Tribute to Veterans Comes Nearly 40 Years After Conflict : Korean War Memorial Design Unveiled

In a White House ceremony as hot and humid as a rice paddy in July, Korean War veterans Wednesday saw the unveiling of the winning design for a memorial to their war of nearly 40 years ago--a representation of a 38-man platoon advancing in battle column through trees.

Mopping his brow, President Bush hailed the memorial as an overdue tribute to an “American victory,” a term not usually associated with the conflict more frequently described as a stalemate in which a U.S. attempt to defeat Communist North Korea ended with the peninsula still divided.

“We succeeded and built a stable peace that has lasted more than 35 years,” Bush said. “In retrospect, the policy of containment so exemplified by the Korean conflict created the conditions for the tide toward democracy now changing and uplifting our globe.”

The presidential view of history was backed by retired Marine Gen. Raymond G. Davis, whose four rows of medals were topped with the starred blue ribbon of the Congressional Medal of Honor won in Korea for a heroic rescue mission.

“Many people called it a draw,” Davis told reporters after the ceremony. “But if you look at it as the salvaging of the freedom of a people which enabled them to become one of our foremost allies in that part of the world, in that sense it was a victory.”

Need $2.8 Million

Retired Army Gen. Richard G. Stilwell, chairman of the memorial advisory board appointed to help the American Battle Monuments Commission carry out the $6-million project, pledged a “fast track” campaign to raise the $2.8 million still needed to complete construction by June 25, 1991, the 41st anniversary of North Korea’s attack on the south.

The $20,000-design competition winners, Don Leon, Eliza Oberholtzer, John Lucas and his wife, Veronica, all from Pennsylvania State University, said they were attempting to show the movement of a war that surged the length of the peninsula before its final entrenchment along the 38th Parallel, the original line of demarcation after World War II.

The 38 8-foot-high figures include a Korean porter and three “Katusas,” members of the South Korean army who fought with U.S. units. At the point where the platoon would emerge from the trees into an open, sunken area, a retaining wall will honor the 33,629 killed in battle and depict the air, naval and noncombatant aspects of the war.

The dramatic design, chosen by a 10-member jury of Korean War veterans, will encompass about two acres in a grove of trees southeast of the Lincoln Memorial, directly across the reflecting pool from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.