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Shelton Mason County Journal
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July 12, 2007     Shelton Mason County Journal
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Service in Seabees merits" med (Continued from page 1.) well that his son-in-law is headed back into the battle zone and that his daughter has one of the unhap- py chores of an Army wife: attend- ing military funerals at Arlington National Cemetery and giving comfort and care to the families of the men in her husband's unit who have perished in Iraq. "Molly gets called with the chaplain to help deal with the problems of the widow or the mother," her father said, The former Molly Eveleth, 1982 Forest Festival queen, attended the public schools in Shelton, as did her parents and her hus- band, Colonel Bruce Parker. As an Army wife she is the mother of three girls and a link in an unof- ficial chain of command within the extended family of the XVII Airborne Corps. "There is always a responsibility and a relationship to the other wives, and Bruce's commander's wife is senior to her," Eveleth said. The colonel's commander is Lieutenant General Lloyd An- derson, who with Molly's help re- cently 1Sinned the silver eagle of a full-bird colonel on Parker before a gathering that saw Lieuten- ant Commander Chris Olson of the Navy present Eveleth with numerous decorations for his un- recognized service in Korea as a carpenter in the Seabees, who get their name from the C.B. in Naval Construction Battalion. His tour of duty came during and after the fight against communist elements in Asia that was stopped by an armistice on July 27, 1953. Med- als were not a high priority in the hurly burly that attended the end of the war. "They were a little nonchalant about handing out.stuff," Eveleth said. "If they didn't have them in hand they didn't give them to you." COLONEL PARKER learned about this oversight from the fam- ily and learned from his Army buddies that the U.S. and its allies were willing to make amends in such cases. On the same day that the son-in-law graduated from lieutenant colonel to full colonel, the father-in-law was presented with the Korean Service Medal, United Nations Korean Medal, Republic of Korea War Service Medal, Fleet Marine Force Com- bat Operation Insignia, Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Cita- tion and the Naval Good Conduct Medal. Eveleth's conduct had much to do with pounding nails and laying a foundation for a cease-fire that will have held for 54 years on the 27th of this month. He knew Mol- ly's morn in high school and mar- ried her after four years of Navy time, joining up after graduation in the hopes of going to sea to see what he could see of the world be- yond the Shelton area. After boot camp at the Naval Training Cen- ter in San Diego, he was assigned to the duties of a landlubber and deployea to duty in the Far East with the 103rd Naval Construc- tion Battalion. His first assignment was to build homes for American soldiers on Chichi Jima, a Japanese locale with a name that translates into English as "Father Island." Chi- chi has a storied, if little-known history. Eveleth cites a 2000 edi- tion of Bulletin of Atomic Scien- tists asserting that "the Fat Man" was stored on Chichi in the years after World War II. This was the nickname of an atomic bomb of the kind that destroyed much of the Japanese city of Nagasaki on STANDING BY the flag is Norm Eveleth with medals he received for his service in Korea. August 9, 1945, five days before the unconditional surrender of" the Japanese brought World War II to an end. "Now I know why we were there and what we were building homes for," Eveleth writes. "It was all secretive then. We were told we were building a base to serve as a stopover place for submarines patrolling the Japanese-Korean waters." THE PROBLEM with the Fat Man is that the U.S. had promised the Japanese government that it would not place any atomic weap- ons on Japanese soil. While it is not at all certain that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists knows what of it speaks, cybersources like Wiko- pedia have given their blessing to this report and Eveleth seems convinced that he was involved in some heavy-duty duty as a young- er man. He thinks the houses he built on Chichi were for the scien- tific types who kept the Fat Man on ice until such time as the un- thinkable occurred. "I was just a kid off the farm at Bucks Prairie," he said. "I was not a war-hero type. I was just one of the millions who served in the military and had some interesting experiences." Prior to the American victory in the Pacific Theater of World War II, the island served as a radio sta- tion for the Japanese and a sup- ply base fbr Iwo Jima, its more fa- mous neighbor. An American pilot by the name of George Bush, who was the son of a U.S. Senator by the name of Prescott Bush, was shot down while trying to drop a 500-pound bomb on Chichi. "George escaped, but all of those the Japanese fished out of the sea were beheaded," Eveleth writes. OF COURSE, George went on to become the 41st U.S. President and the father of the other George Bush who is Colonel Parker's Commander in Chief and the man who ordered the invasion of Iraq. "Even back when it first started, in my mind I thought we shouldn't go there," Eveleth said. "I never felt we belonged there from the be- ginning to now." A few weeks after Eveleth re- ceived the medals for his service in Korea, the President's press secre- tary floated the idea of a Korean solution to the conflict in Iraq. White House spokesman Tony Snow said President Bush thinks Iraq will develop along the lines of "a Korean model" and defined that to mean a situation in which the United States has an "over-the- horizon support role" which would "provide security as long as seems A * Residential* Commercial* Guaranteed Quality Same-Day Service on Most Glass  -Auto Glass Specialist • New Shower Doors Mirrors Contractors Discounts • Rock Chip Repairs 1714 Olympic Highway North .. Monday-Friday 8:30-5 '| ["/, .Call 426-3163 Page 6 - Shelton-Mason County Journal - Thursday, July 12, 2007 reasonable to the Iraqi people" as they conduct "the lion's share of the business." The Korean War ended after more than 54,000 American and allied deaths with the country di- vided between north and south. A peace agreement was never signed, but hostilities were end- ed by an armistice that has been more enduring than the one that put an end to World War I. It is called "the Forgotten War" because it has been overshadowed in the American imagination by the ma- jor conflicts which occurred before and after it: the victories of World War II and the disappointments of Vietnam. Just because the war was forgotten doesn't mean it was meaningless. "It was short, relatively short, and it was very successihl," Evele- th said. "We drew a line across the country that created north and south and that was the end of it. That brought it to a conclusion and it has created South Korea, which is a country which has never had any internal conflicts or conflicts with us." WITH SOME prompting Evele- th talked about how he views the current conflict in the light of his own experience. He said Korea has been "a very good ally" and notes that American troops are still guarding the line that sepa- rates the north of Korea from the south. "I think if we achieved the same thing in Vietnam or the same thing in Iraq, people who would be pretty happy and Bush wouldn't have egg on his face the way he does," he said. This is not to say that South Korea has enjoyed smooth sailing in the years since this Seabee re- turned to Shelton. Since the end of the Korean War there have been five fhiled attempts to establish a home-grown democracy and eight years of increasingly corrupt civil- ian rule followed by 27 years of strong-man rule by two military men, General Chun Doo Hwan taking power after General Park Chung Hee was assassinated by the director of the Korean Cen- tral Intelligence Agency. The first peaceful transfer of power in Ko- rean history took place in Febru- ary 1988 with the beginning of the sixth republic just prior to Korea's hosting of the Olympic Games. Since then, democracy has de- veloped hand-in-hand with a vig- orous economy. Korean cars have found a place on the American road, Korean athletes have been added to the lineup of American baseball teams and a Korean film recently has played to rave re- views from certain sectors of the American audience. Things have changed since Eveleth was there in 1953-1954 and the end of a long occupation by the Japanese and three years of civil war. "South Korea was a rubble pile that stretched from one place to the other with piles and piles and piles of bricks," he said. "The coun- try had no industry at all. There were a lot of' peasant fhrmers. It has changed. It has really, really changed. Women carrie.d water from the reservoir on their heads in jugs and beat their laundry on rocks with a stick in the stream." Contrary to what President Bush and his press secretary may say, Eveleth does not hold out a lot of hope that the people of Iraq will be able to follow the Korean model to any significant degree. He thinks a redeployment of U.S. forces "into a perimeter of some sort" would reduce American casu- alties but doubts that a continuing U.S. involvement would do much good for the Iraqis. "THOSE PEOPLE have so many conflicts based on their reli- gious differences that the Korean people don't have and I think the Korean people are just more ame- nable," he said. His view of Korea to 18 months of military Pyongtaek where the worked on Airfield K-6 First Marine Air Wing. months as supervisor of carpenter shop, Eveleth teered for a job rean laborers in a "They were fun guys to the Korean work force," said. "These are guys who their 30s who had war years fbr the borers and they knew concrete." Their main objective down a concrete ephant Huts, structures big enough to craft flown by Marine (Please turn to SUNDAY, JULY Call today tor a FREE ESTIMATE on a new Trane system! 'rK Olympic Heating & • Sales * Service • Installations h Hard  Stop A tu.: • Repairs • Heating * Air Conditioning • Refrigeration • 426.9945 * 754-1235 • 1-800-400-9945 OI,YMIqlC968IA exhaust City of Shelton - Public Sidewalk Plan and In:Lpact Fee i Open House Date: July 18, 2007 Time: 5:30-7:00 p.m. Shelton Civic Center 525 West Cota Street Come and hear staff, and the City's consultant She Carr, & Jewell present important information on planning and funding sidewalks for our city streett Contact Public works at 426-9731 for more information. Refreshments Availab] Service in Seabees merits" med (Continued from page 1.) well that his son-in-law is headed back into the battle zone and that his daughter has one of the unhap- py chores of an Army wife: attend- ing military funerals at Arlington National Cemetery and giving comfort and care to the families of the men in her husband's unit who have perished in Iraq. "Molly gets called with the chaplain to help deal with the problems of the widow or the mother," her father said, The former Molly Eveleth, 1982 Forest Festival queen, attended the public schools in Shelton, as did her parents and her hus- band, Colonel Bruce Parker. As an Army wife she is the mother of three girls and a link in an unof- ficial chain of command within the extended family of the XVII Airborne Corps. "There is always a responsibility and a relationship to the other wives, and Bruce's commander's wife is senior to her," Eveleth said. The colonel's commander is Lieutenant General Lloyd An- derson, who with Molly's help re- cently 1Sinned the silver eagle of a full-bird colonel on Parker before a gathering that saw Lieuten- ant Commander Chris Olson of the Navy present Eveleth with numerous decorations for his un- recognized service in Korea as a carpenter in the Seabees, who get their name from the C.B. in Naval Construction Battalion. His tour of duty came during and after the fight against communist elements in Asia that was stopped by an armistice on July 27, 1953. Med- als were not a high priority in the hurly burly that attended the end of the war. "They were a little nonchalant about handing out.stuff," Eveleth said. "If they didn't have them in hand they didn't give them to you." COLONEL PARKER learned about this oversight from the fam- ily and learned from his Army buddies that the U.S. and its allies were willing to make amends in such cases. On the same day that the son-in-law graduated from lieutenant colonel to full colonel, the father-in-law was presented with the Korean Service Medal, United Nations Korean Medal, Republic of Korea War Service Medal, Fleet Marine Force Com- bat Operation Insignia, Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Cita- tion and the Naval Good Conduct Medal. Eveleth's conduct had much to do with pounding nails and laying a foundation for a cease-fire that will have held for 54 years on the 27th of this month. He knew Mol- ly's morn in high school and mar- ried her after four years of Navy time, joining up after graduation in the hopes of going to sea to see what he could see of the world be- yond the Shelton area. After boot camp at the Naval Training Cen- ter in San Diego, he was assigned to the duties of a landlubber and deployea to duty in the Far East with the 103rd Naval Construc- tion Battalion. His first assignment was to build homes for American soldiers on Chichi Jima, a Japanese locale with a name that translates into English as "Father Island." Chi- chi has a storied, if little-known history. Eveleth cites a 2000 edi- tion of Bulletin of Atomic Scien- tists asserting that "the Fat Man" was stored on Chichi in the years after World War II. This was the nickname of an atomic bomb of the kind that destroyed much of the Japanese city of Nagasaki on STANDING BY the flag is Norm Eveleth with medals he received for his service in Korea. August 9, 1945, five days before the unconditional surrender of" the Japanese brought World War II to an end. "Now I know why we were there and what we were building homes for," Eveleth writes. "It was all secretive then. We were told we were building a base to serve as a stopover place for submarines patrolling the Japanese-Korean waters." THE PROBLEM with the Fat Man is that the U.S. had promised the Japanese government that it would not place any atomic weap- ons on Japanese soil. While it is not at all certain that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists knows what of it speaks, cybersources like Wiko- pedia have given their blessing to this report and Eveleth seems convinced that he was involved in some heavy-duty duty as a young- er man. He thinks the houses he built on Chichi were for the scien- tific types who kept the Fat Man on ice until such time as the un- thinkable occurred. "I was just a kid off the farm at Bucks Prairie," he said. "I was not a war-hero type. I was just one of the millions who served in the military and had some interesting experiences." Prior to the American victory in the Pacific Theater of World War II, the island served as a radio sta- tion for the Japanese and a sup- ply base fbr Iwo Jima, its more fa- mous neighbor. An American pilot by the name of George Bush, who was the son of a U.S. Senator by the name of Prescott Bush, was shot down while trying to drop a 500-pound bomb on Chichi. "George escaped, but all of those the Japanese fished out of the sea were beheaded," Eveleth writes. OF COURSE, George went on to become the 41st U.S. President and the father of the other George Bush who is Colonel Parker's Commander in Chief and the man who ordered the invasion of Iraq. "Even back when it first started, in my mind I thought we shouldn't go there," Eveleth said. "I never felt we belonged there from the be- ginning to now." A few weeks after Eveleth re- ceived the medals for his service in Korea, the President's press secre- tary floated the idea of a Korean solution to the conflict in Iraq. White House spokesman Tony Snow said President Bush thinks Iraq will develop along the lines of "a Korean model" and defined that to mean a situation in which the United States has an "over-the- horizon support role" which would "provide security as long as seems A * Residential* Commercial* Guaranteed Quality Same-Day Service on Most Glass  -Auto Glass Specialist • New Shower Doors Mirrors Contractors Discounts • Rock Chip Repairs 1714 Olympic Highway North .. Monday-Friday 8:30-5 '| ["/, .Call 426-3163 Page 6 - Shelton-Mason County Journal - Thursday, July 12, 2007 reasonable to the Iraqi people" as they conduct "the lion's share of the business." The Korean War ended after more than 54,000 American and allied deaths with the country di- vided between north and south. A peace agreement was never signed, but hostilities were end- ed by an armistice that has been more enduring than the one that put an end to World War I. It is called "the Forgotten War" because it has been overshadowed in the American imagination by the ma- jor conflicts which occurred before and after it: the victories of World War II and the disappointments of Vietnam. Just because the war was forgotten doesn't mean it was meaningless. "It was short, relatively short, and it was very successihl," Evele- th said. "We drew a line across the country that created north and south and that was the end of it. That brought it to a conclusion and it has created South Korea, which is a country which has never had any internal conflicts or conflicts with us." WITH SOME prompting Evele- th talked about how he views the current conflict in the light of his own experience. He said Korea has been "a very good ally" and notes that American troops are still guarding the line that sepa- rates the north of Korea from the south. "I think if we achieved the same thing in Vietnam or the same thing in Iraq, people who would be pretty happy and Bush wouldn't have egg on his face the way he does," he said. This is not to say that South Korea has enjoyed smooth sailing in the years since this Seabee re- turned to Shelton. Since the end of the Korean War there have been five fhiled attempts to establish a home-grown democracy and eight years of increasingly corrupt civil- ian rule followed by 27 years of strong-man rule by two military men, General Chun Doo Hwan taking power after General Park Chung Hee was assassinated by the director of the Korean Cen- tral Intelligence Agency. The first peaceful transfer of power in Ko- rean history took place in Febru- ary 1988 with the beginning of the sixth republic just prior to Korea's hosting of the Olympic Games. Since then, democracy has de- veloped hand-in-hand with a vig- orous economy. Korean cars have found a place on the American road, Korean athletes have been added to the lineup of American baseball teams and a Korean film recently has played to rave re- views from certain sectors of the American audience. Things have changed since Eveleth was there in 1953-1954 and the end of a long occupation by the Japanese and three years of civil war. "South Korea was a rubble pile that stretched from one place to the other with piles and piles and piles of bricks," he said. "The coun- try had no industry at all. There were a lot of' peasant fhrmers. It has changed. It has really, really changed. Women carrie.d water from the reservoir on their heads in jugs and beat their laundry on rocks with a stick in the stream." Contrary to what President Bush and his press secretary may say, Eveleth does not hold out a lot of hope that the people of Iraq will be able to follow the Korean model to any significant degree. He thinks a redeployment of U.S. forces "into a perimeter of some sort" would reduce American casu- alties but doubts that a continuing U.S. involvement would do much good for the Iraqis. "THOSE PEOPLE have so many conflicts based on their reli- gious differences that the Korean people don't have and I think the Korean people are just more ame- nable," he said. His view of Korea to 18 months of military Pyongtaek where the worked on Airfield K-6 First Marine Air Wing. months as supervisor of carpenter shop, Eveleth teered for a job rean laborers in a "They were fun guys to the Korean work force," said. "These are guys who their 30s who had war years fbr the borers and they knew concrete." Their main objective down a concrete ephant Huts, structures big enough to craft flown by Marine (Please turn to SUNDAY, JULY Call today tor a FREE ESTIMATE on a new Trane system! 'rK Olympic Heating & • Sales * Service • Installations h Hard  Stop A tu.: • Repairs • Heating * Air Conditioning • Refrigeration • 426.9945 * 754-1235 • 1-800-400-9945 OI,YMIqlC968IA exhaust City of Shelton - Public Sidewalk Plan and In:Lpact Fee i Open House Date: July 18, 2007 Time: 5:30-7:00 p.m. Shelton Civic Center 525 West Cota Street Come and hear staff, and the City's consultant She Carr, & Jewell present important information on planning and funding sidewalks for our city streett Contact Public works at 426-9731 for more information. Refreshments Availab]