Hundreds of thousands of servicemen were exposed to asbestos over decades, especially during the period from 1940 to 1980. Asbestos was used in construction of naval vessels as well as shore facilities. All branches of the military used asbestos, which was also widely used in civilian applications. Asbestos can cause mesothelioma. Because this cancer has a particularly long latency period, many servicemen who were exposed years ago are now developing this disease.
- Mesothelioma Patient & Family Resources: Mesotheliomahelp is provided by Belluck & Fox, LLP as a comprehensive resource for mesothelioma victims and their families. The site provides up-to-date information on the latest news and treatment options as well as an easy to use search feature to find local mesothelioma doctors and health care clinics.
We fight for veterans harmed by asbestos: Veterans with mesothelioma or asbestos-related lung cancer should know they have options: the opportunity to bring a suit against manufacturers and sellers of the asbestos that caused their illness. If you were harmed by asbestos exposure, for example, in ships or military housing, contact Weitz & Luxenberg to get a free case review.
Important Information for Veterans: Asbestos products were often used on military ships and within military housing, and Veterans may have been exposed. Previous exposure to asbestos is the only known cause of mesothelioma, a fatal cancer that has no cure and affects countless Veterans and loved ones. For more information regarding military asbestos exposure visit Mesothelioma.com
Features: 60 Years, A Tractor and a Korean War Veteran from Maine
A Moving Testimony to a Community's Love for one of their Fallen Sons
Maine Misses A Veteran
by Ken Buckley, Bangor Maine
I will forever be astounded at seeing this tractor where Edgar left it almost 60 years ago. For the few remaining islanders who knew Edgar, there are hundreds more from the mainland who have come to know him. "That's Edgar's. He said he'd move it when he comes back."
In a recent news story about Korean War Veteran Jim Taylor being awarded 100% VA Disability and a retroactive check for $264,000, Tampa based WFTS ABC Action News and their Consumer Reporter Jackie Callaway falsified from what source they received the news story and thereby plagiarizing, exploiting, and slighting Terry Richards, a 60-year old Vietnam Era Disabled Veteran and well-known Veterans Rights Advocate (ME) who wrote the original story on his Veterans Corner website which “GOT THE BALL ROLLING” in Taylor’s claim, and then provided WFTS with the story, all for promotional considerations and financial gain from selling TV commercial advertising for higher dollars…
So I feel that the viewing audience of WFTS ABC Action News in Tampa, Florida, and Veterans, and the General Public everywhere, have a right to know the full story and the full truth about this matter.
News: President Obama Signs Korean War Veterans Recognition Act
WASHINGTON – Yesterday, on the 56th anniversary of National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day, President Barack Obama signed H.R. 2632, the Korean War Veterans Recognition Act. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), adds National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day to the list of days on which the display of the flag of the United States is especially encouraged.
President Obama said, “The freedom, security and prosperity that we enjoy as a nation exists only because of the heroic and selfless sacrifices of America’s servicemen and women. Today, we owe special remembrance to the veterans of the Korean War, and especially the United States and allied combatants who made the ultimate sacrifice in Korea. For their courageous actions in pursuit of freedom and democracy for the Korean peninsula, these dedicated men and women deserve our unending respect and gratitude.”
News: NATIONAL KOREAN WAR VETERANS ARMISTICE DAY, 2009
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A PROCLAMATION
Fifty-six years after the signing of the Military Armistice Agreement at Panmunjom, Americans remain grateful for the courage and sacrifice of our Korean War veterans. More than 600,000 United States and allied combatants lost their lives in Korea during the 3 years of bitter warfare that ended on July 27, 1953. Many were also injured, taken as prisoners of war, and missing in action. These dedicated servicemen and women, under the banner of the United Nations, fought to secure the blessings of freedom and democracy on the Korean Peninsula, and they deserve our unending respect and gratitude.
By MICHAEL BURY Tribune Chronicle correspondent AUSTINTOWN - Area veterans gathered at the Korean War Memorial in Austintown to remember those who died in the "forgotten war."
Fifty members of the Korean War Veterans Association Chapter 137 laid 120 roses to honor the 120 men from Trumbull, Mahoning and Columbiana counties who died during the war in the early 1950s. The group estimates that more than 10,000 Mahoning Valley residents served.
Features: REMEMBERING THE KOREAN WAR -- AND THE AMERICAN VETERANS WHO SERVED
by Rees Lloyd
Lest we forget the American veterans who served, over 35,000 giving their lives: The Korean War began on June 25, 1950, when the communist Democratic People's Republic of North Korea, under the communist dictator Kim Il Sung, without warning, invaded the capitalist Republic of South Korea by sending waves of troops across the 38th Parallel which had divided the country when Japan surrender in WWII, and Japanese troops above the Parallel surrendered to the Soviet Union's Red Army, while Japanese troops south of it surrendered to U.S. forces.
For the third time in our city, Korean War Veterans from across the country were honored in Las Vegas Sunday night. And News 3's Tiffany DeLeonreports that while some may call it the "forgotten war", these veterans are determined never to forget. While more than 900 people from all over the country came to Las Vegas for this event, 300 to 400 are Korean War Veterans proud to display their medals and ribbons. 77-year-old Walter Ade served in a war that many people refer to as the "forgotten war."
News: US 'fully prepared' for any NKorea launch: Obama
The United States is "fully prepared for any contingencies" regarding a potential missile launch toward US territory by North Korea, President Barack Obama said in an interview to be aired Monday.
"This administration -- and our military -- is fully prepared for any contingencies," Obama told CBS when asked about the possibility that North Korea could fire a missile toward Hawaii in the coming weeks.
Asked if that meant Washington was "warning of a military response," Obama answered: "No. It's just we are prepared for any contingencies.
News: Korean War-era soldier finally buried in Arlington Cemetery
"We now have our brother home."
By Les Blumenthal | McClatchy Newspapers
ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY — Under blue skies and with military honors, Cpl. Robert Schoening was buried at Arlington National Cemetery nearly 60 years after his front-line unit was overrun by Chinese troops in Korea and he was declared missing in action and presumed dead.
The second youngest of eight children, Schoening grew up on a Blaine, Wash., farm during the depression and joined the Army at age 17 after being rejected by the Navy. His family remembers him as a fearless teenager with a ready smile, a bit of a tease who often tinkered with his 1926 Model T.
North Korea announced Wednesday that it is no longer bound by the 1953 armistice that halted the Korean War, the latest and most profound diplomatic aftershock from the country's latest nuclear test two days earlier.
North Korea also warned that it would respond "with a powerful military strike" should its ships be stopped by international forces trying to stop the export of missiles and weapons of mass destruction.
The twin declarations, delivered by the country's state news agency, followed South Korea's announcement Tuesday that it would join the navies that will stop and inspect suspicious ships at sea. North Korea has repeatedly said that such participation would be a "declaration of war."
News: Fischer, Korean War ace fighter pilot, dies at 83
AP
LAS VEGAS - Col. Harold E. Fischer, an ace fighter pilot whose high-profile captivity became a symbol of heightened tensions between the U.S. and China at the end of the Korean War, has died. He was 83.
Fischer died April 30 after suffering complications from back surgery, his companion Tsai Lan Gerth said.
As a captain in the Air Force in April 1953, Fischer had shot down 10 MiGs in just 47 missions, making him an ace. He shot his eleventh on the day he crashed his Sabre Jet north of the Yalu River in enemy territory, The New York Times reported.
Special Report: California National Guard soldier killed in 1952 in Korea to be honored
He was the first soldier from the California Army National Guard's 40th Infantry Division -- "Los Angeles' Own" -- to be killed after the division deployed to the Korean War.
And today the memory and sacrifice of Sgt. 1st Class Kenneth Kaiser will be honored at a special ceremony in Inglewood, where Kaiser graduated from high school.
He was killed in a mortar attack near Kumsong on Jan. 20, 1952, just days after the division arrived. Later, U.S. soldiers named a rebuilt school in his honor in the village of Kapyong.
Today's ceremony is set for 11 a.m. at Inglewood Park Cemetery, 735 East Florence Ave., Inglewood. An honor platoon from the 160th infantry regiment, Kaiser's unit, will be there.
"This is a great opportunity to honor a dedicated soldier who made the ultimate sacrifice for his country and to show his family that he will truly never be forgotten," said Lt. Col. Kurt Schlichter.
Special Report: Korean-American charged in rocket technology plot
By CURT ANDERSON
MIAMI -- A Korean-American man who served prison time for trying to broker the sale of sarin nerve gas bombs to Iran has been indicted on charges of attempting to export advanced rocket technology to South Korea.
The federal indictment filed Wednesday in Miami charges 68-year-old Juwhan Yun (Joo-'WAHN Yun) of Short Hills, N.J., with illegally trying to arrange a deal for rocket propulsion systems for a South Korean satellite launch vehicle.
Yun was convicted in 1989 of conspiracy involving the nerve gas plot and served about two years in prison.
North Korea announced on Tuesday it would quit six-nation nuclear disarmament talks and restart its atomic weapons programme in protest at the UN's condemnation of its rocket launch.
The communist nation said Security Council discussion of the launch, which the North insists sent a satellite into orbit, was "an unbearable insult" to its people.
Analysts described the Pyongyang statement as unusually strong. China, the North's sole major ally, urged it to reconsider.
"There is no need for the six-party talks any more," said a statement from Pyongyang's foreign ministry carried by the Korean Central News Agency.
"We will never again take part in such talks and will not be bound by any agreement reached at the talks."
North Korea has sent up a rocket it says is carrying a satellite, despite international appeals not to go ahead with the launch. Its neighbours and Western powers have responded with strongly worded statements.
SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea has begun fueling a long-range rocket for an impending launch, a news report said today, as President Barack Obama warned that the liftoff would be a "provocative act" that would generate a U.N. Security Council response.
North Korea has said it will send a communications satellite into orbit on a multistage rocket sometime from Saturday to Wednesday. The U.S., South Korea and Japan think the reclusive country is using the launch to test long-range missile technology. They have warned the move would violate a Security Council resolution.
Regional powers have also begun to deploy ships...
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates says North Korea is likely to launch a rocket soon, and Washington would not attempt to stop it.
"If we had an aberrant missile, one that looked like it was headed for Hawaii, we might consider it, but I don't think we have any plans to do anything like that at this point," said Mr Gates.
Special Report: Atomic bomb survivors in South Korea still feel the wounds of The Hibakusha
Sent to Hiroshima as forced laborers during WWII, they returned home to face poverty, prejudice and loneliness. Now they're trying, one more time, for compensation from Japan
By John M. Glionna
Reporting from Hapcheon, South Korea -- Shin Jin-tae says he lives in the unluckiest town on Earth.
During World War II, when the Japanese occupied Korea, thousands of residents of this small farming community were shipped to Japan to work in munitions factories.
Their destination: Hiroshima.
Shin and his family were there on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, when the U.S. military dropped the atomic bomb, leveling the city center and vaporizing many of those within a mile of the blast.
Along with Japanese civilians, thousands of people from Hapcheon died instantly. Others lived, only to face poverty, prejudice and loneliness, some of them marrying other survivors because no one else wanted them.
News: Korean War memorial dedicated in Operation Welcome Home launch in Myrtle Beach
by Steve Palisin
Looking at the Korean Conflict plaque on a granite stone dedicated today in Myrtle Beach's Valor Memorial Garden, Dolores Braginton realized that war began June 25, 1950 -- nine years before her birth date.
The Myrtle Beach resident was among a group of area Blue Star Mothers of America serving cookies and treats for many of the 200 people who turned out for a breezy, but sunlit, ceremony to honor all living and deceased Korean War veterans and announce the kickoff of Operation Welcome Home in Myrtle Beach.
Braginton's son, a captain in the U.S. Air Force, served in Qatar and now teaches in Reserve Officer Training Corps program in Florida.
Recently we were in contact with a Veterans Advocate calling for expanded AO benefits for Veterans who served in Korea during the Vietnam War. Currently the DVA pays Veterans who served in specific Army battalions on DMZ duty during 1968-69.
What we found was typical DVA carelessness. Just as they were hoist by their own petard in oral arguments in the Haas case at the Federal level in November 2006 on the NHL issue, now they have been hoist again upon their own petard regarding Veterans who served in Korea.
The Secretary made this law regarding the Army Veterans serving in the DMZ in 1968-69, after consultation with and documentation from the Department of Defense. So the Secretary changed DVA Policy to authorize benefits for these Veterans.
But Congress did something else, too. Title 38 includes language that authorizes the payment of benefits to the families of Vietnam veterans who's children are born with Spina Bifida. It also expanded these benefits in Chapter 18 to include the children of Veterans who served in Korea, in or near the DMZ, from September 1967 through August of 1971.
News: Korean War Executions by U.S. Backed Regime Unearthed
The mass executions have been largely hidden from history
Grave by mass grave, South Korea is unearthing the skeletons and buried truths of a cold-blooded slaughter from early in the Korean War, when this nation's U.S.-backed regime killed untold thousands of leftists and hapless peasants in a summer of terror in 1950.
With U.S. military officers sometimes present, and as North Korean invaders pushed down the peninsula, the southern army and police emptied South Korean prisons, lined up detainees and shot them in the head, dumping the bodies into hastily dug trenches. Others were thrown into abandoned mines or into the sea. Women and children were among those killed. Many victims never faced charges or trial.
The mass executions — intended to keep possible southern leftists from reinforcing the northerners — were carried out over mere weeks and were largely hidden from history for a half-century. They were "the most tragic and brutal chapter of the Korean War," said historian Kim Dong-choon, a member of a 2-year-old government commission investigating the killings.
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing from the Korean War, has been identified and returned to his family for burial with full military honors.
He is Cpl. Clarence R. Becker, U.S. Army, of Lancaster, Pa. He was buried April 25 in Indiantown Gap, Pa.
Representatives from the Army met with Becker's next-of-kin to explain the recovery and identification process and to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the secretary of the Army.
On Dec. 1, 1950, Becker went missing in action when the convoy of trucks in which he was riding was ambushed south of Kunuri, North Korea. He was captured and taken prisoner. U.S. servicemen who were held in captivity with Becker said he died in the North Korean Pyoktong POW Camp 5 around May 1951 from malnutrition and disease. He was buried near the camp.
"I am tired and sick of war," said Gen. William T. Sherman. If so, he was fortunate not to have lived in the 20th and 21st centuries, whose hostilities would have exhausted him.
There have been enough wars since Sherman's day, in fact, that most of them have been consigned to history within less than a generation because succeeding conflicts have brought their own fresh terrors.
In the context of two world wars, Vietnam, Kuwait, and Iraq, for example, how much room has been left in the American consciousness for the war in Korea? How many Americans under the age of 50 know the background of the present issue of nuclear power in North Korea?
And yet it was a costly war, prompted by North Korea's invasion of the South, an aggression resisted in large part and ultimately repelled by American forces. The war ended 53 years ago today with an armistice signed by the United States, North Korea and China but not before President Dwight D. Eisenhower's implied threat to use atomic weapons against the North...
SUPER BOWL MVP CHAMPION OFF TO KOREA IN SEARCH OF DAD'S OLD FIGHTING GROUNDS
Hines Ward hopes trip to homeland opens eyes to plight of those of mixed blood
PITTSBURGH - Growing up in suburban Atlanta, Hines Ward often felt he was a victim of double discrimination. Not only did some of his white classmates make fun of his biracial heritage, his South Korean mother felt ostracized by her homeland because she had a son with a black American soldier.
Since the Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver won the Super Bowl MVP award last month, Ward has become a huge celebrity in Korea -- cheered by those who know little about American football and once may have shunned him for being less than pureblooded.
To learn more about his heritage, Ward and his mother, Kim Young-hee, plan their first trip together to Korea next month -- a country he knows little about and, until recently, knew little about him. Partly because of his recent accomplishments, Ward said Friday he hopes to find a land that may be more receptive to others of mixed blood than it might have been not long ago.
Army deserter Jenkins plans visit to ailing mom U.S. soldier crossed into North Korea in 1965; now lives in Japan
A U.S. soldier who deserted his Army unit 40 years ago and fled to North Korea is planning to visit his ailing mother in the United States soon, an official said.
It would be Charles Robert Jenkins' first trip to the United States since he deserted in 1965.
Jenkins, 65, served 25 days in a U.S. military jail in Japan last year after a court-martial. He came to Japan in July to be with his Japanese wife, Hitomi Soga, who was kidnapped by North Korean agents in 1978 but allowed to return home in 2002.
The couple, who met in North Korea, have two daughters, who left the North for Japan with Jenkins.
He and his family are preparing for the trip, said Shigeru Matsuda, of the Cabinet Office team in charge of supporting Jenkins' family and other Japanese victims of North Korean abductions. He could leave soon.....
U.S. veterans of Korean War treated like royalty by people of South Korea By THERESA CAMPBEL
Left: Ralph Hoffmann was presented a medal from The Korean Freedom League for his service with the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War.
While it may be called "the forgotten war" in this country, Villages resident Ralph Hoffmann has learned the Korean War has not been forgotten in Korea, where many of the Asians bow with gratitude to the American veterans who served in the war more than a half-century ago...
The mass executions have been largely hidden from history
Soldier Missing From The Korean War Is Identified
SUPER BOWL MVP CHAMPION OFF TO KOREA IN SEARCH OF DAD'S OLD FIGHTING GROUNDS
Army deserter Jenkins plans visit to ailing mom
U.S. veterans of Korean War treated like royalty by people of South Korea 
