1923. And where were you born . Where was i born . I was born in virginia. Okay. Will you tell me brief information about your family . Where did your family come from . Well, they are primarily from the english continent. My wife primarily did an analysis of where we are and we have a book up to a certain point but we cant go back much further, back to about 1760. And we have all that in a genealogy book. And i can show that to you before you leave here. Sure. But i was born on the farm. My dad raised corn and horses and cows. And i was born there. There were seven children. Three girls that were older than i, two boys that were older than i, and one daughter that was younger than i. And they all have deceased now. Okay. And so, you are part of the chosin few association, which means you are at the chosin reservoir during the korean war, is that right . That is correct. Okay, then were you part of the marine corps . Yes, i was. Okay, that means you enlisted yourself, you werent drafted . That is correct. Then when did you enlist . I enlisted in a reserve program. I was in college in william and mary and i enlisted december 12, 1942. When did you arrive in korea, and where did you arrive to . I arrived in korea in the incheon peninsula, the battle of incheon. Prior to that, i was in san pendleton, and i went to an Artillery School at ft. Sill, oklahoma, and i studied what i would be doing in korea, which was surveying, flash and sound raging, which meant that we had estimates that could see flashes of guns and mortars. And we had microphones that we put in the ground and we could hear the sound and we could analyze and triangulate as to where they were coming from. And if we saw a flash of a gun, we would call that an a reading. If we saw the smoke of a gun without the flash, we would call them a b reading. If we saw the glow on the horizon, that was a c reading. And i did that most of the time i was in korea. On the second tour i was there twice. On the second tour i was with the second battalion marines and i was a commander. Okay, so your second tour you were with the second battalion . Okay, then when you first got to korea, which unit were you with, and what was your rank . My rank was a lieutenant and i was with headquarters battery the 11th marine regiment. I landed on incheon in the eighth wave in a duck boat. A duck is a boat that has a propeller on the back. It can go on the ocean and also it can go on land. I see. I landed on the island of wolmido with 45 men. Can you tell me about that story, of you in that boat coming into korea. What were you feeling and what did you see, what did you hear . What was it like . Well, we could see the incheon proper where the infantry was landing. Being the eighth wave, we got to a position we could see, we could see them on their ladders as they climbed up the wall. And then, when we got closer to the island, we could not see that, but we could hear the firefights of the infantry on the island. And then after you arrived, where was it that you were stationed . You mean in korea . Yeah. Well, we really were not stationed. We did not have a station. We moved all the time. Okay and just a brief analysis of what we did, we landed on wolmido and i set up four ops there, and we could observe what was happening in incheon and beyond. And we reported what we saw. We did not see any artillery or mortars, but we did see trucks and troops and mortars and so forth. And they were taken under fire on different artillery regiment. Got it. And what was the Living Condition like . You said you kept moving around, but wherever you stopped at to stay for, im assuming a few days or so, then you moved around . You would probably stay for a couple days, maybe a week. But you had a tent, and you had a sleeping bag. And later on, we got a rubber mattress, but early on we did not have that. And you slept in the tent or you slept outside. And you were on duty 24 hours a day. And you had to learn to work and then sleep. Then work and then sleep. Which battle were you involved in during your time in korea . I have five stars on my ribbons. Im not sure i can name every one. Incheon, seoul, wonsan, the chosin few, central korea at thi children. They were nice people, they were friendly to us. And as i was order to find another op, observation post, i went to this small village near the airport. I noticed the villagers were friendly and started to point. And i wondered what they were pointing at. Finally i stopped, then they pulled out a guy and it was a north korean. And they wanted me to take him, which i did, because they wanted to get rid of him. That was the first prisoner that i captured. Wow. And brought him back to the regiment and he was sent through the prison chain of command. I did not know what happened to him after that. Wow. Was it kind of an intense moment or was it kind of easy to handle . It was not easy to handle but it was intense not knowing if he was the only one. I only had a jeep and four people. I did not really know much about how the Korean People felt about us coming there, right . But they were friendly and they were helpful. So, it helped us, it helped the whole engagement along. I finally got an interpreter, and he traveled with us the whole time that we were in korea so that we would be able to know whats going on. Right. So without when you didnt have the interpreter yet, you must have had to use body language. You did it with your hands. But another thing that happened before we got to seoul, we reached the han river, and i still had the duck. And the observation was best on part across the han river, and part of it on the what would that be, the east, the west side of the han river. So, i found some observation post on the others of the han river, which i occupied, and i had some on the side. And we were able to see seoul, the outskirts of seoul, not downtown, but the outskirts of it. Particularly on the side there. While we were doing that, a message came over the radio with a set of coordinates and said dont fire on these coordinates. It is a brewery and there was beer there. I said gee whiz, that is interesting. After a day, i saw people going and coming back with cans of beer. And my men said, we have to have some beer. So i had five, five gallon water tabs. One for each observation post and one for the center. I sent five gallon water tankers down to the brewery and brought back beer. And each o. P. Had a five gallon full of beer. After two days, i got a call from one of the o. P. Leaders and he said, lieutenant, i have washed in beer, i am shaved in beer, and i am tired in beer. Can you please get some water . So i got some water. We all had water then. But those were two wonderful observation posts because we could see what was coming out of seoul before our troops crossed the han river and after they crossed it. We had a good position to see. And while there, we saw a number of targets which we reported. And finally, we observed six tanks coming out of korea, right toward our infantry. Wow. So, i reported that and they we had an air observer, so we sent the air observer up there and they spotted them. And the Artillery One fired howitzers fired on the six tanks and knocked all of them out before they could get down to the infantry. So that was a major piece of information that i felt good about and we were able to stop them there. Also, with the same observation post, we saw some glows to the south of seoul, and it was a pretty good distance from the south of seoul. And we got some coordinates on it and sent it back to our headquarters. They said we do not have any weapons that can hit that, but would you wait just a minute, i think we can get some ammunition to you. So a little bit later said, weve contacted the missouri, the battleship, and they can hit it. So, we gave them the coordinates, and they fired, and we adjusted, and they fired again. They fired three i do not know whether they hit it or not, because there was a sea reading. We did not see any flashes. We saw the glow, but they stopped firing because they were firing into our troops there, they stopped firing. So we felt good about that. Yeah. Then going back, what was the reason that you were given this specialty, the surveys, the flash and sound . Did you have background in that . No, i was i did not i did not have background. I had college training. What did you study at william and mary . I had enough math that i could do that. And the colonel of the artillery regiment at pendleton did not have anybody scheduled that knew anything about this. So i had another job at the time. My job was treasurer at the commission office. He used to come up to have lunch and so forth. He said, i need a lieutenant to go to school. He said, what are you doing, and would you like to go to school . And i said, well, what are you talking about . He told me, and i said sure, i would love to go to school. So we went to ft. Sill, to this school. It included we had to survey our o. P. S, and we did not have a surveying instrument except the instrument they used to site with had a circle and all these things on it and we could survey with that instrument. We were supposed to survey every o. P. , and every microphone we put in the ground, to make sure that when we gave them and a set of coordinates, it was correct with the coordinates. But i was at ft. Sill when the war started. I was just about finished, i had about a week left. I missed the first deployment with the 1st battalion that went down. I missed that by about ten days. I came back and was at pendleton and organized to go out with the division. And pendleton was quite a place then, because we began to bring in all the reserves, the organized reserves, and individual reserves that had specialties. And they came from all over the country. And was organized into their battalions and supplies, and artillery, tanks and all. And we boarded ship and went to japan. Japan, we got off on our ships and went to some barracks, and the weather was bad and some of the ships broke loose in the harbor, and we thought we were going to be delayed on the incheon landing, and that is what we were there for, but they got the ships back in, and we went back aboard the ships for the lending. We got aboard an l. S. D. , a landing ship dock, and it was operated by the japanese. The japanese, and they fed us food, which was good food. And most of the japanese, the small, amphibious boats were manned by japanese crew. They did a wonderful job in taking us and putting us into the right place. How about the chosin reservoir, your time there . I heard from a few veterans that it was so cold, their sleeping bags would freeze up, and all those stories. What was your experience like . Well, we went up from the east coast around seoul. We got aboard ship and got on on on the other side of the peninsula, then we went north. From there, we were ordered to go up to the chosin reservoir, which we did. And i went ahead and just my driver and i and a radio operator, with the other people that were in the regiment there. We went up there and we got up there late in the afternoon and they began to pitch out tents and so forth. 3 and we had some native people helping us. Some of the young people could speak english, and they said chinese, chinese, in my village, chinese, they say they are coming tonight. So we knew they were coming. We reported that to the division and they knew they were coming. We set a perimeter inside the perimeter with our artillery. They did hit us that night. The first night we were up there. And they broke through the lines and came in through the perimeter. And we stopped part of them at our perimeter there, and some of the other units did the same there. And along about 5 00 in the morning, after the fighting was still going on, the infantry counterattacked and ran them out. And then the next day, they prepared and the lieutenant of one of the 3rd marine battalions was hurt or killed, i do not know which, and they said we need an officer for this platoon. So i moved over to the 3rd marines as a platoon commander. I was there as a platoon commander the rest of the time we were there. And even though there were no major attacks in our section, there were sporadic attacks and sniper fire and so forth. And coming out of the reservoir, we got the people back, and got them organized and started out was transferred over to this 1st battalion, 7th marines. I was assistant liaison artillery liaison officer. And we came out with the first battalion, seventh marines. And on the way out, as you probably know by now, it was just one road, a real thin road, you could not pass most of the time. And you just went down that road, that was the way out. You could not do that. We were ambushed several times. One was a major ambush, with my part of the convoy, and they hit us we did not know they were there, they hit us all at once. The jeep we were in, i was in the back at the time, the jeep was hit in the engine, it hit the gas tank and punctured the rear tire. I was sitting in the backseat and nobody in the jeep was hit. But we all jumped out and got in a little hill on the backside, and they started coming over the Railroad Tracks on the other side. And we had a pretty good firefight. I had an m1 rifle, and about the second or third round, it jammed. And there i was, in the middle of a firefight, with a jammed rifle. And i looked around and there was a marine who had been hit, and he was not moving. And i said something to him, he didnt say anything. He had i picked up, went to his pocket and got some ammunition and continued to fight. And finally, with 50, 100 men altogether in this one section, our sergeant said, i am a sergeant, who is in charge here . I said, well, i am a lieutenant, i do not know whether he would he said you are it, what do we do . I said okay, lets move over to the Railroad Tracks. Lie down and use the Railroad Tracks. Got down and continued to fight. And thats what we did. Then they finally stopped. The jeep i was in the driver was pretty resourceful he began to look for something and he found a rope and truck in front of us. He tied a rope to the bumper of the truck, to the jeep, and we were pulled behind that truck. So that was pretty resourceful, i thought. Thats so intense. Im like picturing the scenes in my head. All of a sudden, you are asked, what do we do and you just have to think of a solution quickly. With that particular section, there was nobody really in charge. It was just the end of a column in the beginning of another and somebody had to be in charge. Right. Wow. I have some clothing, if you want me to discuss. Clothes . Yes. Yes, lets show that to the camera then. So you have some jackets here, next to you, and so, yeah, if you can just hold it up and we can show the camera. Okay. First off is the field jacket. It has the hood on the back that can zip on or button off. Its real thick. The other one is really a god send that we had. Its an overcoat that has an insert, which is fur. And its london fog. And everybody had one of these and everyone wore them. You slept in them. You wore them. You were lucky to have one. In addition to that, we had a wool scarf, which was wonderful, because you could put it around your face in the wind, which was really cold. You could put it under your helmet and just have your eyes out and that was wonderful. In one place, the wind was blowing like crazy and we were out near the bridge that was blown and we were communicating with our headquarters. And as i stood there with the wind blowing, and at that time it was 42 degrees below zero, and the wind was blowing like crazy, and if i faced the wind any length of time, i could not close my eyes. They were freeze sflg oh, my gosh. So i turned my head around to try to blink them. Oh, my goodness. Once we got to coterie, we refurbished and replenished and the real blizzard hit that i am talking about. We waited for it to come down. There was one major obstacle. We had to take care of the mountains overlooking the bridge. We had to occupy those mountains and we kept waiting and the blizzard was about two days. And it was one of the worst blizzards in history is what they said. Really . Wow. Worst blizzard in history. And the colonel was well known and he was there and kept wanting to know when we could leave. And after about the third day, the wind began to dissipate and the clouds begin to part and at night he went out of his tent and looked out and saw it was flurrying and he saw one star and he said, we go in the morning. Now that one star is what the chosin few chose as their motto. And i have a copy of it right there. Right. Thats a wonderful star. And we really appreciate it but not many people other than the chosin few people can get this. So im proud of that. I am proud of every marine that was up there. It was just you helped one another and you tried not to create anything that would be more dangerous for someone else, and you tried to help them, all the way through. You have so many of course, it was the war. You had so many hardships you had to endure. Would you say you could pick the most difficult, the most dangerous moment or instance you went through out of all of those . Oh, boy. That would be very difficult, because i i would say that coming out of the chosin and before we started that was probably the most difficult moment because most of the marines did not know, and even though the officers would tell you this, they did not know either. Our division commander, general smith, what a wonderful man he was. Macarthurs former chief of staff was in charge of the 10th brigade, and he came up and general smiths division was under the 10th brigade. And he came up there and we did not know if we were going to make it or not and he said, what i want you to do, telling general smith this, abandon all of your equipment, destroy it, and walk out the best way you can. General smith looked at him and said, general, we come in as marines. He says, we bring in our wounded. We bring our dead. We bring our equipment. And we come out. And thats what he did. He was a religious man, i think, in some ways. But he was well respected by his staff. He made sound decisions and he tried to take care of everybody. For example, they had trouble they wanted to have an airfield and there wasnt really a place for it on the strip, but he talked to the engineers and said, you know, there is a flat area right here and theres a mountain, not too big. Why cant we have a flat area right here and have the roadway up the mountain . That is how a lot of aircraft came in. They brought in came in they brought in supplies and so forth. General smith was a wonderful man, and he got us out of there. When we continued on down after coterie, we got the bridge settled and we got the mountain taken, a battalion from the south they came up and took the mountain. So they came from there. We got down to the area where the navy was, with everything they had, and we started to board these ships and it was crowded, i mean really crowded, sometimes 10 to 1. For example, i went aboard a small craft boat, just a little smaller than a destroyer and the mess hall served 24 hours a day beans and they had metal i forget what the meat was. But everyone was there and no one was assigned a bunk. People that were there, you sleep and then i will sleep. Four people slept in one bunk. And the civilians they wanted out of there. They did not like the chinese and they did not want to be there. They left their homes. They brought their children. They brought their whole families. And try to get into our convoy and we started letting them get in our convey and finally, the chinese were infiltrating the civilians and coming into our convoy and firing on us. Oh, my. We kept them out of the convoy. Thats what they did. We got down to where there were 100,000 people who wanted to get aboard and they had trouble finding ships that would carry finally, a chaplain was i think instrumental in talking to some of the commanders of the ships and finally he got command of a lst, which is run aboard the bank on the sand and he agreed to take them. And thats what they did. And one other ship did the same thing. There were two ships that took the civilians out. They got them on board. It was 10 to 1, what it should be, they took them south to the island. Put them on the islands because they were not sure the ship would hold up. The one the chaplain got, got them on, there were nine babies born. Wow, oh, my gosh. So that was really something. Those people wanted out of there and 99,000 of them, thats what they estimate came out. Right. There was a recent movie that was made that captured that reenacted that scene and it was so many people just, you know, running for their lives to get into the ship and some people even falling off the ship unfortunately, after even having gotten on, because it was so crowded on the deck. They did what . They fell off the ship, too. Oh, yes, because a ship just has a low wire or chain around it, and people, if theyre not used to it and the ship is going like this, they can fall aboard. They can fall off, particularly young people, even older people sometimes can fall off. Yes. It was a really intense moment. I was right there in the midst of it. I was not there when the chaplain talked to the skipper but the skipper said, we have to do something. I will take them. And the other captain said if you take some im going to take some, too. They got all of them that were there. How about with korean soldiers, did you often Work Together with korean soldiers, Korean Marines . Yes. Korean marines, primarily. Some korean soldiers. Korean marines were tough. The discipline was ten times tougher than ours. They just did not put up with anybody that did not cooperate, and didnt try. They just didnt put up with it. And they had wonderful advances when they were asked to advance. They advanced. When they were asked to defend, they defended. They were wonderful. Theyre absolutely great. The marines, im talking about, i dont know much about the soldiers, but im sure the same thing there. Were they smaller in stature compared to u. S. Marines . Yes, they were smaller. And probably a lot of them did not speak english well, but there were translators to help . That is right. There was always an interpreter somewhere and the interpreter i had was so good, he got so he could speak pretty well. I see. After we came down, we were there replenishing and getting supplies and training, he said, i have a friend who would like to have you for dinner. Theyd like to have you for dinner. I said, that sounds nice. What are you going to have . He said, they are going to have octopus. I said, octopus . I said, okay, i will be there. It was good. Wow. You had some delicacies. Did you ever get the chance to kind of tour the country and do some sightseeing during your time there . No, i never did that. But normally, if theres no fighting, we did tour the villages and we talked to the people and saw the people and saw their little children. And most of them wanted a candy bar. Thats true wherever you go. The children want a candy bar. But they were nice. And i was impressed with their culture. While we were on my second tour there, the people we got to know a little bit next to us and observed several burials. Which was interesting, how did that. Emphasis on certain parts of it more than we do. Wow, interesting. They helped us out while we were there on the 38th parallel, they had the socalled ceasefire and i was veteran commander on the second tour and we still had to fire, particularly when they would send out patrols across dmz and try to find out where we were and what we were doing and maybe get into a firefight, we had to be prepared, and we did. We did that the whole time. And i came out with a division when it left korea, we came to Camp Pendleton and i still had my d battery there. Were you wounded in korea at all . No, i was not wounded but i had a chronic not a disease, but a chronic sickness on my second tour no, it was on my first tour. I was up in central korea near the reservoir, and i had breakfast one morning and i had cereal and i used that canned milk, and i had more pain in my stomach, i could barely stand it. There was a doctor in the battalion next door to ours and some of my people went over and got the doctor and he came over and he examined me, and he said, we have to get him out of here right away. And they called a helicopter and took me down to an army center and they diagnosed me as having ulcers. They said, we do not like to do it here, the best bet is the hospital ship and you need to go there, to the hospital ship. They put me on a korean train. The train is smaller than the trains here. I dont know how wide the rails are, but its smaller and the train took me there and then i went to the hospital ship. I got to the operating room. And said, we are going to take one more picture before we operate. There were about six doctors there. They took the picture and they came back and got together and said, we do not see any peptic ulcer. We are not going to operate. We are going to send you to japan, to the Army Hospital there. So i went to the Army Hospital. I went by plane and then to the hospital and they began to examine me and tested me and they said, we need to operate. One, you have stones in your bladder my gallbladder. And also your stomach juices are not what they should be, they are different than what they should be and we are going to operate on that, too. I was operated on there. And they cut some of the optic nerves that control some of the stomach solutions and they operated on my stomach. And i was there for a couple of months, and then i came home and was here at home for a little while, and then i went back on the second tour. I see. But i still have that what they operated on, they changed the valve in my stomach, they cut it, so it releases more than it normally does and they cut some of the bile ducts through there. So i take medicine for that and it seems to work fine. And so during your second tour, no trouble . No problems, no injuries. Very lucky. Yeah. Oh, wow. And so when did you leave korea . What month and year . Im sorry. Web did you leave korea . About what month and year, do you remember . I think the spring of the year i forgot exactly. Wait a minute, maybe i can figure it out. The war ended in 1953, right . Not ended, but ceasefire in 1953 . Well, i came back in 1953 or 1954. Not into that. Okay. You mentioned a few friends and colleagues you were with that you remember and talked about. Any other friends or colleagues that you would like us to know about during the war . No, not really. Most of them have gone on. Most have passed on. I said gone on. Theyve passed on. I thank god every day that im able to do this. I really do. And so does my wife there. Shes 93. But we work at it. We walk every other day. We try to walk two miles up and down the road. We pick up trash as we go down. We even pick up cigarette butts as were going down the road there. We try to clean up the road and have it more beautiful for everyone else. Thats how you have stayed so healthy . You look very healthy. I try to eat right. We both do. My wifes famous for her entertainment while i was in the marine corps. Shes corp. I mean she really is famous for that. And i make a salad every night and have ten vegetables in the salad. And i try to rotate them, and i try to have as many colorful vegetables, red and yellow and green and purple, any of those. And we do that. I got started on that in 2008 because my wife was in the hospital. She had colon cancer. And i was at the hospital reading the books and it said you need to eat at least five vegetables a day to be healthy, and i said gee whiz, i dont think we are. So i started coming back and started eating five vegetables, said whats wrong with ten, and so i began to take ten vegetables a day and thats what weve been doing now for a long time. Weve tried to stay healthy, and we tried to walk and keep our exercise, keep our body in the right shape. Well, thanks for the tip. Just like the marines. You got to be ready. Weve got to be ready for what were going through. Im not doing it now, but i have done a lot of work for the church. With helping her im not helping much in the church anymore. Yeah, when you returned from korea where did you come to in the u. S. . When i went to korea my wife and children went to her family in ohio, and its a small town in bellville, ohio. And Everybody Knows the family. Everybody knew her. And when i got up there at the reservoir with all the publicity everybody knew i was up there. But nobody up there could mail kblg because there wasnt any mail. You had ammunition but no mail, so i didnt write anything or couldnt write anything until i got aboard ship. And i finally got a postcard from one of the sailors. And i wrote my wife then. And she got it on christmas eve. And how she got it the post master knew all about this, and the post master brought it to her at 8 00 at night and gave it to her. So she knew i was aboard ship. So the wives and family suffered i think as much as the marines did, particularly the children. Because they didnt know what had happened. And once they found a lot were really glad and some were real sorry because they didnt make it. Right. And once you returned did you think of korea often think about korea often and think back to your time here . I really thought about it often and later on when i went to school at quantico i got on a traveling team, there were five us and we talked about warfare and i would often ask questions. I would never bring it up on the lesson plan i had, but if someone in the audience brought it up and asked about it id tell them about it, whatever they asked about. But i dont consider myself a hero when i know what everybody did out there and how they suffered. And i think about the men that got frozen feet. Ive got on support hose right now and my feet are cold all the team. When i came back my feet were black and blue. Im so happy you came youre doing this. I really thank you for your time and telling me all these stories so now i know more about the history and also even the things you talked about. My grandchildren ones 14 and ones 12. The 12yearold is more into doing this than the other one. But theyre both into it and i know they would love to see it. Tonight on American History tv beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, a night of programs on espionage. We begin with paul kicks talking about his book the saboteur which chronicleathis the world ii exploits. Watch American History tv tonight and over the weekend on cspan 3. American history tv on cspan 3. Xploring the people and events that tell the american story every weekend. Coming up this weekend, 60 years ago four africanamerican students protested segregation at a lunch counter in greensborough, north carolina, which began the lunch counter sitins of the Civil Rights Movement on sunday at 9 00 a. M. Eastern, live on American History tv and washington journal well discuss the sitins and desegregation in the 1960s with amherst professor tracy parker. Then at 4 00 p. M. On reel america, two films on the Civil Rights Movement. February 1, the story of the greensborough four, and American Revolution of 63. And at 7 00 p. M. Eastern on oral histories an interview with former Bennett College president esther terry and her role in the 1960 sitin protest in greensborough. Exploring the american story. Watch American History tv this weekend on cspan 3. Now on American History tv korean war veteran james sharp talking about his experiences as one of the few africanamerican soldiers in his company while serving as a machine gunner in the u. S. Marine corps. My name is james sharp. When i was in korea i was a marine pfc, and im very pleased to be doing this interview on may 29th, 2014. Its a long time after the war so youll have to forgive any memory lapses i make, encounter. Thank you very much again