Bucher Reflects on Terror in Eye of the Storm : Pueblo Skipper Finds Calm Seas

A flock of Japanese cranes, wings flapping against a sienna sky. A stack of yet-to-be-signed prints entitled “Song of Freedom,” depicting a stern bald eagle descending onto an olive branch. A purplish, chilly portrait of an isolated millhouse in winter. An almost surrealistic rendition of an albatross shadowed by a rolling, sinister sea, an image that might have been inspired by Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

These are among the works waiting for buyers that hang on and lean against the walls of the breakfast den that adjoins Lloyd (Pete) Bucher’s kitchen. They are only a handful of the more than 500 paintings that Bucher, the commander of the ill-fated USS Pueblo, has created in his 10-year career as a professional artist.

Tonight, Bucher and dozens of his Pueblo crew members convene in San Diego for a 20th-anniversary reunion of their shared experience in the eye of the storm. The captain, his ship and his men were captured by North Korean gunboats in international waters in January, 1968, and spent most of that year in internment, pawns in a Cold War chess game that included beatings, forced confessions and a cross-fire of political rhetoric.

Recently, the 60-year-old Bucher stood in his kitchen, surrounded by his artworks, and, between draws on cigarettes, reflected in carefully measured tones about his life. It is soon apparent in listening to Bucher that he is not preoccupied with the events of 1968. He speaks clearly and easily about the misadventure he was sent on as the skipper of a refurbished intelligence ship that was woefully unprepared to withstand an attack.

Would Rather Discuss Present

Bucher becomes more animated when concentrating on the current events in his life. Working out of his spacious ranch home tucked away on 1 1/2 wooded acres in Poway, he is kept busy by the planning, painting and selling of the products of his new command: the easel. Bucher said that, when he retired from the Navy in 1973, he intended to use his relationship with Doubleday, the publisher of his autobiography, to continue writing. He said he set out to write a humorous account of life aboard submarines, but it didn’t go as smoothly as he had hoped.

“I found after a while that, though I had the stories in my mind and could string the words together, it was very difficult ending each day satisfied that I had accomplished something,” he said. “It was like pulling teeth. So, I thought I better try something else.”

The something else was art.

Combining his observations and reading of library books with the basic drawing skills he had acquired from sketching as a hobby and from making extensive log book diagrams in the Navy, Bucher was able to accumulate a sizable portfolio. Although he had no art degree or formal training, in 1977 he followed up on a friend’s suggestion, applying to enroll in Pasadena’s prestigious Art Center.

“When he got accepted, it was like a bolt out of the blue,” said Rose Bucher, the trim, soft-spoken Missourian who has been married to Bucher 38 years.

Spending a year studying illustration at the Art Center, Bucher learned all the formal techniques needed to make the transition from an amateur to professional painter.

“It’s just fantastic that an old Navy man could take up a virtual unknown, and in just a few years spin himself up to speed to be a professional,” said John Tillson, of Bucher’s transition from seaman to artist. Tillson, a Mira Mesa real estate agent who served with Bucher in the Navy, is one of his biggest customers and promoters.

Bucher’s art has been paying off for a long time now. Since 1978, he has been painting a steady 30 to 35 portraits a year, selling almost all of them. Bucher receives $400 to $800 for each of his pieces, as well as about $60 for each reproduction. One of those prints, a 1986 collage of American symbols titled “Of Thee I Sing,” inadvertently caught the tide of nationalism generated by the celebration of the Statue of Liberty’s centennial. More than 4,000 of the prints have been sold, and it has been Bucher’s biggest commercial success.

What makes Bucher’s relatively solid sales volume all the more impressive is that he does not have an art agent. The Mitcshke Art Gallery in Del Mar and a Poway picture frame store are the only businesses that handle Bucher’s works.

Bucher’s paintings--delicately crafted watercolors laced with an almost Oriental touch--evoke solitary thoughtfulness. The works include images of schooners, destroyers and submarines rolling on the ocean’s waves, Western scenes of cowboys and Indians, and, more recently, portraits of children and birds.

When he isn’t painting, Bucher spends as much time as possible with Rose, their two granddaughters, and their two sons, Mark, 35, an offshore oil rigger, and Mike, 34, a Vista carpenter. He socializes a lot with his many friends and acquaintances, and travels extensively.

Bucher also makes about six speeches a year, including a recent lecture on leadership for IBM, and an emotional, halting presentation last February for his alma mater, Boy’s Town, an organization that he often works with.

Influenced Him Deeply

Boy’s Town has played a major role in Bucher’s life. Bucher was born in Pocatello, Ida., in 1927 and orphaned as an infant. He spent his early childhood shuttling between his adoptive parents in Idaho and relatives in California. The unsettled environment got Bucher on the wrong track and, at age 8, after being caught shoplifting, he was placed in an orphanage. Later, he was sent to a rural Roman Catholic mission.

It was while he was in the mission that Bucher read about Boy’s Town and was inspired to write a letter to its founder, Father Flanagan, asking to be admitted. The request was granted, and, in the summer of 1941, an excited 14-year-old Bucher boarded a train for Omaha.

During his five years at Boy’s Town, Bucher distinguished himself as an honors student and as a star athlete. When he graduated in 1946, Bucher couldn’t afford to go to college immediately (he later earned a degree in geology at the University of Nebraska), so he enlisted for a two-year hitch in the Navy. It was a decision that would lead to the fame that he neither sought nor wanted.

Bucher does not balk when asked about the Pueblo incident (“I’m not a politician, I don’t have anything to hide”), but his body tenses slightly. His arms are suddenly crossed, his voice becomes louder and a brittle edge seeps into his narrative. He also does not mince words about the incident.

“There was no raw deal involved,” Bucher said. “But pure and simple, it was a case of the U.S. Navy and the U.S. government sending out somebody to do a job, the job fell apart, and then they failed to back that person up.”

The Pueblo was one of about 90 ships in what was called the Navy’s Electronic Intelligence gathering corps (ELINT). It was little more than a specially modified but creaking fleet of aging freighters performing routine clandestine spying missions in international waters, such as monitoring Soviet military broadcasts and charting the sounds and movements made by their submarines.

Commissioned in the waning days of World War II, the 176-foot-long Pueblo was originally a merchant marine vessel performing the mundane missions of conveying food and toiletries to soldiers stationed overseas.

But, in early 1967, the Pueblo was given a new directive. While docked in Puget Sound Naval Yard outside Seattle, she was ordered to undergo a $5.5-million refurbishment that included her being equipped with the latest electronic surveillance gear. The Pueblo was going to be made into a giant oceangoing ear.

And Lloyd Bucher, one of scores of Boy’s Town graduates to enlist in the Navy, would be its first alumnus to receive a command of his own.

But that command, which at first seemed promising, began to tarnish quickly. Shortly after the Pueblo’s refitting began, the Navy slashed $1 million from her refurbishment budget. This spelled doom for Bucher’s request that an elaborate but vital destruct system be installed on board, thus eliminating anything sensitive in the event the ship lost rudder control and ran aground in hostile territory (her steering mechanism failed 60 times during sea trials).

“It never occurred to me that we’d be attacked,” he said. “We were operating under the principle that we were unaggressive, that we couldn’t defend ourselves, and that we were supposed to be defended. At every briefing I had asked, ‘What would happen if the rudder fell off this sucker?’ ‘Oh, well, we’re going to be right there and get you,’ they told me. I counted on that. If that wasn’t going to be the case, the mission should never have been run in the first place.”

But the Pueblo was put out to sea, carrying a sensitive cargo virtually unguarded, protected by little more than a pair of tarpaulin-covered .50-caliber machine guns (useless in combat against armored ships), some fire axes and two antiquated and glacially slow paper shredders.

In January, 1968, the beginning of a year when the world seemed to detonate, the fuse began sputtering off the coast of North Korea.

On Jan. 5, the Pueblo cast off from Japan’s Yokosuka harbor for its latest mission, to chart Soviet submarine movement off the North Korean coast. A few days before, the North Korean military had begun broadcasting warnings that they would take severe action against any spy ships found off their coast, whether the ships violated the 12-mile international limit or not. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff knew of these warnings, but did not act on them. As a result, the Pueblo sailed for North Korea still assigned on a mission labeled “minimum risk.”

“There were a whole lot of areas where the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not take any action,” Bucher said. “There’s a lot of areas where the whole damn connective organization, up to and including the State Department, didn’t take the proper action. Everyone we were working for, the National Security Agency and others, had a responsibility in this matter, and they had a whole hell of a lot more information than I ever had.”

Such as the fact that on Jan. 21, 31 North Korean-trained insurgent guerrillas attacked soldiers in the streets of Seoul, South Korea. Subdued after a bloody fire fight, their captured leader confessed that his group’s goal was to storm the presidential palace and assassinate then president Chun Hee Park.

Not Told of Danger

Although the North Koreans were clearly primed to bear a retaliatory attack, the Pueblo, cruising 16 to 20 miles off their coast, was not notified of danger.

“The whole history of North and South Korea is based on an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” Bucher said. “We only got one message a day about what was going on in the world, and no one told us what was going on over there. No one ever told me, ‘Hey, you got a problem.’ ”

And on Jan. 23, the seemingly inevitable occurred.

At high noon, a North Korean vessel, a high-speed subchaser, approached, circling the Pueblo at about 1,000 yards and signaled, “Heave to or I will fire.” As harassment is considered an almost routine part of naval spy work, Bucher signaled back that he was in international waters, and for the time being ignored the other vessel.

About an hour later, four other North Korean vessels--three 30-knot torpedo boats, and another subchaser--arrived on the scene, and a pair of MIG fighters began circling overhead. One of the torpedo boats, rubber bumpers rigged on the outside of its stern, began backing toward the Pueblo, indicating a boarding. It was then that Bucher began running for deeper waters, even though his ship had a top speed of only 13 knots--less than half of the other vessels.

The first subchaser pursued, opening fire on the Pueblo with its 57-millimeter guns.

One of Bucher’s 82-member crew, fireman Duane Hodges, lost his leg in the barrage and died soon afterward. Slightly wounded himself, and hoping to buy time, Bucher stopped the ship and ordered that all the equipment and documents be destroyed, a task that proved impossible.

Shortly after the crew vainly attempted to comply with their commander’s orders, the North Koreans boarded the Pueblo.

None of the American rescue or assistance attempts promised Bucher before were forthcoming. The Pueblo, with much of its equipment and documents intact, was towed into Wonsan harbor.

“One of the great lessons of the Pueblo was that you have to provide the state-of-the-art equipment for destruction,” Bucher said.

Hustled off their ship and herded into a special train, the Pueblo’s crew was spirited out of Wonsan and taken to Pyongyang, the capital city. Held in a peculiar marble-floored military barracks, they would endure 11 months of abuse while negotiations for their release dragged on.

Trying to extract confessions of wrongdoing, Bucher’s captors beat him and his crew repeatedly, at times so severely that many urinated blood. Bucher himself held his ground several days, finally relenting after being shown the result of savage torture inflicted on a South Korean prisoner, and then being told his entire crew would be shot before his eyes. Signing a blatantly contrived confession, Bucher “admitted” that his ship violated North Korean territorial waters, which, according to all official records, never occurred, and referred to himself and his crew as “hostile criminals.”

“I do believe my ordeal was easier than most of the others’ though,” Bucher said. “Because, when there wasn’t the brutality, there’s nothing else, just ultimate boredom, which is really difficult to endure. And what may have helped me there was the fact that I was the commanding officer, so on a daily basis I had a need to consider how the rest were doing and what we could do to discredit the North Koreans, and uphold morale. I had more of a responsibility in that way, so it helped occupy my mind and fill up the time. Of course, I couldn’t have stood it forever, but it was certainly long enough.”

Released Before Christmas

Bucher and his crew were finally released Dec. 23, 1968, after the United States admitted to, and at the same time, repudiated, a written statement that the Pueblo was engaged in an espionage mission, and apologized for their acts.

“The Pueblo was not engaged in illegal activity. . . . The document I am going to sign was prepared by the North Koreans and is at variance with the above position. I will sign the document to free the crew and only to free the crew,” declared Maj. Gen. Gilbert H. Woodward, who was the chief U.S. negotiator for the crew’s release.

The purloined Pueblo itself was never returned to the U.S., and for many years was displayed by the North Koreans as a propaganda showpiece for tourists.

Bucher, who lost nearly 80 pounds and whose right eye was badly injured during the ordeal, was not yet out of the woods. After his crew’s return to the United States, a Navy panel of inquiry convened to examine the incident and recommended that Bucher and the officer in charge of the ship’s intelligence operations be court-martialed for giving up their ship without a fight. The Pueblo was the first U.S. naval vessel surrendered during peacetime since 1807.

But Navy Secretary John H. Chafee ruled against a court-martial, saying Bucher and the other officer had “suffered enough, and further punishment would not be justified.”

Bucher noted the irony in the fact that, had he not made requests for protection before the ship’s seizure, he probably would have been put through a court-martial.

“If I had just ignored the situation like the other (ELINT) skippers, I would have been in a hell of lot more trouble when I got back. . . . Looking back on the Pueblo incident, you have to ask: Was anything learned? Yes. Was what was learned acted on? No, I don’t think so.”

Bucher pointed out that, within a month of the Pueblo’s capture, the Navy equipped ELINT’s fleet with all the safety equipment it ever needed: Elaborate scuttling systems, water-soluble paper that could be dumped overboard, rendering its printing unreadable, and, counter to its previous policies, deck-mounted 40-millimeter cannons.

But, as a result of their new armament, the ships became too conspicuous and provocative to effectively engage in intelligence operations. At first ignored, this problem eventually lead to the ELINT program being scrubbed in late 1970.

After Bucher returned to active duty, he was assigned to Monterey, Calif., for post-graduate study in management. After that, he was assigned to a post in Guam. He finished his Naval career taking part in the mine-clearing operations in Haiphong harbor.

Although he has some harsh words for Navy bureaucracy, Bucher denies any bitterness about the experience with the Pueblo.

“I never had problems coping with anything after the Pueblo,” he said. “I don’t have any problems with it, and I never did have. I have a mental approach to problems that requires me to take an optimistic view of things. To me, life is a hell of an experience, and I can’t understand anyone wanting to step out before their time is up. Getting up in the morning is wonderful, every day’s a holiday and every meal’s a feast. You’ll struggle a lot more if you don’t believe that.”

Strengthened Their Marriage

Rose Bucher, who spent much of the time during her husband’s captivity keeping in contact with the families of the crew and meeting with such high-level officials as Secretary of State Dean Rusk, agreed.

“It was a very emotional time, of course,” she said. “But, when we got back together, we became a little more thankful for the things that you take for granted. Because once you’re separated, you just keep on thinking about them. Just the fact that you can go to the movies together, or go grocery shopping, or to church, it becomes a great thing. I think in a way it strengthened our marriage, made us appreciate one another more. Things do have a happy ending.”

Bucher said he is looking forward to the four-day reunion in San Diego’s Town and Country Hotel.

“You wind up forming some substantial friendships when you’re in a prison situation,” he said.

The reunion was organized by Bucher and fellow Pueblo crew member Robert Chicca, a former Marine who was involved in the ship’s intelligence gathering. Chicca, who lives in San Diego, had organized the first Pueblo crew gathering, which was held in Las Vegas in 1985.

“The first reunion was a little awkward,” Chicca said. “We only got about 40 of the crew to show up. A lot of them were reluctant to go; they thought they’d be opening old wounds. But, once we got together, it was terrific.”

Through the help of Ann Landers, who mentioned the upcoming reunion in a recent column, Bucher and Chicca have located all the former crew members. Because it is the 20th anniversary of the Pueblo’s capture, they expect a much larger turnout than three years ago.

“We’re hoping to have at least 60 of the crew show up, from all over the country,” Bucher said.

Although the Pueblo and its nightmares--the capture, the imprisonment, the Time and Newsweek covers, the choruses of second-guessing--have sailed 20 years into his past, Bucher finds that he himself is still not forgotten. Strangers occasionally approach him on the street and the mail brings five to 10 letters a month from around the world.

“I guess it’s the price you pay for a bit of notoriety,” he said. “But still, I’d rather that it never happened to me, even though I supposed it was meant to. And I would not have wished something like that to happen to someone else, because, no matter how hard you avoid it, the recognition never seems to go away quite completely.”