Herald, serving as Club president up to June 1951, recalled that the Korean War provided the occasion for two of the Club's noteworthy events. One was a party for the U.N. wounded, the only event of its kind authorized by U.S. Army medical authorities. The cross section of U.N. convalescent cases included Americans, British, Thais, Filipinos, Turks, Australians, and others. Each guest was seated at a table where there was a correspondent who spoke his language.
The commanding surgeon had laid down two conditions: no alcohol for the guests, and all guests to be returned to their hospital beds by 10 P.M. "War correspondents being a hospitable tribe and battle-scarred veterans of whatever nationality only human, ensuring observance of the first condition was not easy," Hessell commented. The elderly president, flanked by two burly colleagues for protection, stationed himself before the elevator and staircase leading to the billets above to prevent well-meaning members from spiriting guests upstairs for a quick one. "But good sense and good humor won out and all the multinational guests were returned to their hospitals in good order and without incident" to Tiltman's relief.
Tiltman's second memorable event was a solemn gathering at which the foreign press corps paid tribute to the memory of correspondent members who had died in Korea or in transit to or from the war zone. Mrs. Jean MacArthur attended on behalf of the Supreme Commander. Later, a plaque listing names and affiliations of the dead was hung "inside the club entrance where it still stands as a reminder of the price paid by those whose duty it was to report the course of the conflict that turned back the Communist attempt to engulf all Korea."
While the Reds stalled the truce talks, fighting erupted again. Ridgway realized he had erred in agreeing to Kaesong as the site of the talks, and insisted on a change to Panmunjom, midway between the two opposing front lines and less vulnerable to Communist machinations. The talks moved to Panmunjom without any improvement. The Communists insisted on withdrawal of foreign troops from Korea as the condition for the talks. Vice Admiral C. Turner Joy replied with a flat no. The Reds backed down at the ninth meeting. But the negotiations followed the same pattern-deadlock, recess, and incidents repeated over and over again.
On December 11, the two sides finally got around to talking prisoner exchange only to find they were far apart on numbers, and then on the issue of giving prisoners freedom to choose whether they wanted to be repatriated. Eighteen months passed before the two sides finally agreed on a POW-release and repatriation plan.
Bob Eunson, AP's Tokyo bureau chief, disturbed by stories of Communist atrocities and mistreatment of prisoners, including the killing of 5,750 U.N. POWs, told Australian newspaperman Wilfred Burchett, writing from Pyongyang for Paris Soir, that he would give Burchett a camera and film to take to Pappy Noel in a Communist prison camp. "Let him take pictures of the prisoners," Bill Shinn quoted Bob as urging. "We'll publish them in the hometown papers and people will start screaming to get them home again." Burchett came back on December 24 with negatives purporting to show Major General William F. Dean, the highest-ranking U.N. prisoner of war, in good health, shadow boxing, doing exercises, and strolling in a forest. When Dean came back to the U.N. side in Operation Big Switch in September 1953, he branded the pictures a lie, saying he had been held in a cave for the past year, not permitted to stand except when he went to the toilet.
When the negotiations were finally concluded on July 27, 1953, the rolls of the FCCJ listed 457 newspapermen and women who covered the Korean conflict, of whom six won Pulitzer Prizes.
Like people in any line of work, news writers respond, each in his or her own way, to the events they cover. Some see the dangers, thrills, and adventures of war; others are stricken by its tragedies. One correspondent who epitomized the latter category was John Randolph of the AP, Tokyo bureau chief, Press Club president in 1961-62, and a Club director for seven years. John served in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II.
Randolph was a stern critic of the writings of his fellow correspondents as well as his own. In an article contributed to the No. 1 Shimbun, he said that though many wrote books, "not one of us has yet been able to capture the entire course and full, tragic nobility of the Korean War in the kind of words that rise above good journalism with all its virtues and strike deep, generation after generation, into the hearts of men. There was some inhibiting miasma in the Korean War that stifled great creative writing as much as it stifled great creative policy. Even today, some of the best works on the Korean War have been done by people who were not there at the time."
John uses words such as "sad," "treacherous," "unspeakably shabby," "murderous," and "unpitying" to describe this conflict. "Why," John asked, "when so many sensitive and able writers were present before such a wealth of material, did not the Korean War produce truly great masterpieces?" He commented sadly, "Children still play soldiers, but they do not play soldiers of the Korean War."
This was the John Randolph who, with Bernard Ullman of Agence France Presse, was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action in evacuating wounded soldiers during the Battle of the Imjin in April 1951.
Then there was Rafael (Ray) Steinberg, who came to Asia in March 1951 to cover the fighting for INS and later for Time. In an article which he wrote for Time in July 1953, one of two by Ray later nominated for the Overseas Press Club award, he asked "What makes a hero?"
It takes the newly arrived GI a while to discover what makes a man risk death, Ray said, but eventually he understands "why a medic threw himself between a patient and a grenade," and the private who climbed out of his foxhole to throw back "Chinese hand grenades before they exploded, until he misjudged one." Ray said, "Those were the cool heroes, sacrificing themselves, not to 'halt aggression' or 'fight Communism' but out of elemental loyalty to the outfit and to the other men around them."
Another kind of a hero, he said, "was forged by the heat and pressure of battle." But there also were the men who "went to pieces in the strain of battle, or groveled at the earth in panic."
Rud Poats remarked, "The great sustainers of high morale, and the chief subjects of conversation and hope, were 'R&R,' leave in Japan and the 'Big R,' or rotation home. R&R had various official translations. But it was usually more aptly described by another name for the five-day plunge into the pleasures of Japanese civilization as 'S&S' or Sex and Saké. About every six months, an American could count on a five-day fling in Japan, where he either explored the fleshpots or struggled with his conscience and polished up lies to match the R&R reports of his less inhibited fellows."
War is never pretty. But the correspondents reported it as they saw it, each in his own way. And their experience and knowledge rubbed off on the younger reporters and photographers who followed them to Tokyo, where they sat and drank with them, soaking it all up.
This was the war the correspondent members lived. And if occasionally some acted a little wild when they gathered with colleagues in the reassuring surroundings of the Club, that was why. They came back to the Press Club with the souvenirs of Korea, ranging from handguns and grenades to Kalashnikovs. And like the cow-pokes in the Wild West movies, sometimes they used them.
The stories about the members get better with each telling, but there is one that has become a Club legend. It's about the correspondent who pulled out a .45 when the Club elevator wouldn't move, and fired a shot at the steel door, making a dent which remained as long as the Press Club stayed there.
