Korean War Memorial : Battle Looms Over the Site of Monument and What It Means

A group of Korean War veterans will unveil plans tonight for an international memorial at Angels Gate Park in San Pedro, but the proposal may run into some opposition from residents who worry that the 24-foot-tall monument will be too imposing for its site.

Greg Smith, president of the residents association in the Point Fermin neighborhood, which abuts the park, said he intends to ask city officials for an environmental impact study to determine how the memorial will affect traffic around the park, as well as the neighbors’ ocean views.

Some Reservations

Smith also said he has reservations about the project because it is in the state coastal zone and the law reserves that area for coastal activities. He said he would like to see other sites considered, and added that he fears that the design of the monument, which depicts 12 soldiers under attack, would glorify war.

“If you want to do something,” he suggested, “commemorate the fact that there hasn’t been any fighting in the last 30 years.”

Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores has a similar concern; her aides said that although she backs the concept of a monument at the Angels Gate Park site, she is worried that its name--the International Korean War Memorial--would indicate that the war, rather than the veterans, were being honored.

Countered Jack Stites, chairman of the war memorial committee: “Well, it was a war. I don’t know how you identify it any other way. I don’t know how you call it a peace action, because it wasn’t.”

Stites, who lives in Lake Elsinore, said the committee’s intent is not to glorify war but to show the harshness of it.

“What we’ve tried to do in that monument is provide an example of what the war was. . . .The faces on (the soldiers) are going to be quite piercing,” he said.

The $4-million memorial is to honor 22 countries--17 whose soldiers fought in the conflict with North Korea and the People’s Republic of China and another five that sent supplies, Stites said. It will stand on a promontory that stretches toward the Pacific, just south of the Korean Friendship Bell, which was given to the city of Los Angeles by South Korea in 1976.

Backers of the monument say the San Pedro site is significant because of its relationship to the bell, and because many soldiers left for Korea from the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro. For many who died, Stites said, it was the last time they stood on American soil.

The design of the bronze and marble monument was inspired by the battle of the Chosin Reservoir, in which 3,000 American, British and South Korean soldiers died, along with 25,000 Chinese troops. Temperatures fell below zero during the 13-day battle; in the monument soldiers will be depicted fighting in the snow.

Stites and the other veterans from across the country who have proposed building the memorial are all survivors of that battle. The 2,500-member group calls itself the Chosin Few; it has already raised $1.6 million in donations and pledges, Stites said.

Ring of Flags

The memorial, which will be ringed with the flags of the nations it honors, is to eventually include a visitors center to will be built in an old military battery underneath the bell. (Angels Gate Park was a part of the Ft. MacArthur military installation before the federal government deeded it to the city.)

Stites said he hopes the committee will be able to break ground on June 25, 1989--the 39th anniversary of the date the war started--and that work will be completed in time for a Veterans Day dedication on Nov. 11, 1990.

The International Korean War Memorial is to be the nation’s first memorial honoring Korean War veterans, but it will not be the only one. Plans for a separate monument, this one honoring U.S. veterans only, are under way in Washington.

Stites said the Chosin Few initially proposed its monument for Washington, but was turned down several years ago. The Chosin Few subsequently conducted a search for a site for its memorial, and in 1986, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley offered the group 5 acres at Angels Gate Park, atop the bluffs overlooking the ocean.

The San Pedro memorial was initially to be built by Felix de Weldon, the noted sculptor who created the Iwo Jima Memorial in Washington. But Stites said the committee has since severed its relationship with De Weldon because the veterans and the sculptor could not agree on deadlines for the project.

The new sculptor is Terry Jones of Newtown, Pa.

The memorial as it is currently proposed is scaled back considerably from De Weldon’s original design, which called for a 40-foot tall monument that would depict 15 soldiers, rather than 12. The size was reduced after objections to the monument’s size, as well as a city view ordinance that bans structures taller than 24 feet in certain parts of Point Fermin, including the park.

The design of the memorial has been approved by the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission. Approvals are also necessary from the Los Angeles Board of Recreation and Parks Commissioners and the California Coastal Commission, which has jurisdiction because the monument will fall within the coastal zone.

Smith, the Point Fermin community leader, said his group’s reservations about placing the monument within the coastal zone are supported by state law. “The coastal act says that things placed on public land in the coastal zone should be coastally dependent,” Smith said. “We don’t see this as having anything to do with the coast.”

Despite Smith’s view that the project should have an environmental impact study, city recreation officials have already issued a “negative declaration” for the monument, which states that it will not be harmful to the environment and therefore does not warrant an environmental review.

Tonight’s hearing, 7:30 p.m. at the Cabrillo Marine Museum, is being held by the city Recreation and Parks Department to gather community reaction to the monument proposal and the negative declaration.

Stites said he will use the meeting to quell the fears of Smith and others, which he attributes to misconceptions about the size of the monument. Stites, a Marine veteran of Korea and Vietnam, said he has personal reasons for wanting to see the monument built: “I’ll be fulfilling an obligation to some friends who didn’t come back.”