Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in this edition is
Paul Cunningham. He is a US Air Force veteran and is also a veteran
of the Korean War. And mister Cunningham, thank you very much for being
with us my pleasure. Where were you born and raised, sir? I
was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and grew up there, attended all the public
schools in Lancaster, and graduated from my school in nineteen forty eight. And
had there been a history of military service in your family, Yes, my
father served in the Army back in nineteen nineteen. He participated in the Siberian
Expedition. That's when the turmoil between the Japanese and the Soviets Sino Russian War,
and we sent nine thousand groups up there to kind of keep the peace.
And my father was part of that group in Siberia, and that's where
the Wolfhounds were founded, the twenty seventh Regiment of the twenty fifth Division,
and they exist today and they have their museum in Hawaii. In fact,
when we formed a chapter of Korean War veterans in my hometown of Lancaster,
we named it for General John H. Mchaelis, who served in World War
two and hundred. First they were born, and then after serving as President
Eidenshower's senior ad camp, he was sent to Japan to head up the twenty
seventh Regiment, and when the war broke out in nineteen fifty, they were
right across there, and General Mcallis played a crucial role in the defense of
the Pussan perimeter. Eisenhowerd brought him back to join him in NATO, and
then he headed increasingly larger commands and finally he retired as a four star general.
So he was from Lancaster. Now you mentioned that you graduated high school
in nineteen forty eight. That's the year you also joined the Air Force.
So why did you decide to join the service and why did you choose the
Air Force? Well, I had hand to Foggs notion what I wanted to
do with my life. I knew at some point I'd like to go to
college. But if you were called back in nineteen forty eight, there were
a few opportunities for scholarships and grants and aid and student loans and things like
that. And no other member of my family or grandparents or anyone had attended
college, so I had no one to guide me along those lines. Well,
I think i'll buy a little time and enlist in the services. So
I went shopping all branches, and my father got to know the recruiting army
sergeant for the Army and Air Force. Back in the nineteen forty eighth,
they hadn't nineteen forty seven. I think they separated, but the separation didn't
wasn't complete then, And he said to the recruiting s artues and my son's
looking around for a branch of service. And the sergeant said, well,
he said, you know, the Air Force has a nice deal. You
can pick three tech schools you don't like to attend. If you don't get
any of your choices, you don't have to enlist. Sound like a good
deal. So I put down radar repairmen, radio repairment, and jet mechanic
in that order. You have to submit transcripts and letters of reference and so
forth, and lo and behold, I got my first choice of radar repairmen.
So I enlisted. They ulminated and list between twenty fifth and thirtieth of
October nineteen forty eight, which I did, and I'm supposed to be in
a slot, you know, to compile of basic training and then right into
tech school. So I completed basic training, was assigned to Keisler Air Force
Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, and that's where all the electronics schools were.
So I completed the training there. That was forty two weeks, but with
holidays and things like that, it sent it almost a year. And it
was assigned to my first duty station, which was at Shaw Air Force Base
in the spring of nineteen fifty. Well, now you're getting pretty close to
the start of the Korean War, So when did you first start hearing that
trouble was brewing? There? At Shaw? We went on two maneuvers at
Fort Bragg Woman's Operation Pointer, which post point cadets were sent down and went
through things and we demonstrated things for them. And on the second one of
those maneuvers, they for some reason decided to give us training in small arms.
And I had been trained in the pistol and the car being but there
I was trained on the thirty caliber machine gun, someone a fifty calibers,
someone Bezuka's, someone brs And little do you think there was any None of
us thought of anything about it war. But anyway, that was like in
probably April, and in June twenty fifth, of course, the war broke
out and our company commander must ed us in the day room. He said,
we're at war. And the second thing he said was President Truman has
extended all enlistments one year. No, I didn't make much difference to me.
I had about two and a half years left on man listen, listen.
But it was one poor devil. He was due to be discharged the
next day, so he wasn't too happy. And then was shortly after that
we got orders to go overseas. They wouldn't tell us, but we knew
we were heading to Korea, So that was in That was in early September,
and we arrived in Korea on September twenty, nineteen fifty. So if
it's early September, where did you land in Pussan, Well, we docked
first in Yokohama, and that was my first introduction to the Far East and
all the Stephen Doors scampering around the trip. That was an eye opener.
And then the next day we landed in Pusson, disembarked there and sent to
occupy an elementary school it was just west of Pusson, and because our first
radar station was going to be on a hill as you enter Pussan Harbor,
it was up to your right. I don't know what the attitude might be,
only several hundred feet. We got our radar set a top of the
They had to build a road around, spiral around to come up, so
it was because of too steep a grade. So we finally got the set
situated up there and operational, and I had been the only tech school trained
radar repairman in the group. We had one other guy who was learned his
electronics by on a job training. He was sharp, a good man.
They left us a small detachment to man this big set and the rest of
them went north to take over a set of the sixty one thirty second aircraft
control on a morning squadron. And within a few days the Chinese push came,
and that was right around Thanksgiving, and of course they had to pull
back given a short amount of that was not a mobile radar set like hours
was mountled on a trailer and we could be from full operation to one a
road in an hour and a half. There they were only given a couple
of hours to get out of there, because the army said we were to
be out of here about a half an hour later. So anyway, they
called an a palm strike on that that set so it can be taken over
by the enemy. And so they all came back and then we regrouped and
we just had our one set here, and then we moved north about twenty
miles north of Poussan. Operated there for several months. Again, we had
to create a site and improve the site, get go through rush and tanglements
to get our set located a proper place. We operated there only a few
months, and then we moved from there down to the port of Poussan and
boarded two LSTs and a navy freighter and it took us around We committed Incheon.
Now this is quite a few months after the initial Incheon landing, and
we moved down south pyeong Tech, which is probably the closest town is Oson
right now. We operated there through several months in the summer of nineteen fifty
one, and then we moved to Kimpo Air Base. There's a hill there
between Kimpo Air boies and the Han River rose up maybe three four hundred feet
completely denuded of any kind of foliage of any kite type. So we set
up on the higher the two peaks, and with the radar set up at
the highest level, got that operational while I was there till February of fifty
two, almost eighteen months, until they finally had replacements to replace it.
For a while they forgot about us. But because the normal tour is about
a year, we were responsible for air surveillance the entire peninsula and tracked all
air craft and me friendly in coming out going, and so forth. We
earned the both the Presidential Unit Citation and the Korean Presidential Unit Citations for our
proficiency. We were given about five minutes a day for daily maintenance where we
might change a receiver or something like that, and one hour a month to
do some major preventing maintenance. But we were operational a great deal of time,
almost constantly, and for that we received the citations. Why don't we
come back? Korean War veteran Paul Cunningham continues his story of serving as a
radar repairman in the US Air Force, including how the radar identified friendly planes
versus enemies during the war, and later Cunningham shares his powerful return to Korea
decades later. I'm Greg Corumbus, and this is Veterans Chronicles. This as
Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Paul Cunningham.
He's a US Air Force veteran of the Korean War. In just a
moment, Cunningham will explain the role that radar played in a number of key
moments. But first he clarifies that the radar repairmen were constantly responsible for making
sure the equipment was up and running, and while they never operated it,
they had a very detailed knowledge of how it worked. No, we just
tended to make sure that the sets was working and all the receivers, all
the consoles and everything. And no, there were radar operators and they were
trained to read the plots and call the plots to a guy behind a touteboard
who had to make his figures backwards so that the controllers, the officers on
the other side could read these and track them. So you had the we
were the main personnel, and then the operators, who I shouldn't say this
but just somewhat disparaging it's called him soap toopes. But they their duration,
their training was eight weeks, and then the officers would read the tracts and
then call those in vector the planes and the beach twenty nine raids and so
forth. How did they tell American plans from enemy planes? How did they
look differently or how did they interpret it differently? Well, when a signal
was received, a blip of plot, and then the iff set is directed
to that he identification friend or foe, and that had a transponder which sent
out a signal, and if they didn't get the proper response, it was
enemy. So everything was carefully tracked there now from what I understand, In
fact, I think you showed me a card about this earlier. Your radar
team was responsible for helping to take down four enemy vessels. Right, there
was anyone who serving career probably knows about bed check Charlie and so called because
he would come around run anywhere between ten o'clock and midnight. They were little
light monoplanes. I don't know if they were manned by more than one person
or not, but they were capable of inflicting big harm, like when they
came around our radar hill and we could hear him just as opposed to our
other higher reciprocating engines. So forth came around, and I was not trained
on fifty caliber as another guy manned the gun and I fed the ammunition,
and none of our traces would burn, so he didn't know where it was.
He knew where the sound was, but he didn't know how much to
lead and so forth, So we didn't knock any down personally. But down
over the hill is the Kimpo Air base and they of course fuel dumps.
If he could have dropped one of these handheld bombs on the fuel dump,
you know, it could have been a disaster. So so they can't be
taken lightly. But it was more of a harassing kind of thing. So
did you get fired upon by the enemy. No, Fortunately, we were
sufficiently far enough behind the lines that we were. You know, we could
hear when we moved to Kimpo, we could hear the firing the cannon and
so forth north of us that might have been twenty miles or so. Right
north of the Han River, it gets really mountainous, and of course we
could hear these echoes and so forth down through there. But you know,
we had to have enough for deed time that we could if an emergency dismantled
things and get on the road. How often would you have to move?
We made four moves in Korea, puss On being the first, Ulsan Pyong
Tech and then Kimpo, and but we on maneuvers. We trained to be
from full operation to on the road, and we could do that in an
hour and a half. We of course didn't have to do it under any
conditions of under fire or anything like that. How well did the system run,
in other words, how often did you have to repair things? We
occasionally we had a major fault, something that might have been in one of
the mechanism more mechanical kind of thing. But the thing we had to extend
with more was the Sometimes the operators might get a little bored and there are
dials on the scopes things that they shouldn't be touching. But the open little
panel or put little dials, the kind of the range thing you could crank
in the range from a few miles to crank in get out three hundred feet,
three hundred miles and so forth. And they would pull around with gadgets
like that, and a call we'd have to go over and turn a few
dials in correct. There they're a little uscie maneuvers there, but that wasn't
too frequent. They thought we just sat in the radar maintenance van drinking coffee,
but that wasn't so we were constantly checking our receivers against with a signal
generator to generate the signal and and try to peek up and make sure that
you were receiving and the signals. Sometimes signals were weeks and good to have
radar vacuum tubes could amplify these signals and so forth. So that's what we
worked on, mainly, the receivers. Now from day to day or even
perhaps week to week, were you aware of how the larger war was going.
We knew what we were fighting for, and we were fighting against communism,
and well, of course you probably heard that McArthur was going to have
his home with Christmas. Well that was the Chinese People's Volunteer Army jumped in.
And of course then that that you know, a lot of fatalities and
so forth. Other than what I just said here, we were fighting communism
and we don't want them to take over the South Korea. We were oblivious
to the politics of the whole thing. We did know that President Truman was
able to engage the support of you and nations to participate in in the effort.
But beyond that, we didn't know that. Now, before the Chinese
came across the river, did you believe were you pretty confident it would be
a short war? Well, yes, we were cheering that on. And
of course that was a surprise to us as well. So but makes one
wonder who was who wasn't watching there to see what was going to happen there?
What the And of course it's the Chinese depicted as a volunteer army and
like they were all volunteers that went into that, but we know that was
was not so. Our squadron was split. We had what we call a
lightweight radar team manning a heavyweight set here in Pusson, and the rest of
the unit, maybe seventy five percent of them went north to take over another
set. And that set was one that it looks like a huge catcher's mit.
The antenna had to be disassembled and so forth. Ours was configured so
that we left the sails off of a boom and put them on a truck
that was designed with another boom, and so forth we could could do that
great efficiency. But this other Catcher's MIT was was not mobile. It was
not considered a mobile set. Ours was called the MPs five M being for
mobile. You mentioned earlier on that you left the service in nineteen fifty two.
So how did you wrap up your time in Korea while the war was
still going on? Well, that was we were at Kimpo. They began
rotating like we had World War Two veterans in our outfit, and they have
their points from their service in World War Two. So they got their replacements
and some of them went back and probably as early as maybe thirteen or fourteen
months so forth. But being a radar repairman, apparently there were not enough
repairmen in the pipeline being trained and so forth, so they didn't have replacements
until nineteen fifty two. So that's why my stretched almost eighteen months. What's
it like to serve that long consecutively, Well, it you know, you
begin to get a little homesick. I didn't get a chance to go home
to Langa serf from based in South Carolina before we shipped out. My brother
came down with a friend and got to he got to see me off.
So it was over two years since I had been away from from home,
so I was anxious to get back and then of course get on with my
life. Coming up. Korean War veteran Paul Cunningham shares his indelible memories of
Korea and tells us about his emotional return there. I'm Greg Corumbas, and
this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our
guest today is Paul Cunningham, a US Air Force veteran of the Korean War.
In just a moment, Cunningham will tell us about his return to Korea
some seventy years after he left. But first he shares some sights, sounds,
and smells that still stay with him from his service during the war.
Well, there's definitely a culture shock there. I come from Lancaster County where
we have a lot of farming, and uh, we know in the spring
of the year that farmers would fertilize by using manure. Over there, of
course, we were hit by this stench. And it wasn't manure from bovian
animals. It was night soil or the human waste which was collected in wells
and and so forth. And this was ladled, well, ladled into buckets
and then carried by. It was like a yoke that they would carry across
their shoulders, a buckle on each stand and carry to the rights patties.
So this was their their method of fertilizing their their race patties. So that
that hit us, and I guess it took a little while we could become
used to it. But this was that, like I said, an elementary
school just west of Possan, and our radar site was on the on the
hill because we had to travel through town and the parts of Who's on and
we had to go through were you know, pretty ramshackle, you know,
small huts like mud thatched huts, and it certainly it's nothing like you'd find
there today. And that as we moved around and we saw that there's some
places, as we moved up, it seemed like a little more prosperous.
You know. What always amazed me is how these elderly gentlemen who walked in
little sandals like, but their outer garbs were snow white and they were a
little black mesh kind of cap and tied under the chin. And how these
things could remain so white on these dusty roads. Were very few except in
the city very human cadamt roods that so there's always a lot of dust.
Before I left, you know, tripped into into Soul, I remember the
RTO Rail Transportation Office, a big Roman style architecture, lots of glass.
There wasn't a pain in it, but the building hadn't been demolished. And
U and then the one south Gate with they had like the eves it was
Oriental architecture and the eaves and they had little monkeys and some of them we
were missing and blown off. But one of another site that sticks with me
is a bombed out church and where we're just like maybe half of it left
and again poor children, you know, by our standards, they were not
very well kept. But so there are some of the lasting memories. But
back in less September, I was privileged to make a trip back to Seoul
and I was a guest of the Ministry for Patriots and Veterans Affairs, and
they've been had this program, the Korea Revisit Program in place for over forty
years and they would each year take a couple hundred veterans not only from the
United States, but England, Canada and about a dozen other nations that sent
combat troops to Korea. In all, or about twenty one nations sent aid.
Only about fifteen or sixteen sent combat troops. Some troops sent hospital ships
or other humanitarian aid. The MPVA has been taking veterans back for two years.
I was president of the National Korean War Veterans Association, and I had
invites to go over, but because of something pressing need required my presidents here,
I had to turn him down. And then when the pandemic hit,
everything stopped. And then he resumed here last year, and I was over
in September, and I had heard about followed pretty much Korea's meteoric rise to
in the place where they ranked tenth and among the global economies. And you
wonder how this can be from literally ashes and rubble to the tenth strongest economy
in the world. But they're very industrious people. And now you know where
I saw nothing but rice patties today, that's all developed. If it's not
a freeway, it's a high rise. And their high rises go up sixty
seventy eighty stories. And I heard one even more, and these chefts coming
right out out of flat land. For that was quite an eye opener there.
And they always want you to have a someone accompany you. So I
asked my younger son if he would be willing to go over, and he
suggests he would, and he told his son. My grandson said, when
ju Dad, he said, you think I could go? Said He'll check.
So I checked out, and he suggests my son would have to bear
all of his costs, which is understandable. So I was accompanied by my
son and grandson and we spent a week there, taken to the DMZ and
to the Grim Memorial to shoot us around and got a feel for what it's
like today. And it's really overwhelming. Of course, it has the traffic
of any major city and now here it is again. I'll be going over
in about three weeks. This time I'll be the guest of the say Eden
Presbyterian Church. And say Eden has a congregation of forty six thousand members,
but that's not the largest Presbyterian church in career. There's one over there I
can't recall its name, but has one hundred thousand members. So and this
say Eden was only founded in nineteen ninety five, and they have this parish
has really taken a keen interest in making sure that what was done for the
Korean people nineteen fifty to fifty three is not forgotten. They want their children
and grandchildren and I probably the fourth generation to see what was done for them
and not to take anything for granted. That they tell them, if it
weren't for them, you wouldn't be here. So this is part of the
overall gratitude. It's a Korean people express towards what was done for them.
How does that gratitude make you feel very good? And if good and a
good feeling that it's not all for nought. I can't speak for those who
didn't come back alive thirty six thousand, five hundred ninety four who didn't make
it back, but I can't help but think that they wouldn't see if they
could see Korea today and what has become that they wouldn't say, Yo,
it was worth it. I know you mentioned this all the time when you
speak about the Korean War, but the difference between South Korea and North Korea
and what the South Korean people and their life would be like if communism had
conquered the entire peninsula. What does it mean to you that you and your
generation basically gave these people a chance to succeed yes, and that's that's awesome.
Really what you did contributed to their emerging as they have and to become
what they are. And there's a photograph I forget who took a NASA or
somebody of the Korean peninsula and maybe you've seen it. The peninsula, the
southern half all illuminated, the upper half dark. Couldn't be any more stark
contrast as that for what being liberated and enabled them to do. And of
course, on another note, the Korean women especially dominate the LPGA, and
of course there's there are a few male golfers in there who right up near
the top. In fact, it was about five years ago that the LPGA
was played at a country club in Leicester and it was won by a young
Korean woman and she very generously made a nice donation to help kids in legacy
there. So there are amazing people want to back up to one thing because
I can't have a discussion with you without adding this, because you were there
for two winters, not just one two And obviously the cold has been documented.
Well there, what are your remembrances of that? When we went over,
we were not given any special arctic gear. We had two blankets mosquito
net or Khaki's or winter Od's and so forth, and a thin parker,
nothing like the big pileline things and fird hoods and so forth, and nothing
like that. So it was really a penetrating cold. And that's the thing
about it. There are probably other cold spots on Earth, but this really
really penetrated. And fortunately I was not did not have to endure that in
a foxhole. Some did, and and they have their tales to tell about.
And of course frostbite was pandemic there among the troops. But I did
have to endure some of the cold, and then we later got a heavier
parka. The two winners there were well below zero. I think probably we
experienced maybe twenty below it, but it went as high as or as low
as thirty and forty in places I recall it. There was an exhibit put
on at the Universe in Dover, Delaware and the archives there, and in
this display they had a guestbook at placed to sign and then make any remarks,
and nine out of ten of the Korean War veterans who visited their commented
about the cold. I mentioned John Wuhan and in the work he's doing.
But in addition to that, there is another Korean American out in Minneapolis who
has a brother in Soul, Korea who manufactures hosiery. And in a way
to show their gratitude, his brother manufactured socks this and an inscription to President
Truman. And this one is a Korean flag. He picked the socks because
with that cold weather, what a guy want more than a pair of clean,
dry socks. So this is their way of recalling that and all those
who had to endure that extreme cold. Sarah. A little while ago,
you mentioned that you recently headed up the Korean War Veterans Association. Tell me
a little bit more about it and what your mission is. Well, the
Korean War Veterans were chartered in nineteen eighty five, originally in New York State,
and then later on they were chartered by Congress, so they have a
dual charter. And of course our mission is to never forget and to honor
our fallen and support South Korea. Among the main missions tonight at the concert,
it will be about nine of us on the stage who will be recognized
as representing that war. We wear this blue jacket. This is to acknowledge
that we fought as UN forces. This is the U N Blue Our last
topic, sir, although a couple of questions related to it. You,
after leaving the service became a history teacher and later an administrator for many years.
But as a history teacher, what do you think of how much or
how little students are learning about the Korean War right now? Well, I
taught world history, not US history. First was five years in teaching world
history in the seventh grade level, and then two years teaching World cultures at
the tenth grade level when it was mandated by the state of Pennsylvania. But
in preparation for you having to give a couple of little talks, I did
research. I did go to some textbooks currently in use in US schools and
quite dismayed to find out that, like in one I looked at there,
this page and this page one Korea. You know, hardly anything that contributes
to the at of seasons, to the war or the after mouth of the
war. And uh, it's you know, we talk about it. You're
a survey or, of course, in something this was not even that it
was hardly enough to to it. It doesn't match the magnitude of that that
every when you have thirty six thousand or more than that dying in one war.
It's it would seem to be deserved a little more attention to that.
So and and that's been borne out by some of my former colleagues who I
see regularly and who lament the same fact that you know, it's there's too
much time spent on other things that are less or important to to kind of
inculcate in our youth. You know, you know what all has, all
the sacrifices that have gone before, so that they can be free to do
what to do today. And uh so, I think that's that's something that
any of my colleagues would express about this if you could write that history.
What would you want students to take away from studying the Korean War? Well,
first of all, more about how they were able to combine the efforts
of many nations to suppress, you know, this aggression from a communist station
keep them from spreading. And you saw how it spread in places in Europe.
But this is who you draw a line in the sand and say here
no more. And I think that's something important to remember. Beyond that,
it would be what the history of the Korean people since the armistice in nineteen
seventy three. They went through a dictatorship right after the war, after Sigmundaries
death. Then there was a dictatorship. And and I've read a number of
books on this, so this issue, and it almost seems like that dictatorship
was what was called what was needed to get some discipline going. Later on,
of course it was free enterprise took over. And we know that all
of the big corporations and how strong they are so and and of course he
what needs to be expressed is how the Korean people endured this. You know.
I h three years ago. I moved into a retirement community and Uh
on a floor above me is a Korean couple and Uh he is retired.
He was had some job in financing in the Boston area, but he retired
and came down to our area. And he is almost thirteen years younger than
me. I was twenty years old when I arrived in Korea. He was
eight when he came. I told him we had a local Korean war veterans
group, and he said, could I come and say a few words.
I said, by all means, David. So he came, and he
spoke and three weeks later, our traitor received At that time we were raising
money for this wall, the Wall of rememberan such Akreen War Memorial, made
a very generous donation to that for our fund there and then later because he
was in the Korean military at one point he became eligible to become a member
of our local chapter. So they never missed a chance to express their gratitude,
and that itself is overwhelming. Well, Sarah, that's such a wonderful
part of the story is their gratitude and how they made the most of their
opportunity thanks to the sacrifice of the United States and other members of the Alliance.
Sarah, we thank you for your time today and we thank you very
very much for your service to our country. Paul Cunningham is a veteran of
the United States Air Force and a veteran of the Korean War. I'm Greg
Corumbus. This is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus, and
thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center.
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