Serving
in the Army for three years, Janke arrived in Korea late in the war and worked
as a typist in personnel in Pusan.
What branch of service were you in?
I was in the Army from 1951 to 1954.
I signed up for three years because at that time all the young men were
being drafted. They said that if
you signed up for three years that when you got out you would get a discharge
rather than be in the reserves. I
didn’t want to be in the reserves so I signed up for three years and at that
time the Korean War was pretty well on full strength.
I was sent to Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri, where we had about eight weeks
of intensive training. After that I
was picked to go to the engineer school at Ft. Belvoir because they said they
had to have draftsmen to design the airstrips in Korea, so I was fortunate to be
sent there for another six or eight weeks.
Most of our battalion was sent immediately to Korea and I am sure most of
them were shot up. God was with me there. Then
eventually, after the training at Ft. Belvoir, at the engineer school, I was
sent to Korea. By that time the war
was pretty much over with and I was sent to Pusan, Korea and we lived in tents
and so forth just like you have seen on the program MASH. It was just exactly like that, whoever did the settings for
that program or TV show did a very good job because it was exactly like that.
We wore fatigues and stuff like that.
By the time I got there, they said they didn’t need any more airfields
laid out so they said, “Can you type?”
I said I could type. I had
taken typing in high school and I was put in the personnel tent.
I did not see any real active bloody battles because we were far from the
front. I spent the whole year there
and eventually I was sent home and if I had more than a year to go in my service
I could have been sent to Europe for a year but I decided to get married instead
and that was fine. Then I was sent
to Augusta, Georgia, Camp Gordon, now it called Fort Gordon. I was in charge of publications and reproductions.
We did printing and so forth for the engineer school.
For a short time I wore combat boots and bloused pants and regular
military police uniform. It was
kind of nice in a way because if you were married you could live “off post”.
Go in the morning and go home at night.
There were a number of apartment complexes there and we kind of
car-pooled and did our job. In 1954
I was released from the service, after three whole years, and I came home and
went into business with my dad. It
was a good portion of my life and last June I was fortunate enough to go to the
Kiwanis Club International Convention in Taipei, Taiwan.
We flew from Japan to Beijing, China right over where I had spent a whole
year of my life in Korea so I thought that it was kind of neat.
Fifty years later. At that
time when I was looking forward to my life, I would be getting back they’re
living that life again. I made many
good friends in the service and still keep in contact with some of them. The Korean War was a very short war. It was a very bloody war.
It didn’t last very long, like the Vietnam War that went on for years
and years. This was kind of an
interesting experience. You have
heard of President Eisenhower. He
was a military man and commander of the forces in Europe during World War II.
It took about two weeks on a troop ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
Now you can do it in a matter of hours by plane but we were coming back
and we must have been in November, and we got news that Eisenhower was elected
President of the United States and somebody hollered, “turn the ship around,
Eisenhower is a military mind and he wants to keep the war going”. It was a joke. After
Eisenhower got in the war ended very soon after that and he did not keep the war
going because he was a military man.
Did you go through any military training?
Oh sure, sure, we went to eight or twelve weeks of training
at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. We
had to crawl through; underneath barbed wire fences while machine guns went over
your head and how to throw hand grenades. I
had a lot of close calls with my life; one interesting one was when we were
learning how to throw hand grenades. These
things look like little pineapples and you pull the pin and you throw it.
We had practiced with the fake ones and the officer said we should try
the real ones. They had cement
bunkers built up and he told us to pull the pin and throw it as far as you can
so it wouldn’t go off next to you. I
had a trick shoulder at the time and I pulled the pin and pulled my arm back and
my arm came out of its socket. I
dropped the hand grenade and the officer who was watching everybody picked it up
and threw it. It exploded, but if
he hadn’t done that I would have been blown to smithereens.
I have had a number of close calls in my life; it’s a wonder I am still
here.
Was the training difficult?
It was for me because I wasn’t an athlete, but what are
you going to do? An officer says
you do this or do that and you try to do it the best that you can.
I am not even real crazy about guns, but you have to do it.
Can you describe the attitude of the Korean citizen?
They were very friendly.
They were very, very poor. I
was in Taegu, Korea, which is about halfway between Pusan and Seoul and lots of
Koreans would wear army fatigues and it got to be at night you couldn’t tell
if it was a GI or a
Korean so they made the Koreans dye the clothes.
Most of us had laundry ladies who would take the t-shirts and underwear
and so forth and take it down to the little creek and pound the clothes with
sticks or little wooden clubs to get them clean.
I have pictures of them, the water is cold with chunks of ice and they
are pounding the clothes with little wooded clubs.
They got them as white as snow and I don’t know how they did that.
Of course, some of the GIs had girlfriends in the village.
I was scared to death of the girls because of disease.
How was the weather?
The weather was very unusual. One minute it could be raining pitchforks and you would have
mud up to your ankles and two hours later the sun would be out and the wind
would be blowing and there would be squalls of dust. It just kinds of boggles my mind now how advanced Korea
is now. When I was there the city
of Taegu was so old and backward, we would get a pass to go to town, we were
seven miles out of town, and we would get a pass to go to town once a week and
all these humble little houses with clay roofs and stucco walls made out of mud
and straw and so forth, and the sewers ran down the curb of the street.
The smell was nauseating. You
pick up a tape recorder or an adding machine and you see that it is made in
Korea. The bombs during the war
leveled Seoul. You see pictures now
days and there are multilevel skyscrapers.
I was young when I went overseas and I remember an interesting story.
Part of your group got off the plane at Pusan, of course we had a packet
of papers with our identification and so forth, and this person was sent here
and that person was sent there. They
put me on a train that went up Korea, up the peninsula on a real old fashioned
train, with green velvet seats, something out of the 1800’s and I had fallen
asleep and a couple of hours later someone poked me and said I was supposed to
get off here. It was in the middle
of the night and they pushed me off the train with my duffle bag and some papers
and it was like I was set on the moon. I
didn’t know anybody, I didn’t know where I was going, it was dark, there
were a few people there and they were all Asian, I had hardly ever seen an Asian
before and I was scared to death. Finally
someone in a jeep had come to pick me up. They
had been notified that I would be there at that time. We went through the rice paddies and a little village and
finally we got to one of these MASH tents and there we were. I was there for a whole year.
What did you do
when you got there?
That is when they asked me if I could type.
A couple of experiences probably saved my life.
One was the vocational school one summer when I took a course in drafting
and residential design and so forth, which is why I was sent to the engineer
school at Ft. Belvoir. My other
buddies were sent here and shot to pieces because they didn’t care if you were
a lawyer or a doctor because if you were in that group and they said go and
fight that battle you had no choice. So,
that helped me delay and when I got to Korea they said, even though there is a
battle going on you have to have somebody keeping the records of who is doing
what and where and it was a full time job, we worked seven days a week, but
there was no sense of having Saturday and Sunday off because there was nothing
to do anyway.
Did you get paid for typing?
We got very modest; I can’t remember exactly what it was,
maybe $100 a month or something like that.
Very modest, what I did get sick of was the powdered food; powdered eggs,
powdered milk, powdered orange juice, everything was powdered and you mixed it
with water. When you were in Korea,
several times during the year you could go to Japan for R&R, which is rest
and relaxation. The Korean War was
not that long after World War II, World War II ended in 1945 and the Korean War
started in 1950, five years later. I
went there several times and I was in downtown Tokyo.
The United States allies had taken over the largest building in downtown
Tokyo which hadn’t been bombed. They
had a PX on the top floor, a PX is where military people can buy toothpaste and
souvenirs and I went up there and they had a restaurant up there and I had a
malted milk shake and a cheeseburger and they tasted so good, it’s the best thing I
had in my life. That is one of the
humorous sides.
How much did that cost?
I have no idea, not very much, one floor they had souvenirs
and one floor was a post office and I bought several items for my mother and had
them shipped home. I still have the
box, I bought a pair of brass candleholders and I still have them and the box
fifty years later, which is kind of neat. They
made a wooden box to fit the item that you bought.
What was the hardest part of the war?
You get to meet some very good friends and you are all in
the group together, you have your buddies together which is nice.
I didn’t like the crossings, they had big troopships, one was called
the Breckenridge and the other was
called the Mitchell.
They took about two weeks to cross the Pacific Ocean and a lot of us got
pretty seasick because you would stand on the deck of the ship and it would
pitch way down about forty feet. I
wasn’t real crazy about the military training but what are you going to do.
When I did get out I was thankful to God that I didn’t get sent to the
battle lines and get shot up. I had
gone to college two years before that, but when I got out, I got married, got a
house and never went back. But it
worked out all right. I went to
work with my dad in the bookstore and have been there ever since. We had a
couple of kids who took over the bookstore now, they are doing a good job, and I
have been able to back off and pursue some of my hobbies including art.
It is very difficult to make a living as an artist.
Do you keep in touch with your army comrades?
There is one in Chicago that I hear from occasionally.
We came back from Korea together. There
is one in California who calls every two weeks and we chat.
Were you shipped to Korea or did you fly there?
That is one thing I wanted to tell you.
Somewhere along that line, our battalion was shipped to a place, group
called Scarwaf. Do you know what
that means? Special Category Army
with Air Force. Many people have
never heard of that. We were in the
22nd Engineer Aviation Battalion, which was kind of nice because we
were not connected with the Army and they left us alone, but we weren’t really
connected with the Air Force either. We
were an entity by ourselves. We
could wear the 5th Air Force patch or the Army patch.
Another interesting point is when we got discharged they let us keep our
uniforms and fifty years later I can still fit in my uniform.
In that unit, did you follow the orders of the Army or the Air Force?
Somewhat, but they usually left us alone.
It was good when they left us alone.
Did you enjoy the ocean travel?
We were coming back on the ship, there were 1400 guys and
the guys in the Navy who didn’t have anything to do, we were chipping away at the
doors, re-painting things. We were
several days ahead of schedule so they stopped the ship and they sent up
balloons for anti-aircraft practice and these Navy guys fired at the balloons
and they didn’t hit one. All the
Army guys are standing on the ship watching and we decided they should have
their paintbrushes back. We were
down below sea level; our bunks were made out of canvas and stacked maybe five
layers high. I found out that if I
lay in my bunk horizontally I would get less seasick than if I was running
around on deck. You had to stand in
line for food and there were all these stairways and hallways and they had to
feed hundreds of fellows and you are woozy to begin with and you take your tray.
There were no tables with chairs, the tables were set on posts and you
stood and ate. They placed the food
on the tray and I asked what the meat was?
He said rabbit and I threw up all over my tray.
The guy next to me also threw up.
What did you drink?
Mostly coffee. They
made the strongest coffee, a quart of water to two pounds of coffee or something
like that. I have been drinking
coffee ever since.
Was there a doctor on the ship?
I don’t know but I supposed they did.
On a cruise ship nowadays there are always medical people on board, but
they have a lot of older people on board. Young
people, twenty years old, are probably looking for a job or going to school.
The average age of our troop ship was under twenty-five.
All the guys were getting drafted who didn’t have an excuse that would
exempt them. In Switzerland, I am
related on my mother’s side, all have to serve.
Some guys nowadays don’t appreciate what they have and they should be
drafted to get some military training.
How many meals were you served a day?
I don’t remember exactly but I didn’t eat a lot.
A lot of ships travel because of the amount of goods that are imported.
The tourists travel to Hawaii by flying.
Another thing that you see in Hawaii is a lot of Japanese.
That is where they go for vacation.
You hardly ever see any fat or overweight Asians.
I met a fellow from England and he said they are just amazed at the all
the fat people in the United States.
Do you have any Korean friends?
No, I do not. When
I was working in personnel, there were several soldiers that had girlfriends who
they wanted to marry. The paperwork
was very difficult and some of these soldiers had children with these women.
I think they are called “Amerasians” and some of the true Asians look
down on these people.
Did you see any Korean refugee camps?
No. During
World War II there weren’t that many Japanese in the US.
When we went to war with the Japanese they rounded up all the Japanese.
Some people thought it was a good idea and some didn’t.
They didn’t round up the Germans.
My dad was in World War I and his parents came over in the 1800’s. Thirty-five years later the United States was at war with
Germany and there were people that were still in the old country.
Somebody asked me about the Asians attitudes toward the Americans.
I told them they welcomed us with open arms.
One thing I did remember from the service is the traveling.
Could the Koreans speak English?
Some could speak a little, enough to get by and we did the
same. I went to Russia a few years
ago and we could communicate through sign language and I have tried to learn
some Japanese but it is difficult.
Oral
History Project 
