Mission for Peace : El Segundo Youth Taking Message to Soviets for Second Time

Nine-year-old Bradley Correa has prepared his speech in the event he meets Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev:

“Hi, my name is Brad. I want peace between nations and I don’t want you to have war and I want you to destroy all your weapons so they can never fight anymore.”

The meeting may not be a child’s fantasy.

Last year, the El Segundo third-grader visited the Soviet Union on what his father calls a “mission of peace and good will,” during which one group of Soviet children dubbed him the “Samantha Smith from California”--a reference to the Maine girl who captured headlines with a trip to the Soviet Union but died in an airplane crash in 1985.

A Second ‘Mission’

Bradley and his father Robert Correa, 39, are leaving Sunday on a second “mission.” The elder Correa said the Soviet officials who are paying for his two-week trip told him they are trying to arrange a meeting with Gorbachev.

Brad’s career as an ambassador began inadvertently.

Last year, his father, a Mexicana airlines employee who travels all over the world on vacations, applied for tourist visas to the Soviet Union. (His mother, who has worked on the space shuttle for TRW, decided she could not go because of her work.)

Soviet officials examined the visa applications and decided to sponsor the trip, explaining that they were making the offer because it is rare for a child to come as a tourist.

The U.S. State Department is not aware of a similar case, according to spokesman Ben Justesen in Washington.

“We have not discouraged this sort of unofficial contact,” Justesen said. “We acknowledge it and encourage it.”

He added that American officials would like to be kept posted “on the next adventure of little Mr. Correa.”

Robert Correa said he knows “it is a risk” that Soviet officials may use his son’s visit to further propaganda aims, but he figures “at least, the people can see an American kid.”

Brad said he was afraid when his father told him they were going to the Soviet Union last year.

When other students in his class heard about the trip, Brad recalled, one boy commented, ‘ “They are going to kill you over there.’ And everybody, like, said, ‘Whoooo!’ ”

His teacher gave him a special assignment. “I had to do a dictionary, a diary, whatever--what I did every day.”

El Segundo Mayor Jack Siadek arranged for him to carry “keys to the City of El Segundo” to Moscow and Leningrad.

In Leningrad, a group called the Committee of the Defense of Peace gave him a statuette of Peter the Great, inscribed to “Brad the Peacemaker.” He also got the key to Leningrad, a medal from the Young Pioneers, a Soviet passport, a Soviet driver’s license, a model of Lenin’s house and several busts of Lenin. There were speeches against war.

“They didn’t kill me,” Brad noted.

But there were some uncertain moments, such as an offer of caviar.

“One thing I really hated about the food was the fish eggs. Yech! I’m not into raw fish,” Brad declared.

As for Soviet gum, “the taste wears out really quick,” he reported. He did, however, approve of “a burrito” they sampled in Armenia, finding it “very, very good.”

Nevertheless, on this trip, Brad’s father said, “We are taking our own junk food,” such as beef jerky.

Brad also is taking a letter from school Supt. Richard V. Bertain: “The El Segundo Unified School District is very pleased to support Bradley Correa’s effort in the area of international relations.

“Obviously, it is important that the efforts of all segments of society be directed at improving relationships throughout the world and this includes young people.”

Despite all the peace rhetoric, Bradley made the discovery that the Soviet kids--much as their American counterparts--like to play war games. Officials took him to a toy store and told him to pick out whatever he wanted.

“Look at my toy gun,” he said, proudly displaying a Red Army artillery piece. “It’s radical.”