The “Forgotten War”

Heroes Remember

The “Forgotten War”

Transcript

When we came back from Korea, first of all nobody knew who we were. I had a town father come up to me one time and said, “Hey, I haven't seen you for ages, where you been?” That sort of thing. We paraded down Portage Avenue. Main Street and Portage Avenue in Winnipeg after we got off the train and people were busy shopping. One thing or another. They had no idea who we were or where we came from and the odd time when you mention something about the Korean War, you realized very quickly that you were boring people. There was no interest in this. So you just quit talking about it. I lived in this city for ten, twelve years and never met a Korean Veteran and there's, there's I think in our unit here we have 55 members. Now you'd think in fifteen years, you'd bump into a Korea Veteran but if nobody's talking about it why would you? We had a guest speaker one time at one of our Honors and Awards dinner, a retired lieutenant colonel from the Van Doos and he brought up this point of the “forgotten war” and he was not a Korea Veteran and he said, “You guys have to quit worrying about the forgotten war and get out and tell the story. You have to tell the people.” And so we get involved in many things as we can. We get involved in parades, city exhibition parades. We go out of town on exhibition parades, any place where we can hold our banner up and say, The Korea, Korean War Veterans.” Remembrance Day here in Saskatoon at the arena, this year we had just over 8,000 people indoors. There was over 7,000 in the stands plus a thousand on the floor so it's a big Remembrance Day celebration here and the legion takes, and the Korea Veterans take a very yactive part.

Description

Mr. McKinney discusses how unaware the people in his community were about the war in Korea. He then describes being told to tell the story themselves to raise awareness of the Korean War.

James McKinney

James McKinney was born on August 17, 1932 in Winnipegosis, Manitoba. Eventually his family settled in Gladstone, where he finished high school. Along with a brother and two friends, he enlisted in the army at Winnipeg. Mr. McKinney joined the artillery, took a jumper's course, and transferred to the airborne artillery. He also studied logarithms at night school during his basic training, and went to Korea as a Tech Able with the 1st Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Heavy Artillery. In this capacity, he ranged guns on enemy positions and acted as an observer in the observation post trench.

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