American vet looks back at Korean War

James Albert Kearns, known as Jim, started out down a rough path in life. Shortly after his birth he was left at an orphanage in Brooklyn and barely survived his first few years. Small and weak, he was often sick and overlooked for adoption.

Fast-forward 19 years — he’s full of life. Kearns passes his military entrance exam with flying colors and entered the Navy just as the Korean War was under way.

Now at age 80, Jim — a devoted New York Giants fan, lover of big band music, cancer survivor and father of five children with five grandchildren — looks back on the “Forgotten War” and some of the most memorable events while serving his country.

This is not your typical war story, but a unique and colorful perspective from the eyes of your everyday serviceman. The type of man whose story is not often told, but whose dedication and sacrifice formed the backbone of the U.S. effort in the Korean War.

He’s my father, and this is his story.

When did you enlist in the Navy?

I went in on Dec. 12, 1950.

So the war was already going on when you enlisted?

Yes, the Korean War started June 1950, so it was in full blast. The Chinese came in in November with 5,000 or 6,000 men, but we only had a couple hundred men on the front. So it was like suicide fighting these guys because they were outnumbering us. Everybody thought the war would be over in a couple of weeks, but they didn’t realize what we were fighting against — loads of Communist troops.

What was it like to join the Navy while the Korean War was going on?

When the Korean War started they had to get 2,000-3,000 guys into the service real fast. Most of the rates (jobs) for the Navy were filled in by guys who had been in WWII. They figured there would never be another war after WWII, which was what we all thought, so they signed up in the Reserve. I had a guy on my ship who was 55 years old. He was called back. Can you believe that? We called him Papa Fisher. We couldn’t believe that he was that old.  I’ll never forget the guy. He was so funny. He had no teeth so he had to put his false teeth back in his mouth when he’d talk.

Guys like Fisher joined the Reserves to get cheaper cigarettes, cheaper cameras and other things, never thinking they’d be called back. That’s when I got my first movie camera for about $15 or something like that. These guys were so pissed off they had to come back because WWII was supposed to be the “war to end all wars.” No other war was ever going to happen. But Stalin wanted to have this invasion of Korea and he thought that America would not fight for this piece of land. It was quite an insult to him that we sacrificed so many troops.

Boot camp was about 16 weeks, but they cut it down to eight weeks for me. They wanted us to get out and get on ships, because the ships were in demand. After WWII we mistakenly thought we could relax a little bit, so we were in pretty bad shape as far as having a full Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and all that. You know? We were on demand and the Russians had more planes and tanks than we ever had or thought to have, because that’s all they did for five years was just build their armed forces. They could start any kind of war and they would win, but they didn’t know they were going to fight us Americans in Korea and we fought real hard to defeat them.

What was your role in the Navy/Korean War?

I wasn’t able to strike for a rate for two years, since all those guys from WWII were called back in and there were no rates open. So I was on the deck force for two years doing every crappy thing you could think of like shining garbage cans with brillo pads, painting the side of the ship and shining the steel deck.

Finally after two years, I had the chance to go to a Quartermaster school in Bainbridge, Maryland, for navigation and signaling. I learned how to operate the signal lights, how to do celestial navigation, how to steer a ship and many other things. It was a very complex rate. Once I got the rate I was considered a Navy Seaman Quartermaster Striker and I had a steering wheel with three stripes on my sleeve.

A Signalman?

Yeah, like Morse code, flashing light, all kinds of flag raising and so forth. And we also had infrared light, so the enemy couldn’t see what we were sending. We would wear special glasses and put a filter on the signal light so the enemy couldn’t read it.

I could also read celestial navigation charts. There would usually be five magnitude stars that would come out first in the evening and they’d be the last to disappear in the morning. We’d use an instrument called a sextant to obtain an altitude reading from those stars and then calculations would be made to get our exact location. We had a long-range navigation machine (nicknamed LORAN) that could do this automatically, but my captain, Captain Marker, was really into celestial navigation and wanted to do everything the old fashioned way, like Columbus did.

All the ships I was on were ships from WWII. The biggest ships, like the battleships, had 16-inch guns that could shoot 20 miles off cost and they’d hit the target. Our ship didn’t have that kind of equipment. Ours was an old rust bucket from WWII. When I got my equipment from the Navy, my pea coat was from WWII. I didn’t get first class things. In fact, some of the sea rations were even from WWII.

My first ship was the LST 242 (Landing Ship Tank) a WWII, flat bottom ship that could land on the beach and it easily carried a couple hundred marines and navy men, plus tanks, jeeps and all kinds of artillery. They were very valuable in the Korean War because they landed up on the beaches and they also transported thousands of North Korean refugees who didn’t want any part of Communism.

My second ship was the PCEC 873 (Patrol Craft Escort Control), which was a patrol craft that would escort convoys of ships to protect them from any submarines. We would also patrol the beaches and areas where there might have been enemies. We didn’t have much armory, so the PCEC didn’t really go over seas like the other ships did. They just used it for escorting ships and patrolling Russian submarines. In fact we almost crashed into a Russian submarine. It must have seen us coming and started diving under the water. I think we ripped off their periscope or something because they didn’t do anything. They couldn’t see anything. But it was crazy.

Where was that?

In the Atlantic someplace. They were taking pictures of New York City with their cameras on the submarine.

They wanted to control the Panama Canal. They were ready to start a global war, but the Korean War sort of stopped their ideas of taking over the world.

So from there, I only had one more year to go and I was transferred to the U.S.S. Navarro APA 215, which was an attack transport and cargo ship. We’d pick up 1,500 Marines down in Morehead City, N.C. and cargo (tanks, jeeps, army trucks, artillery, etc.) and would bring them overseas to the Korean War, to Busan. But when we got over there the last time, the war ended, so they didn’t need our ship or us. But it wasn’t really an end to the war, it was an armistice, because the Communists were still building up troops and Russian equipment. They were still shooting at us even though the war was over. It was bullshit.

Do you have any specific stories that you remember as being particularly extraordinary?

The old man, Captain Marker, he worked his way up the ranks and he loved to do celestial navigation. He was a great man. I really admired him. One time we were studying the stars down by the Panama Canal and he said, “Kearns, what’s the name of those stars up there?” And I thought, what is he nuts? I didn’t know the names of all of those stars. And if I did, I couldn’t pronounce them. And as he’s talking this long silver rocket ship comes straight down from the sky and hovers right over our heads. It had two white lights, like headlights, and a green and a red light, like a ship. It stayed over our ship for about five minutes and then it turned up and in a matter of seconds it was in the heavens. We never had anything that fast. My hair on my arms was standing straight up. I took my hat off and the hair on my head was standing up, too.

Marker and I looked at each other and I said, “Should I mark this down in the Navy log?” And he said, “No, don’t put it in there, they won’t believe it. If we did they’d have us in a straight jacket in Section 8.”

How do you feel about Truman’s direction during the war?

Truman let Russia tell us what they wanted to do and everybody jumped, which we shouldn’t have done. We should have told them to go fuck themselves. But Truman wasn’t like MacArthur. MacArthur said, “There’s no substitute for victory.” And he wanted to destroy all Communism.

The Korean War was on for three years from ’50 through ’53 and we lost over 36,000 American boys, but we shouldn’t have lost any, because we had the most powerful country in the world. It’s a shame. There were all these American boys that died in prison camps in China or in Manchuria. They died of broken hearts. They say it was “The Forgotten War.” It’s because Mr. Truman decided it was going to be a forgotten war and fuck the American boys who were going to die fighting there.  And most of them were young boys that were just 18 years old.

Truman called the Korean War a “police action,” when in reality it was one of the most brutal wars in history. They said that Stalin killed 80,000 citizens in Korea. The man was a butcher. He didn’t believe in God because he was an Atheist (although he was an ex-priest). He died in ’53 thank God. God called him and then he probably sent him right to hell, the son of a bitch.

When you think back on the war what stands out the most?

Truman being an asshole and fucking everything up.