U.S. Army Korean War Naperville, IL Flight date: July, 2019
By Sharon Skonie Martin, Honor Flight Chicago Veteran Interviews Volunteer
Jim Wightman knows he is one of the lucky ones. Not only was he spared frontline action and injury, but each and every one of his six army buddies came home, too. Oh, and a typhoon came from the Sea of China into the too-close-for-comfort Incheon Harbor but stopped short of going as far inland as Seoul, close to him.
He maintains contact with two of those buddies — one by phone, the other by texting and emailing. He also maintains an interest in returning to Seoul, where he was stationed in the 8th Army Signal Corps as an E-4 for two-and-a-half years from 1959-1962.
“I’d love to go back. It’s so much different now,” Jim said. “Back then, the tallest building was three stories high. And the rice paddies had human defecation on them for fertilization.” Jim said the stench was just another hardship to deal with, but added that his sense of responsibility to his beloved country carried him through.
“I needed to do a duty for my country.” That sense of duty was part of what led Jim to respond to his draft notice enthusiastically. Another factor was wanderlust to move beyond his high school graduating class of just 30 in Harbor Springs, Michigan, (pop. 1,426). He also had taken three semesters of ROTC during college. Jim was further inspired by his father, who flew a glider at 1:00 a.m. in the D-Day mission, as well as by his uncle, who served under General Patton in Africa.
Jim most definitely changed the scenery, traveling more than 6,500 miles over 45 hours from small-town Michigan to Seoul, South Korea. Basic Training saw Jim stationed in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas for eight weeks to kick things off. It was known as ‘Ft. Lost in the Woods,’ Jim recalled.
During Jim’s deployment, the U.S. Department of Defense was pulling troops from Korea to send to Vietnam. But Jim’s sense of adventure was overridden by his sense of personal safety. He remembers thinking, I don’t want to sleep with the green snake, referring to the Vietnamese jungles.
In South Korea, Jim enrolled in Clerks’ School based on a sergeant’s encouragement. As an E-4, he worked directly for a Major, typing highly classified documents, from confidential to secret to crypto. Because of his proficiency at his daily workload, a Colonel hand-picked Jim as a part of the support staff at a meeting between the two sides at Panmunjom, approximately 15 miles from where Jim lived. Here, Jim was on the front lines, sitting at the table with a wide line of demarcation dividing the North from the South.
Jim’s sense of serving his fellow man spilled over into his off hours. He taught conversational English to seven South Korean women who attended a large woman’s university in Seoul. For two hours per night, three nights per week they read aloud from a book for an hour followed by discussing it for an hour. Jim’s students named him, “Pok-nam,” or “Happy Man” in Korean. Jim gave each woman an English name. They would take long walks through tea gardens and a park, conversing in English every step of the way.
Also during his free time, Jim often went water skiing with a group of buddies on an area reservoir and enjoyed eating cross-legged on the floor at Korean restaurants. There were camping trips, as well. And villagers patronized a bar inside a brewery with Jim and his buddies. Jim filled the rest of his free time with social visits back-and-forth between villagers and members of his unit.
“They liked the American soldiers over there,” he explained. “I felt very welcomed in the country.”
The news that Jim had been waiting to hear that would end his extended free time finally came — he was going home for good! In the Spring of 1962, he traveled via the San Francisco-Oakland area, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and eventually ventured northeast to Pittsburgh and met up with his sweetheart, Ann, who was a teacher.
“She was the reason I stopped in Pittsburgh,” Jim recalled fondly. Ann and her female roommate each had their own bedroom, “so they put me up on the couch in the living room,” Jim said. Like so many separated wartime couples before them, Jim and Ann wrote letters faithfully — with a twist. “I would receive a letter from Ann and would take my time, mulling it over,” and deciding what to write back. A day or two after responding, another of Ann’s letters would arrive. “So she wrote two for every one I wrote,” Jim said.
Jim and Ann have been married for 56 years, raising three children and welcoming eight grandchildren into the world. Their eldest grandson is following in Jim’s footsteps, having attended Culver Military Academy near Plymouth, Indiana, (in Northern Indiana) and is now on track to participate in ROTC at Purdue while majoring in engineering. “He looks almost as good as I did in a uniform,” Jim chuckled.
When Jim first returned from the Army, a friend told him about job opportunities at a JC Penney. He later worked as the National Sales Manager for the Food Service Division at E.J. Brach & Sons, creating that division from the ground up. Jim worked for a couple more candy companies and a popcorn company, before moving on to Swiss Colony — the Christmastime mall kiosk food gifts company.
Today, Jim is still helping people, working in community-oriented pursuits. He’ll take on the politically-charged task of the 2020 U.S. Census and works on the Election Commission, as well. His sense of duty certainly stayed with him, from Seoul to Chicagoland.