Korean War Veterans Research Articles

Risk of myeloproliferative neoplasms among U.S. Veterans from Korean, Vietnam, and Persian Gulf War eras.

The Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act expanded U.S. Veterans' health care and benefits for conditions linked to service-connected exposures (e.g., Burn Pits, Agent Orange). However, myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) are not recognized as presumptive conditions for Veterans exposed to these toxic substances. This study evaluated the development of MPN among U.S. Veterans from the Korean, Vietnam, and Persian Gulf War eras. This retrospective cohort study included 65 425 Korean War era Veterans; 211 927 Vietnam War era Veterans; and 214 007 Persian Gulf War era Veterans from January 1, 2006, to January 26, 2023. Veterans with MPN, thrombosis, bleeding, and cardiovascular risk factors were identified through ICD-9 and -10 codes. Veterans from the Persian Gulf War era had the highest risk of developing MPN compared with Veterans from the Korean and Vietnam War eras, hazard ratio (HR) 4.92, 95% confidence interval (CI) 4.20-5.75 and HR 2.49, 95% CI 2.20-2.82, both p < .0001, respectively. Vietnam War era Veterans also had a higher risk of MPN development compared with Korean War era Veterans, HR 1.97, 95% CI 1.77-2.21, p < .0001. Persian Gulf War era Veterans were diagnosed with MPN at an earlier age, had higher risks of thrombosis and bleeding, and had lower survival rates compared with Korean War and Vietnam War era Veterans. This study reinforces evidence that environmental and occupational hazards increase the risk of clonal myeloid disorders and related complications, impacting overall survival with MPN. Limitations include the inability to confirm clonality and fully verify deployment and exposure status.

Afro-Asian Antagonism and the Long Korean War

American racial politics during the long Korean War formed what this essay terms Afro-Asian antagonism, a racial hate between African Americans and Asians (and Asian Americans). When the Truman administration issued Executive Order 9981 and proclaimed its commitment to military racial integration in 1948, two years before the outbreak of the Korean War, it seemed to signal a significant step of racial progress. Black servicemen who enlisted in the “liberalized” military, however, were strategically deployed to represent American national violence, especially to the eyes of Asians who were internalizing antiblack racism imported from the United States through the military apparatus. In the face of decolonization and an upsurge in civil rights movements, this article argues, the executive order molded Black Korean War veterans into an instrument to abort Afro-Asian connections while promoting racial liberalism to a global audience. The Korean War inaugurated the American Cold War racial formation that endures into the twenty-first century. Contrasting two Korean War novels written by Asian American and African American authors—Nora Okja Keller’s Fox Girl (2002) and Toni Morrison’s Home (2012)—this article traces how Afro-Asian orphans and a Black veteran internalize and challenge the Afro-Asian antagonisms of the long Korean War.

Features of the "Monumental" Policy of the United States in Relation to the Conflicts of the Cold War (on the Example of Monuments in Washington, D.C.)

In this article, the authors analyze the unique features of the United States' "monumental" policy in relation to the conflicts of the Cold War and the associated memorial and commemorative spaces within the metropolitan region. Specifically, the authors focus on the two Cold War conflicts that are commemorated on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. — the Korean War (1950-1953) and the Vietnam War (19641975). The Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) and the Korean War Veterans Memorial (1995) are among the monumental objects that commemorate these conflicts, along with the Three Soldiers Monument (1984) and the Vietnam Women's Memorial (1993), which were later added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. To examine the evolution and specific characteristics of the American "monumental" policy regarding the history of the Cold War, the authors employed various sources, including artifacts of "monumental" policy such as monuments, memorial complexes, and architectural structures; official documents on monumental projects; official websites of memorials and their funds; materials on planning, construction, and preservation of memorials; memoirs and interviews of architects; articles in the media; opinion polls; reviews from visitors to monumental objects. By tracing the history of the creation of these monumental objects, the authors aim to evaluate the degree of influence of civil society on official memory politics and to understand how assessments of Cold War conflicts have evolved in the United States.

Quantifying Healthy Aging in Older Veterans Using Computational Audio Analysis.

Researchers are increasingly interested in better methods for assessing the pace of aging in older adults, including vocal analysis. The present study sought to determine whether paralinguistic vocal attributes improve estimates of the age and risk of mortality in older adults. To measure vocal age, we curated interviews provided by male U.S. World War II Veterans in the Library of Congress collection. We used diarization to identify speakers and measure vocal features and matched recording data to mortality information. Veterans (N = 2 447) were randomly split into testing (n = 1 467) and validation (n = 980) subsets to generate estimations of vocal age and years of life remaining. Results were replicated to examine out-of-sample utility using Korean War Veterans (N = 352). World War II Veterans' average age was 86.08 at the time of recording and 91.28 at the time of death. Overall, 7.4% were prisoners of war, 43.3% were Army Veterans, and 29.3% were drafted. Vocal age estimates (mean absolute error = 3.255) were within 5 years of chronological age, 78.5% of the time. With chronological age held constant, older vocal age estimation was correlated with shorter life expectancy (aHR = 1.10; 95% confidence interval: 1.06-1.15; p < .001), even when adjusting for age at vocal assessment. Computational analyses reduced estimation error by 71.94% (approximately 8 years) and produced vocal age estimates that were correlated with both age and predicted time until death when age was held constant. Paralinguistic analyses augment other assessments for individuals when oral patient histories are recorded.

Reflections on Leonard J. Arrington

Reflections on Leonard J. Arrington

Pantoum for a Veteran of the Great War

&ldquo;Pantoum for a Veteran of the Great War&rdquo; is a poem (a pantoum) crafted from quotes from First World War British servicemen taken from interviews housed in the Imperial War Museum archives and used in the 2018 documentary film, &ldquo;They Shall Not Grow Old,&rdquo; directed and produced by Peter Jackson. The pantoum also draws on content from a November 11, 2018 National Public Radio broadcast on the hundredth anniversary of the Armistice of November 11, 1918, which featured a recording of Fenton Caldwell, a World War 1 U.S pilot, describing what the Armistice meant to him. &ldquo;I Never Talked About it After the War&rdquo; is a villanelle about the author&rsquo;s uncle, a Korean War veteran whose POW status and valor as a U.S. Army sergeant in U.N. Special Forces during the war were unknown until after he died.

I Never Talked About it After the War

&ldquo;I Never Talked About it After the War&rdquo; is a villanelle about the author&rsquo;s uncle, a Korean War veteran whose POW status and valor as a U.S. Army sergeant in U.N. Special Forces during the war were unknown until after he died.

Twice Forgotten: African Americans and the Korean War, an Oral History by David P. Cline

Reviewed by: Twice Forgotten: African Americans and the Korean War, an Oral History by David P. Cline Steve Estes Twice Forgotten: African Americans and the Korean War, an Oral History. By David P. Cline. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. Pp. xvi, 387. $32.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-6453-8.) “I got out of the military and came back to Mississippi to restore the power and the glory to my bloodline,” one Korean War–era Black veteran told an interviewer in 2006; “I came to Mississippi to conduct a war against white [End Page 180] supremacy” (pp. 333–34). That veteran was James Meredith, the activist who desegregated the University of Mississippi in 1962 and launched his one-man March Against Fear in 1966. In Meredith’s telling, he would not have had the confidence and courage to face white supremacy if not for his time in the military. David P. Cline includes Meredith’s interview in the new book Twice Forgotten: African Americans and the Korean War, an Oral History. While many scholars acknowledge the impact of World War II and the Korean War on the civil rights movement, none have offered as comprehensive an account of Black service during the Korean conflict and Black veterans’ perspectives on civil rights as Cline has here. The introduction to Twice Forgotten provides context for the oral history interviews with a detailed chronology of Black military service before Korea and the process that led President Harry S. Truman to order the desegregation of the armed forces in 1948. Historians know that desegregation of the military was an uneven process, but this book lets the veterans themselves tell that story. Interviews with political luminaries like Congressmen Charles B. Rangel and John Conyers Jr. stand alongside the stories of many more everyday folks. Black veterans from every branch of the military and every region of the country explain the impact that leaving a segregated society to fight in an increasingly desegregated military had on their political views and the rest of their lives. “When we first traveled from Houston to Los Angeles by train and we had to eat together [with white soldiers], it was kind of frightful,” a former corporal in the U.S. Army told Cline. “One of the cooks there, he used to say, ‘Go on man, go on and sit down, you’re in the army now, don’t act like you’re different’” (p. 47). In contrast to this soldier’s experience, veterans who had grown up outside the South described the comparable shock of experiencing legal segregation for the first time while traveling to southern bases or serving in segregated units that persisted in some divisions until nearly the end of the Korean conflict. The most gripping sections of Twice Forgotten relay the harrowing details of battles waged by Black combat veterans and years of incarceration endured by Black prisoners of war. Cline steps aside and allows veterans’ voices to rise to the fore in these chapters. He intervenes more directly in chapter 7, “From the Service to the Streets: Korean War Veterans and Social Change,” which uses activists’ memoirs and other sources to draw connections between military service and civil rights that were not covered in as many of the interviews included in the book. Cline’s sources from Black newspapers, the Truman Presidential Library, and other archives provide necessary context for the oral histories. Cline conducted many of the interviews for American RadioWorks in support of a documentary on the Korean War, and others were conducted by a range of oral historians under the auspices of the Library of Congress Veterans History Project. This book could have benefited from more thorough explanations of how these interviews were conducted, how they were chosen, and how the historical context of their collection (many were recorded in the early 2000s) might have affected their content. Still, this comprehensive account of Black service in Korea makes an invaluable contribution to American military historiography and scholarship on the civil rights movement. [End Page 181] Steve Estes Sonoma State University Copyright © 2023 The Southern Historical Association

Opinions of Korean War Veterans about Health Care Services They Received during the Wartime

This research was carried out examining and defining the opinions of Korean Veterans about the health care services they received during the war. The literature related to the health care services provided for the soldiers during wars is limited. Historical processes and analyses are potentially large reserves for establishment of bonds between generations and for information transfer. Understanding the past makes us comprehend the present time and includes effective solutions for future events and cases. A qualitative study for sentinel event preparation, was carried out with 12 volunteer veterans who were members of the Izmir Branch of the Combatant Veterans Association. In the research, face-to-face interview technique was used with "Semi-structured Question Form". The necessary approvals were obtained from the ethics committee and the association to conduct the research. After the interviews are completed, it is for the research of the receording data made by the researchers, for content analysis with the program NVivo 10. Demographic information’s of Veterans participating in the research; their mean age is 86±1.12 and 42.7% of them are primary school graduates. 33.3% of the participants served at the front in the Korean War as combat, 33.3 % as artillery, 16.6 % as infantry, and 16.6 % as technicians. According to the information obtained from the veterans, the main themes related to the health care services that the veterans during the war are determined. The main themes related to the health care services that veterans receive are appointed as preventive health services, treatment health services and rehabilitation services. In order to know what historical authority is about health care services, it is recommended to reach different groups in the turning point role in historical process and to orient present-day in the education.

A Study on Brotherhood-Perception for Korea through the Oral Life Narratives of Korean War Veterans in Turkey

This study was conducted to examine the full extent of the brotherhood perception of Korea, which has expanded to the Turkish general public based on the experiences of Turkish Korean War veterans. To this end, the traits of the Korean perception were closely examined based on the data collected through the research on the oral life story of veterans conducted from 2018 to 2022. As a result, we established that Korea was initially an unknown place to veterans and then transformed into an object that needs protection. This imparted a new meaning of saviors for the veterans. Finally, after the war, they identified Korea as a companion, then a brother for life, who sublimated their horrific war experience into a noble sacrifice. As the brotherhood perception through this process spread throughout Turkey, centered on veterans and their acquaintances, it formed the brotherhood perception as we know it. By confirming the reality of the brotherhood perception of Korea through oral life stories of Turkish veterans, we can pave the way to maintain and develop future bilateral relations. In conclusion, it is necessary to maintain and strengthen the foundation of the friendship bonds between the two countries and continue the companionship as eternal brothers by documenting and sharing the experiences of veterans who are still alive as soon as possible.

Mental health of U.S. combat veterans by war era: Results from the National health and Resilience in veterans study

Combat exposure is associated with elevated risk for adverse psychiatric outcomes in military veterans. However, few studies have examined psychiatric characteristics of veterans who served in different war eras. We analyzed data from the 2019–2020 National Health and Resilience in Veterans Study, which surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1257 US combat veterans including World War II or Korean War veterans (n = 61, weighted 4.9%), Vietnam War veterans (n = 767, weighted 44.5%), Gulf War veterans (n = 168, weighted 14.5%), and Iraq/Afghanistan War veterans (n = 261, weighted 36.2%). Sociodemographic, military, and mental health factors were examined. Gulf and Iraq/Afghanistan War era veterans were comprised of younger veterans and included more women and racial/ethnic minorities relative to previous era veterans. Overall, Gulf and Iraq/Afghanistan War veterans endorsed greater trauma burden, and were more likely to screen positive for lifetime and current major depressive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as current suicidal ideation. Among all war era groups, Iraq/Afghanistan war veterans reported the greatest lifetime trauma and combat exposure severity, and were most likely to screen positive for lifetime PTSD (weighted 29.3%), current alcohol use disorder (weighted 17.2%), and current drug use disorder (weighted 12.4%). Specifically, more than 1-in-4 Iraq/Afghanistan War veterans (weighted 26.3%) reported current suicidal thoughts. Collectively, these findings provide war-era specific characterization of the psychiatric status of US combat veterans, which may help inform era-specific assessment, monitoring, and treatment of psychiatric disorders in the combat veteran population.

Alternative Application of Oral History in the Secondary Classroom

While oral history has been demonstrated to hold potential as a more engaging and rigorous alternative to textbook-centered instruction, it has also failed to replace textbooks as the mainstream methodology in high school classrooms. Here, the author presents oral history data from Jim Walch, a WWII, Korean War, and Vietnam War veteran who “retired” as a Red Cross emergency relief worker as well as sample classroom activities derived from that data. The objective is that these sample activities may be received as more approachable than traditional oral history methodology to secondary teachers who are accustomed to textbook-based instruction. It is hoped that these approachable alternatives will encourage secondary teachers to adopt more engaging and rigorous methodologies such as oral history into their curriculum.

Reassessing the Past: Memory and Identity in Toni Morrisonʼs Home

Toni Morrison’s superior literary oeuvre reconsiders the American past by introducing memories of subjects who have been ignored or misrepresented in official history, with particular attention to their identity construction. This paper aims to examine how the neglected history of African Americans is reconstructed in Morrison’s novel Home (2012) through remembrances of the protagonist, a Korean War veteran. His attempts to recall his personal and his family’s past shape the quest for identity. Concurrently, the narrative about the characters’ fates prompts a deeper retrospective of American race relations and debunks the myth of “the Fantastic Fifties” in the United States. Using scholarship on this topic and critical viewpoints of authors such as bell hooks about home in African Americans’ lives, this analysis seeks to explore Morrison’s novel Home, concentrating on how identity is constructed in the process of the main character’s remembrances of the past and growth toward self-respect

한국전쟁과 민간의 보훈외교에 관한 연구: 유엔평화군성전추모연합회를 중심으로

한국전쟁은 민족사적으로나 세계사적으로 중요한 의미가 있는 역사적 사건이었다. 한국전쟁은 대한민국의 현대사에서 가장 비극적인 사건으로 한국전쟁으로 전 국토가 폐허가 되었고, 천만 이산가족을 초래했을 뿐만 아니라 우리 민족사의 전개과정에서 심대한 영향을 미쳤고 세계사에도 큰 의미를 남겼다. 3년여의 전쟁기간 동안 무려 21개국이라는 많은 나라가 참전하여 3백여만 명이 희생된 대규모 전쟁으로서, 냉전 이후 최초의 국제전이라는 의미를 가진다. 한국전쟁은 현대사에 가장 많은 참전국이 참전한 전쟁사로 2010년 기네스북에 등재되었다. 2000년 최초의 남북한 정상회담이 개최되고 남북한 교류협력이 지속되고 있지만 여전히 한반도는 국제정세 속에서 평화를 정착하지 못하고 불안이 지속되고 있다. 한국전쟁 70주년을 맞이하여 한국전쟁의 발발원인과 준비과정, 유엔평화군성전추모연합회를 창설한 문선명 총재와 추모연합회의 활동을 소개한 후 한국전쟁이 국내외에 미친 영향과 함의를 고찰해보고자 한다.

Gunship Over Angola : The Story of a Maverick Pilot

“Most war stories”, according to Hynes, “begin with a nobody-in-particularyoung man, who lives through the experience of war, to emerge at the end definedby what has happened to him.”443 One such “nobody-in-particular young man” wasnational serviceman 74257684BC Private Stephen Pierre Joubert, born on 3 July 1958in Chingola, then Northern Rhodesia.444 Since the age of five, he and his family livedin Pretoria. He had a typical childhood in most respects.445 Barely seventeen yearsold, he, like many other young men, reported for national service. One year later,in 1977, he stood in a “perfectly pressed” uniform with “buttons and badges [that]sparkled like diamonds” in a large room in a nondescript building at the South AfricanAirforce (SAAF) Gymnasium in Valhalla, Pretoria.446 Facing him was an intimidating,expressionless collection of brass seated in a semicircle. It was Joubert’s second PilotSelection Board interview for the Pupil Pilot’s Course. Among the brass was thelegendary aviator, World War II and Korean War veteran, then chief of the SAAF,General Bob Rogers. The general asked the first question, “[h]ow long have you wantedto be a pilot?” Joubert responded, “[s]ince I stopped wanting to be an ice cream seller,sir!”447 Two years later, “on an early November day”, 21-year-old Joubert with wingspinned to his chest stepped onto AFB Ondangwa in South West Africa, now calledNamibia.448 The events that followed changed him forever. It was as Hynes notes, “outof that nobody, war has forged a self”.

Implementing Technology-Based Visitor Counts in Parks: A Methodological Overview

Historically, documenting visitor counts in park, recreation, and tourism spaces has been fraught with challenges that often result in data with questionable reliability and validity. However, these counts are necessary for managers in that they inform budgets, staffing, and policy. The purpose of this methodological study is to detail the processes involved in implementing technology-based counting systems within parks with the goal of assisting managers who wish to modernize visitor counting procedures. The first step involves a detailed site analysis, with considerations specific to park boundaries, access to power sources, the availability of WiFi, and whether lighting is needed for the technology to function. Once the site analysis is completed, the technology options can be considered, with the understanding that the accuracy of the counts will be impacted by visitor flow, focal area of interest, the number of counters utilized, whether visitors must be carrying WiFi-enabled devices to be counted, data transmission options, and access to dynamic features such as those that eliminate double counts. A case study approach was used to demonstrate implementation procedures, focusing on site and technology selection, then moving on to installation considerations, data collection, validation, data analysis, and management implications. The Korean War Veterans Memorial (KOWA), a National Park Service holding located within the National Mall and Memorial Parks in Washington, DC, was selected as an optimal site based on semi-porous boundaries, consistent visitor flows, and ready access to power sources. After consideration of price, privacy, ease of installation, and ready access to data, 3D people counters were the chosen technology. The counters were installed in weatherproofed housings and mounted on lampposts that were situated at the two main entrance sites to the memorial. Analysis of twelve weeks of data indicated that the counting accuracy of the 3D counters was high, minimal modifications were needed, and visitor privacy was retained. A similar methodological approach can be applied by park managers within a wide variety of settings.

6·25 참전자 혹은 타락자와 함께 살아가는 사람들의 고통 －이청준, ｢병신과 머저리｣론

프로이트는 대상의 죽음만이 아니라 대상의 타락 역시 ‘대상상실’을 초래한다고 말했다. 다수의 6․25 참전자들은 누군가를 살해했고, 그로 인해 수많은 사람들은 타락자의 곁에서, 타락 이전의 그를 상실한 채로 살아가게 되었다. 분단문학은 지난한 대상상실의 서사로도 독해될 수 있다. 이청준의 ｢병신과 머저리｣는 친형이 살인행위에 가담했을지도 모를 타락자로 변모해버린 동생의 이야기다. 동생의 병리적 고통에서 6·25와 분단이 야기한 고통의 보편적인 형태가 드러난다. 모든 전쟁은 가까운 지인을 타락자로 만들 수 있는 가능성이기 때문이다.<BR> ｢병신과 머저리｣에서 동생인 ‘나’는 형의 타락으로 인해 고통 받는다. 온순한 성품의 소유자였던 형이 살인자가 되었다는 소식을 듣고, ‘나’는 우울증을 앓기 시작한다. 상실된 대상인 형을 마음으로부터 떠나보내지 못한 채, 형에 대한 애증 병존의 양가감정을 느끼고, 일상생활의 차질을 겪으며, 비정상적 행동을 일삼는다. ‘나’는 자신의 고통에 환부가 없다고 말하지만, ‘나’의 고통에는 대상상실이라는 명백한 이유가 있다. 그러나 혜인은 6·25전상자인 형과 ‘나’를 비교하며 ‘나’에게는 고통의 이유가 없다고 한다. 이는 6·25 참전자를 영웅화하며 그들의 타락상에 대한 증언을 은폐시켰던 당대 담론과 다르지 않다.<BR> ‘나’의 멜랑콜리의 근원에는 참전자를 타락자로 인정하지 않은 채 영웅시하는 사회 담론이 있었다. 참전자를 영웅화하는 분위기는 1964년의 베트남전쟁 파병 이후 가속화되었다. 1966년작 ｢병신과 머저리｣는 1960년대 중반의 군사주의 분위기 속에서 태동했다. 무수한 타락자들과 함께 살아가야 했던 이들의 고통은 징후와 증상으로 드러난다. 전쟁 트라우마는 참전자들만이 아니라 그들의 타락을 묵인하며 살아가야 했던 이들에게도 엄연히 존재했다. 군사주의가 초래한 참전자 영웅화를 경계하며 이청준의 ｢병신과 머저리｣는 참전자와 함께 살아가야 하는 사람들의 고통을 가시화했다.

The Uncanny Return of Settler-Colonial Capitalism in Toni Morrison’s Home

Toni Morrison’s 2012 novel Home is concerned primarily with the efforts undertaken by its protagonist, the black Korean War veteran Frank Money, to accommodate himself to civilian life. However, Home differs from other Korean War novels in that after Frank returns to the United States, he neither aligns his wartime experiences with the superpower rivalry nor conducts a critical meta-engagement with Cold War ideology. When Frank comes back to the United States in 1955 from a tour of duty as a combat infantryman in Chosin, Korea, he instead undergoes the unheimlich experience of becoming a fugitive within a carceral state. Morrison confronts readers with a comparably uncanny experience when she deletes from the narrative any trace of the Cold War ideology whose structures of feeling, epistemologies, and military architecture the Korean War was putatively fought to establish and that the so-called war on terror had eerily revived. When she disallowed Cold War ideology control over representations of Home’s characters, actions, and events, Morrison recast the Korean War as the Cold War’s uncanny Other that exposed readers to an ongoing settler-colonial war being waged within 1950s US domestic society.

Veteran income and employment policies in Canada

Introduction: This article examines the history of Veteran financial benefits provided by Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) since the First World War. Methods: The history of financial benefits is described using policy documents held at VAC. Data from the Life After Service Studies (LASS), covering Veterans released since 1998, were used to describe income and employment among Veterans today. Results: For wartime-era Veterans, benefits supported those with service-related disability and their employment, along with those experiencing poverty. Post–Korean War Veteran benefits were limited to service-related disability benefits. Studies during 1997–2003 suggested that the needs of Veterans and their families were inadequately addressed by existing VAC programs. Consequently, the Government of Canada announced plans to modernize its programs, and the New Veterans Charter (NVC) was launched in 2006. Subsequently, NVC financial benefits have been expanded numerous times. The incomes of Regular Force Veterans declined after release but recovered, surpassing pre-release income, and low-income rates were half that of Canadians. Most Regular Force Veterans were employed after release and satisfied with their work. Lower rates of difficult adjustment were found among employed Veterans, who were satisfied with their finances and jobs. Higher rates of difficult adjustment were found among Veterans who were not employed; who were not satisfied with their job, main activity, or finances; or who were experiencing low income. Discussion: Wartime-era Veterans’ financial benefits and employment supports were guided by the idea of opportunity with security. After 2006, policy returned to a focus on employment supports to enhance Veteran well-being while continuing to provide financial benefits for Veterans experiencing service-related disability.

A tribute to the inventor of arteriovenous fistula for hemodialysis: James E Cimino

A tribute to the inventor of arteriovenous fistula for hemodialysis: James E Cimino