The remaining members of the last crew of the USS Pueblo will have a reunion next week, forty years after the capture of the ship and crew by North Korea. Read about it below and see photos and a video.

USS Pueblo

The Pueblo Incident is one of those historical events that got lost in the public’s awareness because of the times in which it occurred. It happened in a time of societal upheaval in the United States. 1968 was full of historically significant events. The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. The riots at the Democratic National Convention. It was the height of the Vietnam War and the American population was putting increasing pressure on politicians to surrender in Vietnam and leave the South Vietnamese to their own devices. Riots on college campuses and in the streets of cities were dominating the news.

For America, the times they were a’changin’ and 1968 was right smack dab in the middle of those changes. When the USS Pueblo was fired upon by North Korean ships and the ship and 69 crew members were taken captive the news was just one of a long series of societal changing news events.

Its been forty years and forty crew members remain. The men of the USS Pueblo spent 11 months in a North Korean prison. They were beaten, tortured, public humiliated and used for propaganda. The USS Pueblo still sits in a harbor in Pyongyang. Its a popular tourist attraction there. Its used for propaganda as to the evil of American ‘aggression’ and the impotence of America at that time to do anything about what North Korea had done.

The men of the USS Pueblo will have a reunion next week. The men who withstood almost a year of captivity and still had the spirit to shoot Kim Jong Il the bird when their photos were taken. They were released just a couple of days before Christmas that year and returned to the dull roar of accusations a radicalized society that saw them as the perpetrators rather than the victims.

I hope that our diplomats and representatives haven’t forgotten about the Pueblo when they are negotiating with North Korea over their nukes and war games.

I hope that we as a society will remember what these men did and and endured on behalf of our country. Finally.

USS Pueblo – Photos

Photos: US Navy