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Fort Worth, Texas. When the USS Pueblo and her 82 sailors were captured during the Vietnam War, the surprise wasn't that it happened, it was where. Not on a battlefield in North Vietnam, but in international waters off the coast of North Korea. Here to tell the story is Jim Deremeyer, author of The Capture of the USS Pueblo, The Incident, The Aftermath, and the Motives of North Korea. and Pueblo crew member Larry Strickland.
Let's get into the story. Take it away, Jim. 1968 was the worst year in President Johnson's administration. 232 GIs killed and 900 wounded makes one of the heaviest weeks in the Vietnam War. Senator Kennedy has been shot.
Is that possible? Dr. Martin Luther King has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee. And suddenly now, we've got the Pueblo to add to this. And the American public is all upset that the ship had been captured.
People turned against the Navy, Congress, and administration and said, you need to get that crew out of North Korea. The Pueblo started out as an intercoastal freighter carrying goods to different islands and then was retired. And when the Navy began thinking they wanted to get serious about having a spy ship, there were these small intercoastal cargo ships available.
So that's what they did. But it was a horrible mistake on the Navy's part. That ship was not very seaworthy. It had a lot of problems. But they went ahead and pushed it forward and put her into service.
So it was very, very small. And it made a maximum of 10 knots speed. You could ride your bicycle faster than that ship could go. And it had cable steering. It was very, very unreliable.
When they started putting the ship together, They were sandblasting the side of the ship, and they actually blew holes straight through the ship because. that it had deteriorated that much from Second World War. It was either that or build a spy ship from scratch. Very expensive.
So they took the cheap way out. These horrible little slow boats, really. were not conducive to being spy ships. They're worsen people. who said, maybe this is not such a great idea.
But other people overrode that and just bulldozed on. We're off the coast of Bonsan. Keeping track of traffic of ships from China, Russia, and North Korea.
So you could see the mountains. We were 12 miles out. In international waters. If you're in international waters, you're safe. That you can't be attacked with.
That's called the law of a sea or rule of a sea. And we had two civilian oceanographers. that were supposedly providing our cover story for us so that if anybody came out, they'd drop their oceanography equipment over the side and make like they were taking samples. But at best it was a naive attempt at a cover story because you had antennas all over the thing. Anybody that walked past it could see all the doggone antennas.
They relied on that as the protection por puebo. There really was no backup plan. Yeah. I was up on deck, and this Korean high-speed gunboat just took off from the shore area and went over the horizon. We thought somebody else might be in trouble, but we really didn't realize we were.
Korea had threatened before, and they threw threats out all the time. And so they were sort of ignored. But the North Koreans have a radar just like we do, and they're able to look and see what's off their coast. And finally, they said, Hey, this is a ripe apple for picking. Let's go get then.
And then when they came back, They had more boats with them. Six North Korean ships and two North Korean MiGs flying overhead. And then we realized we were in deep trouble. Skipper of the USS Pueblo, Commander Bucher, was told. You are not there.
to start a war. In fact, You should keep those two .50 caliber machine guns below decks so they're not seen at all. They couldn't fight their way out of anything. Our maximum speed was 10 knots, so. We couldn't high-PL it out at any real speed.
They tried a couple times to get us to stop, and finally it's. Had the guns been a little bit stronger, they would have shot clean through that ship. We were outgunned, outmaneuvered, and we were given the order to destroy all classified material. Each Navy ship, and this is no secret, carries a certain amount of classified material for talking and for sending signals to other Navy ships and back to home ports. This ship had Twice what a normal ship would have on board, plus all the intelligence gear.
That ship was cram-packed. It was unbelievable.
Now on top of that, the Navy, made no provisions for destroying that. It it just seemed like it was never endless Pile. Anyway, we kept on burning right up to the last minute. One man that died was Dwayne Hodges. He was throwing these weighted bags with the confidential materials over the sign.
After he was shot, They pumped him full of morphine. Before he passed over, he was singing a religious song that he had heard when he was in church as a kid. You know, and uh that That really uh That stays with you for your whole life. You don't you don't forget something you fuck up. Bucher didn't have a chance.
So he took the choice to surrender the ship. And the North Koreans came aboard. Said we're taking over. The first North Korean that I saw myself, I stepped outside the hatch and somebody hit me from the side of the head with a gun butt and just about dropped me down. We were grabbed.
tied up and then they put a blind fool on. I thought that they were going to go ahead and shoot us right there on the spot. When we come back, more of this remarkable story. of the USS Pueblo. on our American stories.
Lee Habib here, and I'd like to encourage you to subscribe to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get our podcasts. Any story you missed or want to hear again can be found there daily. Again, Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It helps us keep these great American stories coming. That feeling when you're trying to build your credit.
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When we last left off, Larry and his fellow crew members found themselves held at gunpoint, blindfolded. and facing a very uncertain future after being captured by North Korean troops. Let's get back to the story. Take it away, Jim. After the capture of the Pueblo by the North Koreans, the dictator Kim L-sung's propaganda machine ran.
Full tilt. What do you want? Are we gonna hit some? Idaho Rafael Tola. And because the people in North Korea are completely isolated.
All they hear is the propaganda. They thought, this is wonderful. We've got A complete United States Navy ship. A warship, they actually call it. And we are not gonna give it back.
See how superior we are, and what a great nation we are, and what a great leader I am? That was a key point too. Capture of the Pueblo. was a crowning point. To Kim Il-sung, he had to elevate himself in the eyes of his people.
I don't know how in the heck they did it unless they had it arranged days ahead knowing that they were going to take us. But they had a full-blown demonstration when we got off of that boat. Looked like the whole village was there with clubs. The words that we understood were kill American, we thought for sure that if they turned those people loose that we were going to get beat to death on the spot. And once we got into captivity, When they actually brought the confidential material, they still had And they had just like a mountain.
And you wonder where in the hell it all came from because Oh. Yeah, you didn't you didn't think that the whole ship could have that much? That was a huge intelligence Cool. for Korea. But They had no interest in it.
Planes came into Pyongyang and took all that intelligence back to Russia.
So now that Russia knew how our intelligence systems were working, they knew it all. It was a huge, huge blow. To the United States intelligence community. And Johnson. Didn't want to take any of the blame.
And the fingers that he pointed were to the crew of the Pueblo Commander Beautiful. The Navy was not going to let this go. They already had the punishment. in their heads. But the American public didn't buy that.
They took the side of Bucher. And the Secretary of the Navy at the time watched all this going on, and he made the decision. We're dropping all charges. The crew of the Pueblo and Commander Bucher have been through enough. At 4:30 in the morning, the door would swing open.
The person with the bed closest to the door was going to catch a gun button. Everybody would get up. And we used to play what was called Bloody Knuckles, where you played cards. We made some out of toilet paper. And whoever lost the game had to be the one to sit near the door.
because you knew that that day you were going to be the first one to get hit. Mm-hmm. One of the work details that they had us on was mowing the lawn and they'd put you out there Cutting the grass with this little tiny knife, like a bunch of locusts. You had days of nothing. We used to count the cracks in the floor going across.
Just something to keep your mind going. And then The door would fly open. You were going to be beat on every time you moved. And we had some of our members of the crew that were beaten so bad that their face actually sloshed around like a bowl of jelly. You could push on it, and it just.
And that was just the welting. They all suffered from dysentery, diarrhea, malnourishment. And when they had you finally beaten down where you were really on a survival level. the door would come open again and An officer would walk in and say, how's your life these days? Ooh.
We have no life these days. We had a before. We're back with our families and hopefully we'll have a life again in the future. Right now this is not This is not life. The thing that we were very lucky with is the fact that when one man was down, Somebody else would give him the courage to keep up the fight.
They tried to mislead the North Koreans in their interrogation. Any time the North Koreans thought they had received valuable information, they would do a press conference, mainly for the North Korean people, and say, see what we've done and how they're confessing it. They had one such press conference where they lined up the crew and sitting down, half of the guys were holding up a bird in defiance, but North Koreans didn't know what that meant. The aspirator met.
Well, that's a sign of good luck in Hawaii. And the North Koreans believed it. Until I finally found out. By the time that they were done, all the way and the entire floor was covered with bloodstains. But we earned them.
We had successfully caused them to lose face, and we were proud that we were able to cause them that much misery. Um For eleven months, there was really no progress. North Korea wanted really one thing in these negotiations. It came down to what is called the Three A's. They wanted the United States to agree.
to make an apology. We were the aggressors. and that it would never happen again.
Well, the United States was not going to make any apologies. And we were not going to admit that we would never do it again.
So the negotiation just dragged on and on. Finally, somebody outside the negotiating area is actually the wife. of one of the Johnson administration people. She made the suggestion because there had been a precedent set. way back.
Sign the agreement, agreeing to that. But right into the text refute. These charges, we don't agree with them. But by the way, I'll sign your agreement. And the North Koreans agreed to it.
And the following day, they began releasing the crew. They took us down to Pam and John, the Bridge of No Return. We were kept out of sight. We were in a wooded area. Couldn't see anything, and they'd take individuals off the bus and they'd never come back.
We didn't know if they were shooting them or what. When it came time for myself to get off the bus, Took me on down the road. And they told me, don't turn your head. Don't make any gestures. Don't speak to anybody.
and we will not kill you. They aimed me towards the bridge of no return and told me to walk. The walk across the bridge, that was a good feeling. That pressure was gone. And we were under American guard then.
They loaded us in the bus, took us on over to where the mess hall was. And riding on that bus, we saw the American flag for the first time. Yeah, oh my god, oh my god. I don't think there was a dry eye on that bus. But the ship to this day still remains in North Korea.
The North Koreans have made it a museum, a monument to their ability to overcome the great power of the United States. And we will never get that ship back. It's a personal affront to our country and to our Navy. The United States Navy ship is still on the rolls and is sitting in North Korea. Even if they got it back and sunk it, at least let that ship die with honor.
Don't let it stay there. But since they can't get it, we continue to carry it on the rules because it's a reminder. A lesson to Navy officers of huge mistakes made. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own James Joski, a Hillsdale College intern. And a special thanks to Jim Deremeyer for this terrific piece of storytelling about the USS Pueblo.
And this was a huge feather in the cap, a coup for Kim Il-sung in North Korea, a tremendous propaganda device. We got the men back after 11 months of torture, starvation, and all kinds of awful tactics. We never did get the USS Pueblo back. It's a museum, a monument. North Korea triumph and military power.
What a joke, of course. The story of the USS Pueblo. Here on Our American Stories. IceCube's big three season is heating up. The most competitive basketball league on earth is on CBS this Sunday.
Coach Steven Jackson and the DMV Trilogy face off against two-time MVP Michael Beasley and the defending champion Miami305 in a must-win game for both teams. Then the battle for Texas as Greg Monroe, Coach Nancy Lieberman and the Dallas Power take on Jonathan Simmons and the Houston Ringhands. The game played the way you love. Watch live Sunday on CBS at 1 p.m. Eastern, 10 a.m.
Pacific, and catch replays Monday on BET. Presented by iHeart. I'm U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Uh The sound of a seatbelt.
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