Finally, They Remembered the Pueblo

A modest ceremony in San Diego the other day finally produced a small measure of recompense for one of the more conspicuously shameful episodes of post-World War II military injustice. Retired Comdr. Lloyd (Pete) Bucher and the crew members of the intelligence ship Pueblo were officially recognized as having been prisoners of war, 22 years after their capture by North Korea. The medals given the men had been specifically ordered by Congress, even though the Navy--institutionally as self-protective as always in the Pueblo matter--had fought to block them.

The medals were not a gift, nor a courtesy, nor a favor. They had been paid for in blood, pain and humiliation over 335 days of brutal captivity. But the ordeal of the captain and crew of the Pueblo did not end when finally they were freed by their tormentors. Instead began a new ordeal, psychologically callous and morally unconscionable, which saw men who had heroically kept faith with their country and with themselves blamed forothers’ failures.

For what the Navy tried to do was hold Bucher and some in his crew almost solely at fault for the seizure of the Pueblo, the loss of much of its secret equipment, even for their own suffering. Yet, as the record soon revealed, the Navy had only itself to blame for what occurred. The onus for its capture fell not on the Pueblo, but on those in higher authority whose unforgiveable succession of near-criminal blunders had placed the ship in harm’s way.

The Pueblo, an old World War II Army cargo carrier, was not the vessel to send on a spying mission in the international waters off North Korea. Badly outfitted, it could neither fight nor run from attackers and lacked even the means to prevent its secret equipment from falling into enemy hands. Bucher had spotted these deficiencies before the Pueblo sailed. His requests to have them remedied were repeatedly turned down.

In 1969 a Navy court of inquiry, eager to blame an individual and so spare the institution, recommended that Bucher be tried, among other things for failure to resist the seizure of his ship. The Navy secretary wisely ruled that no disciplinary action would be taken against any member of the Pueblo’s crew. Yet, for 21 years, the official Navy attitude--scapegoating Bucher and his men--remained unchanged. Now amends of a sort have been made, official apologies have been tendered. Far too late, and with utter inadequacy, the crew of the Pueblo has at long last been welcomed home.