Battle Over Memorial to War : Korea Veterans, Residents Square Off in Bitter Conflict

There is a conflict raging in San Pedro about the proposed International Korean War Memorial at Angels Gate Park and the battle lines are rapidly being drawn.

Over the past two weeks:

* A meeting to resolve the dispute turned into a shouting match between veterans who back the memorial and residents who oppose it.

One resident claimed the veterans--some of whom live in San Pedro--”acted like bullies.” A veteran accused opposing residents of having “a closed mind.” Said Mario Juravich, an aide to Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores: “We had a war, almost.”

* A residents’ group has formed for the sole purpose of fighting the monument. Although some of its members do not want it at Angels Gate, others oppose only the design, which depicts a dozen 10-foot-high bronze soldiers in battle.

“It’s really violent, it has all these guns in it,” said the group’s leader, Richard Karl. “It’s very inappropriate for a peaceful place like Angels Gate Park.”

* The International Korean War Veterans Memorial Committee, which is proposing the monument, last Saturday unveiled a model of the bronze sculpture, and the committee’s executive director said its design is “not negotiable.” He said he expects ground breaking to proceed as planned, on June 25.

* Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who initially offered the five-acre Angels Gate site to the veterans, has reaffirmed his backing for the project despite the swelling controversy. The mayor “supported the project from the beginning and he is still supporting it,” an aide said Wednesday.

* The city Department of Recreation and Parks, realizing there is opposition, has extended its comment period on the project, giving citizens until April 5 to air their views.

At the center of all the controversy is a plan for a $4-million complex that will stand on a promontory overlooking the Pacific, adjacent to the Korean Friendship Bell. It will honor “silent veterans of the Forgotten War,” according to the memorial committee, which has raised about $1.6 million so far.

The proposal calls for a piazza with the bronze battle sculpture in the center. The sculpture would rest atop a base of rock and granite that, according to the committee’s literature, will be taken “from the very battlefields of Korea that they (the soldiers) died defending.”

The 24-feet-high centerpiece will be ringed with the flags of 22 nations that participated in the conflict. The plan is to light the monument until 10 p.m. and light the flags around the clock. That is another point of contention among residents.

Although the outcome of the conflict in San Pedro remains unclear, it will no doubt depend--at least in part--on the recommendation of Flores.

The councilwoman has no formal say in the matter, but her opinion will carry weight when the city Recreation and Parks Commission decides whether to approve the memorial. Although Mayor Bradley offered the land to the veterans, the commissioners--who are appointed by the mayor--will make the final decision.

Flores has expressed two major reservations about the memorial: She does not like the word “war” included in its name, and she does not want it to overpower the bell and its large pagoda. She does not object to the sculpture’s design, however. “It’s a fact of life that there was a war,” she said, “and this will depict that.

“I personally don’t have any problem with the monument itself,” she said. “I’m not so sure about the size, but it seems to me that if the size could be adjusted to fit without being obtrusive in the community, then I wouldn’t have any problem.”

In the end, the councilwoman said, her opinion does not really matter because she will do what the majority of her constituents want. So far, she said, most people she has talked to favor having some sort of memorial at the site.

However, she expects the organizers of the memorial effort to be willing to compromise. “If the organizers are saying, ‘It’s our way or no way,’ then it will probably end up no way.” she said.

Jack Stites, executive director of the International Korean War Veterans Memorial Committee, said his group is indeed willing to compromise--about everything except the design of the sculpture. The group has already changed the design once. After city officials informed them that their plans for a 40-foot monument exceeded height limits in the area, they scaled them down.

However, Stites did say he would “welcome the help” of residents who have suggestions for the design of the setting for the monument.

Stites’ committee is an outgrowth of a group that calls itself the Chosin Few. All are survivors of the battle of the Chosin Reservoir, in which 3,000 American, British and South Korean soldiers died, along with 25,000 Chinese troops.

The battle began in the last week of November, 1950, when Chinese troops attacked United Nations forces as they approached the Chinese border from North Korea. China’s entry into the war began a long retreat of United Nations forces, which had taken control of North Korea after the North’s invasion of the South five months before. The scene in the monument is modeled after the veterans’ remembrances of the reservoir battle.

The Chosin Few initially proposed placing the monument in Washington, and took the idea to the American Battle Monuments Commission, an independent federal agency that oversees military cemeteries and monuments.

“When they came to talk to me,” recalled Army Col. William E. Ryan, the commission’s director of operations and finance, “it was a Marine Corps memorial to the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir. It hadn’t gotten to be an international Korean War memorial at that time.”

National Memorial Sought

Ryan said he told the group that his agency had been pressing for more than a decade--unsuccessfully--to get the federal government to authorize a national memorial to all veterans of the Korean War. With limited public space available in Washington, he said, he thought chances were slim that Congress would approve a memorial for the Chosin Few, particularly when a national memorial had not yet been approved.

In an interview Thursday, Ryan--who, coincidentally, attended high school in San Pedro in the late 1930s and early 1940s while his father was in the Navy--said there was “no way” the Chosin Few memorial could have taken the place of the one his agency was proposing.

Stites said his group was discouraged after the Washington meeting, and decided to look elsewhere. After embarking on a national site search and considering locations in New Orleans, San Diego and elsewhere, it recruited sculptor Felix de Weldon, who created the Iwo Jima Monument in Washington.

In 1986, Mayor Bradley offered the group five acres at Angels Gate Park, just south of the Korean bell, which was given to the city by South Korea in 1976. At the time, the proposed monument was the only one in the country that would honor veterans of the Korean War.

The following year, however, Congress approved the national memorial, which will be located in Washington, across the Mall from the memorial to Vietnam veterans. A national competition is under way to select the design of the Washington monument.

No Competition for Design

There was no competition for the design of the San Pedro memorial--another point of contention among some residents. At some point, De Weldon--who provided city officials their first glimpse of what the bronze sculpture would look like--was replaced by sculptor Terry Jones, who specializes in battle sculpture. Jones’ design for the sculpture was unveiled last Saturday.

Meanwhile, since Bradley first offered the land in 1986, the proposal for the San Pedro monument has quietly moved through the city bureaucracy. The city Department of Cultural Affairs has approved the monument, and recreation and parks officials have issued a “negative declaration” for the project--a document that says the monument, in effect, will not harm the environment.

The Recreation and Parks Commissioners also gave tentative approval Feb. 13, 1987, to the project, based on conceptual designs.

And a committee of San Pedro citizens--the Angels Gate Citizens Advisory Committee--included the memorial in its master plan for the park without discussing it publicly during several months of deliberations.

According to committee Chairman Jim Hawkins, the committee was informed by recreation officials that five acres adjacent to the Korean bell had been set aside for a “future historic monument” at the park. Nobody asked what the monument was. Some committee members were aware of the Chosin Few’s plans. Others, including Hawkins, were not.

After the controversy erupted at a recreation and parks public hearing in December, Flores asked the committee to reconvene, examine the pros and cons of the monument and make a recommendation to her. At last Wednesday’s explosive meeting, the committee reaffirmed its initial decision to set aside land for the monument.

However, the committee has yet to address the major point of dispute within the community: what the monument should look like, and in particular, the design of the sculpture. It intends to meet again Wednesday to take up that task.

Stites, the Chosin Few executive director, sits on that committee and he resists the suggestion of some that the design promotes violence.

“We selected the design that we felt showed what we remember of our experience in Korea,” he said. “And I know of no other way to try and explain it to these people because in most part, I’m trying to explain something to a closed mind.”

Stites’ opponents accuse him of the same thing.

“They fought for freedom of choice and freedom of expression and they are almost trying to deny people that,” said Karl, leader of the opposition group, Friends of the Friendship Bell. “They don’t want to compromise.”

Said Greg Smith, another opposition group member: “I don’t think we need to have uncounted generations of toddlers and grade-school kids looking up at machine guns, rifles and hand grenades in the hands of heroic bronze figures.”

But the veterans have indicated they will not back down without a fight.

As George Vavrek, a former Marine from Torrance said, “There’s more of us than there are of them.”