Interview between Jeff Rud (junior at Pacific Lutheran University), Timothy Wheeler (columnist for People’s Weekly World), and Liz Yates (area peace activist) held on Monday, August 31, 2009. Transcribed and edited (the interview was conducted over dinner) by Jeff Rud on September 8, 2009.

Tim: Well Liz, maybe you should go first.

Liz: Well, okay. During the Korean War, during 1952 to 1953 I lived in Tacoma. That was when, I don’t remember exactly what year but I think it was in ’52, the Stockholm Peace Petition was created in Sweden to oppose the Korean War and war in general. So it was spread around, numerous people had it in this country and were getting signatures for it. People who walked up to doors to get signatures on that in some cases were knocked down steps, beaten up just for asking for signatures. I didn’t get very many signuatures myself, but I did learn about two people who were writing letters to the editor against the Korean War, and one you could probably find if you do some more research in Tacoma, was the minister of the Hilltop Methodist Church at that time. I don’t recall his name, but he wrote frequent letters about every other week to the Tacoma News Herald. And so I got aquainted with his ideas and went to meet him, and attended a a class for a while on a progressive version of the Bible. So that’s one source, that minister. If you can find his letters to the editor, he’s one good source of opposition. Of course he didn’t organize demonstrations or rallies. I don’t remember any kinds of rallies or demonstrations. People were too frightened or too cautious. Maybe there were some but I just don’t remember any. And I only lived one year in Tacoma. After I left, I don’t remember much very much. But after Tacoma I went to Aberdeen and that’s where I met a couple of people who were against the war, but again we just talked about it at our homes. However, then I began to read letters to the editor in the Seattle Times, and that was by a woman named Alice Franklyn Bryant. She was much more well known than the minister because she was very adamant against the war. She had been a prisoner of war of the Japanese because she had been living with her husband in Tokyo…under arrest in Japan during the Second World War. And so she became very anti-war. She’s another person…I might be able to get you in touch with her daughter who lives in her house today. She wrote numerous letters to the editor, I don’t know to how many places, but certainly to the Seattle Times. So those are two people I know abot who were publicly opposed to the war.

Jeff: Were you politically involved at the time?

Liz: Yes, I was very interested in politics, but I did not get involved in any public rallies or demonstrations.

Jeff: Did you affiliated yourself any particular party, with the Progressive movement in ’48 and ’52?

Liz: Yes, well, I can’t remember when. I did get connected with the Progressive Party, but not very active.

Tim: Well…I grew up in Sequim, and my father, Donald N. Wheeler was being subpoenaed to appear before committees…we called them “witchhunt committes”…during the McCarthy period. In fact, that’s the reason he had gone into dairy farming in the first place, because he had been black listed and couldn’t work in the field that he was trained for. But of course the Korean War was a huge factor in our lives. We were very active in…well, it started out…we moved to Sequim in 1948 and for a couple years we were out of touch. My parents were in the Communist Party and were out of touch with the party, and then found out that there was a very active Communist Party in Clallam County. It seems strange, but there were loggers and a long radical tradition among the loggers…

Jeff: …with the IWW at point…

Tim: That’s right, exactly. So we established contact. I worshipped Paul Robeson. He was my favorite singer. I used to, my folks used to have 78 rpm records and I used to listen to him singing on these records. So Paul Robeson came to sing in Seattle in 1951 and I pleaded with my parents to let me see him, to hear him sing. So finally, my mom said…and we were dirt poor, we didn’t have any money…my mother said “You and your brother can hitchhike to Seattle.” So we hitchhiked to Seattle to hear Paul Robeson. Unfortunately I didn’t meet Paul Robeson, but I did meet a wonderful man named Bill Pennock (sp). Bill Pennock was the founding leader of the Washington Pension Union, a left-led organization for senior citizens. So my aunt, Jene Schudekopf, introduced Steve and me to Bill Pennock, and he said, “Where do you live?” I said, “We live in Sequim.” And he said “Oh my goodness, we’re having the state picnic for the Washington Pension Union at Sequim Bay Park in just a couple weeks!” So we went home and I told my folks the pension union was having their picnic just down the road from Sequim, and we went! And we met all the activists from Clallam County including Vivian Gabry, who was the leader of the Communist Party of Clallam County. So…we were in the thick of it. We worked actively in the Progressive Party, uh, and of course at that time it was Vincent Hallinan was the candidate of the Progressive Party for President. The first time in 1948 it was Henry Wallace, but this time it was a Bay area, San Francisco Bay area lawyer, Vincent Hallinan, and Charlotta Bass. And we were active and supportive. And of course opposition to the Korean War was one of the main planks of the Progressive Party at that time. But we…so, um…to me, at that time…of course I was very young,I was just a kid, but already at that age I was into politics. I was very interested in politics. And…there were a lot of things that were happening at that time. The Rosenburg case was a burning issue. Do you remember, Liz, what year they were actually executed. It was under Eisenhower, because I remember sitting around the dining room table writing post cards to Eisenhower, asking for clemency.

Liz: The Rosenburgs were executed I think in ’53. Because I remember…

Tim: Well it would have been after the election, because Eisenhower was in office when the execution took place. And it was Brownell, Attorney General Brownell…

Liz: It was in the summertime, it was in June I believe. I remember I was having dinner…in ’53. Seems like it was the summer of ’53. I can look it up when I get home. I still have a lot of literature about it…it was complicated…I once read the whole proceedings, legal proceedings, and I had books about the Rosenburgs.

Tim: So I remember that the climate of fear was very intense. Umm, and…harassment by the FBI. We were told “Never talk to strange men in business suits with porkpie hats,” and that kind of thing.

Jeff: Did you ever face any opposition or violence or threats in high school?

Tim: You know, it was really quite remarkable in Sequim. My experience in high school was a very positive one. We were…my brothers and sisters, there were five of us, we were very good students and always got very high grades. Very active in our classroom discussions. In my junior year I ran for student council treasurer and won, you know. So we were…I would say we were not victimized. And you know, it’s a tribute to the democratic values of people that…this was in the midsts of all of this Red Scare, and people going to jail, and we were not…we didn’t suffer. Didn’t seem to me we suffered. I’m speaking for myself. Maybe my parents…let me tell you one story. My dad, as I said, was subpoenaed and taken. He had to go into hearings. And this was righ at the time of the Rosenburgs. And later, when I was grown up I asked my mother about it, and she said, “When your father went off, when he was subpoenaed, I didn’t know if he was gonna come back.” So that’s how heavy the fear was. And it’s one thing to be eleven or twelve years and enjoying life and living on a lovely farm and milking cows and all of that. It’s another thing to be a mother of four children, one of them in diapers and pregnant with the fifth, and have your husband leave. My grandfather came up to help milk the cows.

Jeff: Where did your family live before you moved to Sequim?

Tim: We had been in Washington, D.C. and my dad was working for the government.

Jeff: So being that close to the east coast, did your dad know Browder and Foster and all of these upper eschelon folks?

Tim: No, I don’t think he knew them. But he had been a Rhodes scholar. He went to England during the 1930s. And then he had friends there who, when the returned, became part of Roosevelt’s brain trust. And they recruited my dad, he went down to work for the Treasury Department. During the Second World War he worked for OSS, he was an analyst and one of his jobs was to calculate the casualties of the German army. So that’s…but there were things happening like, I remember we were very deeply involved in the effort, in the fight to save the life of man named Willie McGee. He was a black man accused of rape…so this was one of the ongoing struggles against lynching and violence against black people in the South. So I would say that in the fight against the Korean War, we were…even for the right to speak out against the war was an issue. Very unlike the Vietnam War, where people were out in the streets almost immediately, you had people protesting. But in the Korean War, you literally feared for job or that you were gonna be attacked to speak out against it. So there was a lot more fear.

Liz: All of this anti-Communism…did you mention to Jeff that I.F. Stone book?

Tim: Oh yeah, I sent that in an email…

Jeff: Yeah, Hidden History of the Korean War…it’s like basically the first academic…like the first book to come out and question the narrative we’ve received. And that sorta segues nicely into my next question, which is during the war, what sort of information was available as to the goings on in Korea. Obviously sources like the New York Times and papers of the record had a clear US message…

Liz: No, I don’t remember as much information on the Korean War as I do the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War, the newspaper listed the number of bodybags that were coming out every day for a while, and, uh…the Korean War, it seems so long ago now and I was involved in so many other things. So I don’t remember much about it.

Tim: Well I remember some things. One, we subscribed to the National Guardian, which played a big role in the whole fight to save the Rosenburgs. We also subscribed to the People’s World, a San Francisco-based newspaper, which later merged with the paper I write for now, the People’s Weekly World. And we also subscribed to a magazine called the New World Review, and I remember an article that appeared in the New World Review about germ warfare. And they had photographs of these bomb casings that had broken open, and the Koreans were accusing the US of dropping germ warfare bombs on them. Well, I mean later we found out a lotta things the US did that were pretty god awful. I don’t think that story gained much traction but when I heard about…when you contacted us, I thought that would be interesting to be able to get a copy of that edition of that article in it. There have been some famous reporters, one who sticks in mind is Anna Louise Strong, who incidentally has a history in the Pacific Northwest too, and I’m not sure e whether shes got in North Korea.

Liz: She was definitely in China, and she was in the Soviet Union. She wrote a book about collective farms in the Soviet Union.

Tim: And Edgar Snow, I don’t know if he got to North Korea either.

Jeff: And as far as party literature during the 1950s, how much of that was floating about?

Tim: Well, there was some, and I’d recommend you contact a couple places. One is the Tamiment Libray of Labor and Left and books and literature and other materials at NYU…I think that you should look for microfilm, microfiche of People’s World and if you get those years of the Korean War, it’s gonna be packed with stories and all kinds of information about mobilizations and whatever kind of public protest took place, you’ll find it covered there. Including Washington state, that had a bureau. Now there is a historian you should be in touch with, there’s a guy named Mike Cunning(????), who is a historian you might touch bases with. He’s about…I think he’s just a couple years younger than I am. And I think he teaches at the Tacoma branch of the University of Washington. He’s written several books, and he’s also deeply involved in the Harry Bridges collection. You know about that, at the University of Washington? Harry Bridges was a legendary labor leader who led the International Longshoremans and Warehousemans Union. He’s Australian and they tried to deport him repeatedly on charges that he was a communist, and they were never able to do it. The longshoremen supported him so strongly…that’ll be a goldmine for you if you’re interested in expanding your information on all kinds of protest activity. To give you an idea of the role of the ILWU, when I was growing up the ILWU led the fight for, at the time they called it trade Red China… I think they won. But that’s really a place that you should…well, you should Google it. Just in recent years some of this has come out. I remember a fea years ago there was, the AP had a big expose about the massacre at Gun Ho Ri, the town or the railroad stop where they machine gunned and massacred a whole bunch of people. Back in, I think it was 1983, I went to North Korea to a journalist conference there, and they took me to see some interesting things. First, they said if you look at Pyongyang, very few of the ancient buildings are left. Why? Because they were pulverized by the Air Force, including treasures. Ancient, medieval treasures…

Liz: Just what they did in Iraq. They deliberately destroy people’s history…

Tim: They took me to an ancient pagoda, way out in this mountain valley, and it was especially sacred for the symbolism for the unity of Korea, a unified Korea. They said the Air Force tried to destroy this, and it was very hard to hit because it was a very twisting valley and the jets couldn’t get in. Anyway, they managed not to destroy this one, and they said “We revere this place especially because it was one of the few that was not destroyed.”

Jeff: What are your thoughts on North Korea today? You two have been able to watch it from its birth. What do you think of how it has turned out?

Tim: Well, I think, like a lot of countries around the world, but maybe especially, North Korea has been very distorted by the isolation. A lot of the bizarre things about North Korea are a result of isolation, an isolation in the first place imposed by the west, but I do think that there are, some of the things they have done that there is a self-isolation there. That there are some policies that help that isolation. I was there, and first of all I was very impressed by the energy of the Korean people. Incredibly industrious. They took us to the North Korean version of a people’s opera. We go into the opera, and see the opera, and come out…this is all these journalists, it was called the International Organization of Journalists. It’s a left journalist organization. They took us to this special performance, mainly for us. We come out, and I look around the city, and all over the city I see these torches, these welding torches. I said, “What’s going on?” They say, “Oh, they’re working on the buildings.” In the middle of the night they were working on these buildings! So everywhere you went you got the feeling of incredible work ethic. But every factory we went to would have a statue of Kim Il Sung. There would be a delegation to greet us, and it would include Korean women and the director of the factory. We would go to see the statue of Kim Il Sung, and when they left they didn’t just turn around and leave. They would back away, bowing. To this statue, as if he were a god! I said, “What does this have to do with socialism and Marxism?” It has more to do with…he’s like a warlord, a certain element of feudalist influence.

Liz: Evidently they have the same attitude towards Kim Il.

Tim: So my feeling is that the policy of the U.S. should be to help North Korea overcome that isolation, and I applaud any effort. Bill Clinton going to bring those two journalists back…yes! That is the way to do it. And evidently while he was there, he talked to Kim Jong Il. Good. So, and not demonize, not to villify…this is a tiny, little country country, they’re incredibly poor, there’s all kinds of reports of hunger, and..you know, Liz and I were just talking about this. The recent test, nuclear test? Now they’re questions about whether it even was a nuclear test. But they presented it as a nuclear test, they said it was a nuclear test. What do they think? This is going to enrage people, including their friends. Our party was angry about it! We issued statements saying this was the wrong thing to do. At a time when the human race is trying to reduce the risk of nuclear war, to engage in this is totally irresponsible.

Liz: It’s kinda like a teenage kid, who says, “I’m gonna do what I wanna do, and you gotta listen to me.”

Tim: So to go back, even before I read I.F. Stone’s book, when I was growing up I remember my parents talking about the danger of this war, that this war could escalate to World War III. That’s what they were thinking about. They saw this escalation, they saw MacArthur going across the Yalu as dangerous steps towards engaging China, so you had U.S. troops fighting Chinese troops. Where’s the end? What is the end point of this? This could escalate, this could turn into a war with the Soviet Union. So we were deeply afraid that this could escalate into a nuclear war.

Liz: I forget the exact date, you probably know the exact dates for the Korean War…

Jeff: Oh, um…June 25, 1953 to July…June 1950, excuse me. June 25, 1950 to July 27, 1953.

Tim: Okay, so Eisenhower would have been in office in 1953. And he would have been in office when the Rosenburgs were executed, too. The election was in ’52.

Jeff: And, you know, people point to him and say, “Oh, Eisenhower? He’s a good guy, he ended the Korean War. He saved so many American lives.” Well, sure, but he did it by threatening to use nuclear weapons. And that’s, to me, perhaps the main reason things in North Korea have gotten so off. That country, since its founding, has had to deal with nuclear threats. There were nuclear weapons fifty miles from their border until the 1990s, and we’ve had the capability to launch missiles at North Korea for decades now. When you’ve had to live in that environment for sixty years, eventually you’re going to try to push back.

Tim: You know, the other issue of course that’s such a burning issue for the Korean people north and south is the issue of reunification, and families torn apart. It’s one of the most heartbreaking stories. There are…was it when I was there, or right before? They initiated these exchanges, and they started out with just television. They would show images and pictures of each other and people were weeping and weeping. Families who had been seperated thirty, thirty-five, forty years…that war was just so terribly destructive, not only in terms of physical damage but also but also the human infrastructure was torn apart.

Liz: I had thought that the war lasted a lot longer than that, that it had just gone on and on like Vietnam.

Tim: There’s a lot of mass sympathy for reunification on both halves of Korea, and it’s here in the U.S. too.

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Posted in History, North Korea

Tags: bombing, communism, elizabeth yates, jeff rud, korean war, korean war protest, liz yates, North Korea, paul robeson, progressive party, tim wheeler, timothy wheeler