While I was training at the NCO Academy in Georgia, an incident in the Sea of Japan on January 23, 1968, changed my life. The U.S. Navy ship USS Pueblo was captured by the North Korean Navy in what became known as the “Pueblo Incident.” The ship and 83 crew members were captured in international waters in what became a major Cold War incident between Western and Eastern powers. A few months later, my order for deployment to Vietnam changed, and I was ordered to go to South Korea in June 1968. At the time, it was widely believed this incident would cause the resumption of the Korean War, which concluded in 1953 with an Armistice Agreement. By the time I arrived, South Korea was on full alert and the U.S. Army was deploying additional personnel to existing military bases and along the DMZ. The photo below is of the USS Pueblo docked in North Korea.
