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To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Students pay tribute to Korean War fallen at repatriation ceremony in Yokosuka

Date: February 16, 2002

"Students pay tribute to Korean War fallen at repatriation ceremony in Yokosuka
By Jennifer H. Svan, Tokyo bureau chief

YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Yokosuka Middle School students honored U.S. soldiers who fought and died more than 50 years ago at a repatriation ceremony here Saturday.

But their thoughts and prayers focused on a more imminent conflict.

Eighth-grader Celestine Bidaure wondered when she’ll see her father, who is at sea on the USS Kitty Hawk for Operation Enduring Freedom.

“It scares me because I’m afraid he won’t come back home,” she said.

Classmate Carla Fulgencio, her father also deployed, shared similar fears. “I don’t even know where they are. I don’t even know when they’re coming back.”

Sabrina Chavous said the repatriation ceremony connected the past to the present.

“It’s honoring the people who died for us to give us the freedom we have today,” said the Yokosuka eighth-grader.

The students watched in silence as, one by one, eight caskets were marched into a hangar, each aluminum box carrying the bones of what’s believed to be a soldier missing in action from the Korean War. Five sets of remains were recovered near the Chosin Reservoir, and three were uncovered about 60 miles north of Pyongyang, by a joint U.S.-North Korea recovery team.

Yokosuka eighth-grade U.S. history teacher Kay Taylor said she brought about 100 students and 25 parents to the repatriation ceremony to make history seem more real.

Taylor wants her students to “understand up close and personal that freedom is not free,” she said.

“They have men in front of them who died for our country, and America is going to the expense to bring them home,” she said.

Korean War veteran George Allen, 72, a resident of Yokosuka Naval Base who traveled with the students, knows the price of freedom.

Allen fought in the Chosin Reservoir campaign. He remembers the bitter cold that felt like 38 degrees below zero, and that “we were outnumbered.”

The repatriation ceremony made him sad, he said.

When asked if he lost friends in Korea, he replied “a whole mess of them.”

Even if Americans are brought home in caskets from Afghanistan, the war against the Taliban is worth it, the students said.

“We’re fighting for our freedom,” said eighth-grader Brittanie Singer. “If we don’t, other countries will think they can pick on us.” "