Korean War Vets Lose Battle for Monument

To Colleen Clement, the Korean Friendship Bell is one of the most tranquil spots in Los Angeles--a place for slow walks or to watch the sun set over the Pacific.

The bell, a gift to the city from the people of South Korea, is suspended from a colorful pagoda-shaped belfry, high atop a bluff in a sprawling city park at San Pedro’s southern tip. “I go there for its views, its peacefulness and its low-intensity, natural feeling,” said Clement, who lives two blocks away.

Jack Stites also admires the view from the bell. He runs a national campaign on behalf of a group of Korean War veterans who are trying to build a monument to those who fought in what they call “the forgotten war.”

The letterhead on Stites’ stationery carries an impressive list of backers. They include TV personality Ed McMahon, baseball great Ted Williams--both Marine Corps veterans--and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who in 1986 offered the Korean War veterans what they considered the perfect site for their memorial: five acres at Angels Gate Park, just below the Korean Friendship Bell.

Community Divided

Three years later, that monument--the International Korean War Memorial--has divided this seaside community, pitting Stites and other veterans against residents such as Clement, who contend the memorial would glorify war and destroy the serene mood the bell offers its visitors.

On Thursday, after a contentious hearing before the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission, the veterans suffered a defeat almost as bitter as any on the battlefield: the commissioners voted not to permit the long-sought monument to be placed adjacent to the bell, calling the site inappropriate.

“My advice to those who are promoting this sculpture would be to seek another site,” Commissioner Alan Serioty said.

The veterans may now take Serioty’s advice, or they may modify their design and again propose that it be placed next to the bell. But their next step was unclear Thursday. After the commission’s unanimous vote, Stites, who verged on tears during his appeal for the memorial, stormed out of the hearing, refusing to answer questions. A crew of angry veterans followed him, wheeling out a model of the sculpture that had caused the fuss.

The debate before the Cultural Affairs Commission raised a difficult and emotional issue: How should a community evaluate public art? And in many ways, the discussion paralleled one earlier this decade over the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, whose design was selected by a committee of art experts only to be reviled as an insulting “black hole” by the veterans who had raised the money for it.

Although the wall of names has since become celebrated as one of the most moving memorials in this country, the Korean War veterans vowed that their monument would look nothing like it; “a peacenik’s revenge,” one of Stites’ group calls the Vietnam memorial, even today.

So the veterans hired their own sculptor and kept careful control over his design.

Realistic Sculpture

The result is a realistic sculpture that might be a scene from a John Wayne war movie--a massive bronze cluster of a dozen larger-than-life soldiers in combat, wielding rifles, hand grenades and other weapons in an attempt to repel an enemy attack. The statue would be flanked by the flags of 22 Allied nations that participated in the Korean conflict.

This is deliberately not a monument to the fallen, but rather one the veterans say captures the inner strength a soldier needs to survive.

That vision has drawn fire, even from those who supported the idea of a monument next to the bell.

“Whether they are being aggressive or they are holding off the enemy, it depicts a violent scenario with the intent of killing people,” Clement said. “I don’t know that much about guns, but you’ve got bazookas, you’ve got automatic rifles, you’ve got grenades, and I do not like to see the tools of war in a recreational playground.”

Such opinions have touched a raw nerve among some in San Pedro, a community whose history has been entwined with the military since before World War II. Said Fran Botwin, a monument proponent: “You can’t have figures dancing in a field of flowers to remind people that war is horrible.”

The $4-million Korean War memorial is proposed by the Chosin Few, a nationwide organization of Marine Corps veterans whose members survived the battle of the Chosin Reservoir. It was a brutal battle--some say the most savage in modern warfare--fought over 13 days in subzero temperatures. More than 3,000 American, British and South Korean soldiers died, along with 25,000 Chinese troops. The memorial, for which the Chosin Few already has raised $1.6 million, is based on the veterans’ remembrances of that fight.

Needs Approval

If any memorial is to be erected, it must receive approval from the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Commission, the state Coastal Commission (the proposed monument falls within the California coastal zone) and the Cultural Affairs Commission, which has jurisdiction over the design of the statue and its location. Commissioners said Thursday they would be happy to consider another proposal from the veterans.

Adolfo Nodal, a public art specialist who six months ago became manager of the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, is not surprised by the disagreement over the Korean War memorial.

“Public art is one of the most controversial art forms there is,” Nodal said. “Every piece of public art is an open game. Every community is different, every site is different, every need is different, all artists have different attitudes about it. . . . It’s really a marrying of the concerns of the artist and the needs of the community. And it’s got to be a marriage, it’s got to be a relationship.”

Not so, said the monument’s creator, Pennsylvania-based sculptor Terry Jones.

Veterans Memorial

“It’s a veterans memorial, put up by veterans, and they want something that represents what they did and the price they paid. When you’re dealing with fellows that are alive, they want to see what they looked like. They’re not into highly stylized or allegorical or mythical scenarios. . . . I’m not doing the monument for the grape growers in Napa Valley or for somebody here in Pennsylvania. I’m doing it for the veterans.”

The International Korean War Memorial didn’t begin as an international monument.

It had its roots in San Diego, at a December, 1985, reunion of those who served in the 1st Marine Division at Chosin. More than three decades after they fought on the battlefields of Korea, these survivors--now scattered throughout the United States--came together for the first time to form the Chosin Few.

Each veteran had his own tearful moment. For Stites, it came with the realization that he had saved a fellow soldier’s life.

In the middle of the night on Nov. 29, 1950--he still remembers the date--Stites carried the wounded man down a steep, icy hill. He left the badly injured soldier to die at a medical aid station. But at the reunion, the veteran recognized Stites.

“I know you don’t remember me,” Stites recalled the veteran saying, “but I’m the guy you brought off the hill that night.”

“Jesus,” Stites replied. “I didn’t think you’d lived.”

Spirit of Camaraderie

The spirit of camaraderie that grew from moments like that was so strong that the former Marines decided to build themselves a memorial. They wanted to do it before they were gone, before the world had forgotten them.

As Massachusetts resident Frank Kerr, a founding member of the Chosin Few, explained: “We’re all in the autumn of our years now. . . . You’ve got to do it yourself or it ain’t going to get done.”

The veterans hooked up with a sculptor--Felix de Weldon, now 82, of Newport, R.I., who designed the famed Iwo Jima Memorial--and set their sights on Washington. In early 1986, they took their idea to the American Battle Monuments Commission, charged with erecting and maintaining military memorials.

But the commission’s director of operations, Army Col. William E. Ryan, dissuaded the former Marines, saying his agency had been pressing for a decade to get a national memorial to all veterans of the Korean War--not just those who fought at Chosin. With the limited public space available in Washington, Ryan said, chances were slim that Congress would approve a memorial that honored only the Chosin Few.

Later that year, Congress did approve the national Korean War memorial. It will be displayed in Ash Woods, a grove of trees on the Mall, across from the Vietnam memorial. A national design competition is under way--Ryan said there are 1,018 registered contestants, with the winner to be selected June 1.

Scope Expanded

After they were turned down in Washington, the Chosin Few looked at sites in various cities, including San Francisco, San Diego, San Antonio and New Orleans. They also expanded the scope of their memorial to honor veterans from all 22 nations that joined the Allied forces in Korea.

The veterans were persuaded to consider Los Angeles by a local Korean immigrant, Steve Cho, who at the time was commander of the Korean Veterans Assn. Cho took the veterans to see Angels Gate Park, which is nearly the southernmost point of Los Angeles, and asked them to put their memorial on a wind-swept open slope between the Korean Friendship Bell and the ocean.

“You know,” Cho said in a recent interview, “the Friendship Bell out there is standing alone. It’s lonely.”

The veterans loved the site both for its spectacular vistas and its military symbolism. Once part of Fort MacArthur, Angels Gate Park is also close to the Port of Los Angeles, the point of departure for many soldiers who went to Korea. For those who died, Stites said, the ocean bluffs of San Pedro provided their last glimpse of American soil.

Mayor Bradley liked the idea too. After offering the veterans the land, he wrote several letters on their behalf, asked two of his staffers to coordinate the effort, hosted planning meetings in his office and issued a press release on Nov. 12, 1986, that proclaimed: “Mayor Paves Way for Korean War Freedom Memorial at San Pedro’s Angels Gate Park.”

Sculptor Dropped

Plans for the memorial moved quietly through the city bureaucracy, including reviews by the Recreation and Parks Commission and the Cultural Affairs Commission, until last December. Then city recreation and parks officials staged what turned out to be a boisterous public hearing in San Pedro.

By that time, the Chosin Few had dropped de Weldon, in part because he was too expensive, Stites said. Jones, a battle monument specialist, stepped in and developed a design similar to the one de Weldon had proposed.

Area residents raised several objections at the December hearing. They said the monument was too big and would obstruct the view from the bell. They also opposed the veterans’ plans to light the 22 flags around the clock. But their most passionate arguments were--and are still--reserved for Jones’ sculpture, and how they believe it will affect the “bell park.”

Wrote resident Richard Karl in a letter to the San Pedro Weekly: “The bell and pagoda . . . are the culmination of thousands of years of Korean experience in the creation of sacred and meditative places. Just walk up to the bell and you feel yourself being affected. And as you walk around it and the full panorama unfolds in front of you, you get the MESSAGE and the message is harmony, beauty, friendship and above all, PEACE.”

The residents formed a group--Friends of the Friendship Bell--to combat the proposed memorial. They staged protests at the bell and were out in force at Thursday’s hearing, where they presented the commissioners with written statements and a slide show about the bell.

“The central points of this sculpture denote violence,” June Smith, a member of the group, told the city panel. “The problem here is there are no victims. The victims are the spectators who are looking at the statue.”

The veterans, meanwhile, formed their own group of San Pedro residents who support the monument. They recruited Lawrence Fitzgerald, a 36-year resident whose Navy career spanned three wars, to run the committee.

‘I’ve Worn the Shoe’

A two-time Purple Heart recipient, Fitzgerald, 67, walks on crutches as a result of wounds he suffered more than 40 years ago. He has little patience for those who criticize the military; Jane Fonda is the subject of a derogatory cartoon on the wall of his study. “I’ve worn the shoe,” he is fond of saying, “and I know where I’m coming from.”

Of those who oppose the monument, Fitzgerald said: “They desecrate those who have given their lives for the principles that have sustained our country. They have no right to do so.”

In the wake of the community dispute, the Chosin Few made some concessions. The group scaled down the height of the bronze figures from 12 to 10 feet and decided to reduce the base of the monument by three feet in an effort to keep the figures from obstructing views from the bell. But the veterans stood firm on the design of the bronze sculpture.

To Commissioner Serioty, however, that was the problem.

“I think it will interfere with the peace and tranquility that is inspired by the bell, which is a beautiful gift to the American people,” he said Thursday.

Many of the residents who oppose the Korean War memorial said they would favor a simpler tribute, one on the order of the V-shaped black granite wall that commemorates those who died in Vietnam.

“When you go to the wall in Washington you can’t walk away from there without crying,” Karl said. “This monstrosity, I believe, will not draw a tear from anyone.”

Wall Criticized

But from the start, the Korean War veterans have made it clear that they want their memorial to be the antithesis of the black wall. “Please don’t allow any part of our memorial to bear any resemblance to any part of the Vietnam monument,” wrote Kerr, the Chosin Few founder, in a 1986 letter to de Weldon.

Stites expressed it this way: “The Vietnam memorial is a memorial to death. It does nothing to recognize that there were those who served and fought and bled but didn’t die. I don’t know, but when I went to see the Vietnam wall, it left me cold. I stood there and I watched people crying and tears flowing and I thought, ‘My God, a memorial shouldn’t do that to people. . . .

“I want to be able to go (to the Korean War memorial) and feel the inner force that is required of an individual to be in a conflict like this and survive.”