{"id":34710,"date":"2013-03-23T10:06:59","date_gmt":"2013-03-23T14:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=34710"},"modified":"2013-03-23T10:06:59","modified_gmt":"2013-03-23T14:06:59","slug":"pueblo-vet-recounts-his-capture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=34710","title":{"rendered":"Pueblo vet recounts his capture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jilly sends us <a href=\"http:\/\/www.woodtv.com\/dpp\/news\/local\/kalamazoo_and_battle_creek\/former-navy-pow-mike-barrett-was-piece-of-history\">a link to the story<\/a> of Mike Barrett, a veteran of the capture of the USS Pueblo by the North Koreans in January, 1968;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>On Jan. 23, 1968, Barrett&#8217;s ship, the USS Pueblo, was attacked by the North Korean Navy.<\/p>\n<p>Roy Stafford was 19 and was on board the USS Enterprise when that attacked happened.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I said, &#8216;Mike, we could see you on the horizon,'&#8221; Stafford recalled.<\/p>\n<p>Stafford says he thinks the Enterprise &#8212; an aircraft carrier &#8212; could have affected a rescue. But it was ordered to stand down.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And that is something that bothers me to this friggin&#8217; day,&#8221; Stafford said.<\/p>\n<p>The Pueblo was captured and 82 crew members were taken prisoner. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A nearly forgotten chapter of our Cold War history and the heroes are still among us.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The 82 men were constantly beaten and tortured as the North Korean government sent photos to the US that portrayed humane treatment. The crew of the Pueblo kept up their morale by giving North Koreans with the middle-finger salute. They had convinced the guards it was Hawaiian for good luck. When Time magazine published the photo, the North Koreans learned what that gesture really meant.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And they went through what they called Hell Week and were all severely beaten continuously,&#8221; Claudia Barrett said.<\/p>\n<p>After 11 months, the 82 men were and forced to sign a full confession. Capt. Lloyd Bucher signed the document with his fingers crossed in an act of defiance.<\/p>\n<p>On Christmas Eve 1968, Barrett returned to San Diego a changed man. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jilly sends us a link to the story of Mike Barrett, a veteran of the capture &hellip; <a title=\"Pueblo vet recounts his capture\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=34710\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Pueblo vet recounts his capture<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}