I could hear the bullets hitting the side of the ship

By Douglas Graves © 2009



“I thought about stabbing myself in the heart with the two wooden pencils the North Korean had given me to sign the confession,” said former Navy man Frank Ginther as he described wanting to end his 11-month ordeal after his ship had been surrounded and then captured by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “But I wasn’t sure where my heart was. What if I missed?”
“It was the most alone feeling I ever had in my life,” said the veteran.
Ginther was speaking Sunday night at the Agape New Testament Fellowship Church in Schnecksville. Pastor Dave Farnholtz had arranged the short program with veterans in mind. Several veterans and their families were in the audience.
In January 1968 twenty five-year old Ginther was a communications specialist aboard the USS Pueblo, a communications surveillance ship in international waters but very near North Korea’s maritime exclusion zone. It was his first time aboard a ship. Commanded by Commander Lloyd M. Bucher, the ship and its 84 crewmen were captured and tortured until they signed confessions stating that they were spying.
The ship had specific orders to keep watch on Soviet naval activity in the Tsushima Straits and to gather radio messages and to record electronic intelligence from North Korea but to stay outside the 13-mile limit considered to be international waters.
When they came under attack, the captain maneuvered the ship to keep from being boarded by Koreans while the crew, including Ginther, attempted to destroy secret documents and cryptographic equipment.
One man, Duane Hodges of Cresswell, OR was killed when the Koreans opened fire on the American ship.
“I could hear the bullets hitting the side of the ship,” said Ginther. “I told the men with me, ‘If you guys know any prayers, now is the time to start saying them.’”
Though armed with two 50-caliber machine guns mounted on the deck, Bucher decided not to man the two guns but left the protective canvas, now frozen stiff, on the guns. The ship’s .45-caliber Thompson submachine guns remained locked below decks.
The recently married father of a baby daughter, a native of Pottsville, had been captured and now was being tortured by the Communists.
He described the events leading up to what he described as “the first [U. S. Navy] ship captured in over 150 years.” (In fact, it is the second; Japanese forces captured the USS Wake (PR-3) on Dec. 8, 1941 in Shanghai, China).
“It was very cold,” said Ginther describing the day before the attack. “We had been seen by two fishing boats so we knew our mission was compromised.”
“The next day we were approached at high speed by a sub chaser and soon were looking down the barrels of two cannon.”
“We started destroying classified equipment and papers, but the shredders were useless,” said Ginther reliving his baptism of fire. “They could only shred a couple of pages at a time. The incinerators were on the deck which was under fire by machine guns.”
Ginther and his fellow Sailors and Marines started burning the documents in trash cans below the decks. Soon the spaces were choked with acrid smoke.
The captain couldn’t scuttle the ship because the former Army supply ship had no scuttle valves to let in sea water. Even so, the ship was in 30 fathoms or about 180 feet of water. Captain Bucher reportedly felt that even if he could sink the ship, North Korean salvage divers could easily recover the classified equipment and documents.
The idea of sinking the ship did not appeal to crew who knew that the near freezing water would take its toll. “If we had got in the water we wouldn’t have lasted,” said Ginther.
After the North Koreans escorted the Pueblo and the crew into the port of Wonson on the Pacific side of the Korean Peninsula, the ordeal began in earnest.
Commander Bucher, who had been injured by North Korean shell fragments, was subjected to a mock execution and beatings. Finally, after the North Korean’s threatened to kill his crew, Bucher signed a confession stating that he and the Pueblo were operating in North Korean waters.
“Whatever he did,” said Ginther, “he did it for us. Years later I personally thanked him for saving my life.”
Ginther, too, was tortured. “Three officers kicked me and beat me with a leather belt, hitting me in the head with the metal buckle.”
He picked up a chair and holding it over his head, demonstrated how he had been forced to hold a chair while being interrogated.
“They would strip a man naked and tie his hands and ankles together and put a two-by-four behind his knees,” said Ginther. “Then he would be forced to squat. They would open the windows and leave him in the freezing room.”
“I prayed: ‘Lord, please help me,’” said Ginther. “I heard a deep, powerful voice—I heard it in my mind, not my ear. ‘Trust me; every thing is going to be alright.’ It was so powerful that the feeling came over me from top to bottom.”
Still Bucher and his men found ways to fight back. Ginther showed propaganda photographs taken by his Communist captors with the crewmen each displaying a middle finger in the classic American symbol of disdain. However, because they told their captors that it was “the Hawaiian good luck sign,” the Communists released the photographs to the world’s press.
Ginther said that he had to write a confession and to say that he was being well treated. “I wrote that ‘these people are very nice; just like the people at St. Elizabeth’s [a then well-known mental hospital in Washington, D. C.]”
According to other sources, the widely-read Bucher selected a seldom-used word, “paean,” to let the world know he was repudiating his forced confession. A paean is a work that praises or honors its subject. The Koreans verified the technical meaning of his words: "We paean the North Korean state. We paean their great leader Kim Il-Sung." What they missed was that the pronunciation of “paean” is similar to “pee on.”
Ginther credited his faith in God with helping him through the 11 months of torture, privation and abuse. He said that two plaques given to him by a Sunday school teacher help him remember his faith in God.
“Two things helped me,” he said. “My faith in God and my faith in my country. My faith in God is unshaken.”
“My faith in my country is getting a little shaky,” he added. Still, he had chosen to wear an American flag-themed neck tie for the occasion.
“The message I bring to you,” said Ginther, “is that you’re going to have troubles in life. Just remember that God is love. Jesus never fails.
Ginther’s career combines his communications training and his faith in God. He is the station manager of WJCS 89.3 FM in Allentown, a station featuring a religious format. He lives in Bethlehem with his wife, Judy.
The Navy awarded him the Purple Heart Medal recognizing the torture he endured. He also wears the Prisoner of War Medal.
Pastor Dave Farnholtz concluded the evening by inviting local veterans to give their personal testimony and to offer prayers. The audience then sang patriotic songs.
The USS Pueblo remains a commissioned ship of the United States Navy. It is also still in North Korea.