BASEHOR, Kansas – Monday is Memorial Day, when America pauses to honor and mourn members of the military who died in service to their country.
In a charming and tidy home in Basehor, Kansas, Steve Woelk will think about his friend and fellow sailor Duane Hodges, who was killed in action on Jan. 23, 1968, aboard the USS Pueblo in the Sea of Japan.
And he’ll likely think about his 81 shipmates, who were taken captive that same day by North Korea. And he’ll continue to tell their story – his story – to anyone who’ll listen … to keep it from fading away.
“I'd be wearing a hat, ‘What's that ship, you know?’ And you'd tell them. ‘I never heard of it,’ “ said Woelk, 77, who is wearing a navy blue long sleeve T-shirt with “USS Pueblo 1968-2021” in gold letters.
“Well, it's time you learn. I mean because it has (become) forgotten history. And not only forget what happened, but you need to know what the crew went through, not just what I went through. The crew; they went through absolute hell.”
Three hundred and 35 days of it. Of beatings. Of torture. Rotting food. Brainwashing. Of waiting to be rescued by a government that sent their ship into harm’s way.
Small town boy
Woelk was raised in the small town of Alta Vista in Wabaunsee County. His high school senior class in1966 had just 18 students.
He grew up hunting and fishing like most rural kids in Kansas. And playing music with buddies at places like the Pearl Opera House in Alta Vista.
He learned to play guitar listening to Johnny Cash records.
“I played in bands off and on ever since I got out of service; even before I went into the service, I played in bands,” Woelk said. “And so I played music for a good many years. I'm just not very good at it.”
Wounded and captured
Five months after graduating high school, he joined the Navy, as his father had once done. His first duty station was the Pueblo, a U-S Navy spy ship.
On Jan. 23, 1968, it was off the coast of North Korea listening to radio traffic and tracking movements of the Korean navy. U-S officials insist the Pueblo was in international waters.
But the North Koreans said the Pueblo had ventured into their waters, and they attacked with four combat ships and two fighter jets. The Pueblo, lightly armed and alone, was overwhelmed.
“Unfortunate by being in the wrong place when there was just too many of them and too little of us to do much about turning over a United States naval ship into the hands of the North Koreans,” Commander Lloyd Bucher said during a news conference in December 1968, when the crew returned to San Diego.
Bucher would later face a court of inquiry by the Navy for allowing the ship to be captured.
During the seizure, members of the Pueblo frantically tried to destroy top secret documents and sensitive equipment. Then the Koreans opened fire.
A round cut through the ship and exploded. It killed Hodges and severely injured Woelk, shredding the lower part of his body with shrapnel.
Despite his wounds, Woelk wasn’t overly concerned.
“My thought was the Navy's going to come, and I'm going to be in a Navy hospital, and this is all going to be over,” he said, adding that the morphine he received might have clouded his thinking. “Didn't happen.”
Instead, the crew and the ship were taken to Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital. Woelk, lying on a stretcher, was the last person off the Pueblo.
While the Navy had reported the incident to the White House, Woelk said officials didn’t tell the families of the crew.
“My dad was at work, and one of the guys he worked with come over said, ‘Your son's on the Pueblo, isn't he?’
“He said, ‘Yeah.’
“‘So, they just got captured by North Korea.’
“So that's how he found out. The Navy hadn't contacted him yet. I didn't find out until years later how much it affected my mom … it devastated them.“
Woelk said the crew expected the U-S military to respond, but nothing happened.
“We didn't figure we was going to live through it,” he said. “We figured just bomb the hell out of Pyongyang or the whole country.”
But the Cold War was raging and the U.S. was already struggling in the mire of the Vietnam War; the Tet offensive would begin a week later. It seemed unwilling to begin another war in Korea less than 15 years after the last one there ended.
Surviving captivity
Two weeks after his capture, Woelk was taken to a hospital. Korean doctors removed shrapnel from his body and cut away dead skin without using anesthesia.
He would undergo a second operation in captivity – a tonsillectomy – also without the benefit of anesthesia.
While Woelk spent 44 days alone at the hospital – including his 20th birthday – the Korean guards began beating the other crew members. They focused their rage on Bucher.
“They wanted Commander Bucher to sign a confession that we were actually in their territorial waters, which we weren't … we were never close to their border or their waters,” Woelk said. “But they wanted him to write that we were, and he refused. And the more he refused, the more the crew was beaten.
“They wanted the crew to do that, too, and nobody would do it. And then finally, they said, ‘Well, we'll start killing the youngest first if you don't sign.’ And that's when he did, and he was pretty much beaten down by then anyway.”
Beaten down physically and mentally, Bucher and the crew eventually did sign confessions.
Woelk said Bucher did what he could to take care of his men.
“He didn't take guff from anybody, but he did protect his crew,” Woelk said.
“We all respected him.”
As the captivity stretched into months, and despite the brutal conditions, the crew continued to find ways to defy their captors.
Every time the Koreans took propaganda photos or movies, crew members would extend their middle finger. They told their guards it was a Hawaiian good luck sign.
It actually was an act of defiance and a message to their families and government that any confessions they had signed were phony.
The one person who wouldn’t do it? Woelk.
“I guess I just didn't want to send this message back to my folks if they had seen … the photo.
“And to this day, when we have our reunions and … we'll take a group photo, ‘Everybody give the finger.’ I don't. I don't do that.”
Instead, Woelk said he relied on his faith. Although his family didn’t attend church much growing up, Woelk said his mother sent him to church camp, where he learned to pray.
“I've always said that I don't pray for a miracle because you get disappointed and you question your faith when that don't happen … your prayers don't get answered,” said Woelk, who is active in Risen Savior Lutheran Church in Basehor with his wife, Kathy.
“So, I pray for the ability to handle whatever situation I'm in. And that's the way it was in captivity; it's to get me through situations, not miracles.”
Freedom
The crew’s ordeal finally ended in late December, when U.S. negotiators signed a document saying the Pueblo was spying in Korean waters. The U-S, though, immediately disavowed the confession, saying it was signed only to win the crew’s release.
A day later, the men walked across the Bridge of No Return into South Korea. Woelk said as they took a bus to the bridge, the crew was on edge.
“You didn't know whether you was going to be mowed down by a machine gun while you was walking across or something would happen,” he said.
“Commander Bucher … got on the bus and said, ‘When you're walking across the bridge, don't turn around. Don't give anybody the finger. Just remember you've got crew and behind you, We all need to get out of there.’”
They did, but the Pueblo stayed behind and is now part of North Korea’s Victorious War Museum. It’s the only active duty Navy ship held by the enemy.
The crew later flew to San Diego on Christmas Eve, carrying the body of Hodges with them.
Like Woelk, Hodges also grew up in a small town, Creswell, Oregon. Woelk spent time there with Hodges and his family while on leave.
“He was just a laid back,” Woelk said of Hodges. “Deep voice, talk slow, but just really a lot of fun to be around.
“He was just a good person at heart.”
For Woelk and the other crew, returning to San Diego was a whirlwind. They went from intense beatings to parties and parades. They mingled with celebrities like John Wayne and Andy Williams.
Someone replaced the 1964 Gretsch Chet Akins guitar Woelk had brought aboard the Pueblo. It was taken by the North Koreans when they seized the ship; they later took his watch.
“There was dinners and get-togethers and things like that,” Woelk said. “ … But it's got to stop sometime, and when it stops, it just stops dead.”
Leaving the Navy
Woelk medically retired from the Navy in 1969. He began a career as an electrician, just like his dad, working for the Army Corps of Engineers at Fort Riley and Fort Leavenworth before retiring a few years ago.
He got married and had children. Got help from Veterans Affairs to combat his PTSD. Became a grandfather. Built a life despite his brutal treatment in North Korea.
Woelk said his father taught him how to adapt when life got tough.
“My dad, he was a really logical kind of guy, and he wasn't an excitable type,” Woelk said. “He just just a good person at heart, and I just learned a lot of common sense from him, and still holds true today.
“He just kind of rolled with the flow.”
Despite his treatment, Woelk said he has no ill feelings toward North Koreans.
“The people themselves, they're brainwashed,” he said. “... They're taught that their way of life is the best way of life in the world, and that's how they grow up. And it's sad.
“But I feel sorry for … the little kids. They can't go fishing, they can't go hunting. They do what they're told, and if they don't, their parents get punished.”
He has no such empathy for the North Korean government.
“The regime, they're animals, and it's going to stay that way until they're taken out,” Woelk said. “That'll never change.”
Woelk spends a lot of time these days in the woodworking shop behind his house, where he creates intricate plaques dedicated to the branches of the military. He also does a lot of public speaking, sharing the story of the Pueblo, including at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.
And he’s working to finish a book about the ship with Rob Lofthouse, an author and publisher. It’s title: “Pig Hair Soup: My Prisoner of War Survival Journey.”
The name comes from a type of soup the Koreans would feed the crew. It included chunks of white meat with bristly hair still attached.
Lofthouse said the book is Woelk’s latest attempt to make sure the men of the Pueblo will never be forgotten.
“His purpose is to create a legacy here,” he said, “where people can understand what took place and learn the true story about what took place and what happened to the crew members.”
