NOT FORGOTTEN: THE KOREAN WAR IN AMERICAN PUBLIC MEMORY, 1950-2017 A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Levi Fox May 2018 Examining Committee Members: Dr. Seth Bruggeman, Temple University Department of History Signature_______________________________________Date_______________ Dr. Hilary Iris Lowe, Temple University Department of History Signature_______________________________________Date_______________ Dr. Jay Lockenour, Temple University Department of History Signature_______________________________________Date_______________ Dr. Carolyn Kitch, Temple University Department of Media and Communication Signature_______________________________________Date_______________ ii ABSTRACT The “forgotten war” is the label most frequently used to recall the conflict that took place in Korea from June 25, 1950 to July 27, 1953, with variations of this phrase found in museum exhibitions and monuments across the country. Since the widespread presence of so many mentions of Korea clearly demonstrates that the Korean War is not forgotten, this project critically evaluates several forms of public memory (including museum exhibitions, historical scholarship, films and television shows, state and local monuments, and memorial infrastructure including bridges, highways, buildings, and trees) in order to explore how the war has come to be called forgotten. This project also seeks to examine the foreign policy issues of labeling the Korean War as forgotten, by exploring how it is recalled globally and why it is essential to remember details about the war. This project also seeks to fill a niche in the scholarly literature on public memory of American wars by examining Korea as prior studies have both WWII and Vietnam. In addition, this project intervenes in several more scholarly conversations ranging from the argument that the television series M*A*S*H was not primarily an allegory for Vietnam, as is often alleged, to the contention that a Korean Anti-War Movement was much more widespread than has been appreciated by academics interested in the history of activism. This dissertation is designed to highlight the ongoing need to remember the Korean War in detail, given the threats to world peace made by North Korea, and to make clear that it is vital to understand the enduring legacy of the war for twenty-first century diplomacy, which can only be done by examining how the war has been publicly recalled and why the forgotten war label persists despite evidence that Korea has been widely remembered. iii For Sabrina, Furrious, Casper, and Candy iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am extremely appreciative of the many who have contributed to the writing of this dissertation including teachers, all those who aided in my research, and my family. My AP Euro teacher, Dr. Richard Elmore, took a group of us to the DC Korea memorial on an Academic Team trip, sparking my interest. My undergrad professors at UVA (especially historians Brian Balogh, Herbert Braun, and Joseph Kett as well as anthropologist Fred Damon) helped me to refine my interest in American cultural history and memory studies. Without the graduate instruction I got at Temple this project would never have been thought up, let alone accomplished. In my second semester, while taking a War and Culture course with Beth Bailey, I decided to write my seminar paper on Korean War memory for an International History class with Petra Goedde. The next semester, while taking Seth Bruggeman’s Introduction to Public History course, I wrote a paper on Untold History for a class on Media Memory with Carolyn Kitch. In my last term of course- work I did an independent study on Memory Theory with Dieu Nguyen, and I decided to write my seminar paper on the Korean anti-war movement for a Social History class with David Farber. After completing my course-work I then began the long process of research and writing, which also required considerable support from both Temple History faculty and the Department of History itself. I appreciate the insights offered both before and during my Prospectus Defense from two members of my Committee, Hilary Iris Lowe and Jay Lockenour, which influenced the direction of my project going forward. My chair and advisor, Seth Bruggeman, read numerous drafts and provided me copious comments that helped to re-orient my research mid-stream, then forced me to focus during end-stage edits. Carolyn Kitch and Seth Bruggeman both attended a Temple Talk I delivered in the fall of 2016 on my media chapter, and stayed long afterwards to discuss it with me. In addition, Petra Goedde provided valuable feedback on my state and local monuments chapter, which I wrote while a College of Liberal Arts Advanced Graduate Scholar and a regular participant in the Center for the Humanities at Temple (CHAT) Fellows Seminar. I v also need to thank the other fellows for their helpful feedback over Korean food one afternoon on what was then a really-rough draft, and CHAT itself for providing me with the funding to support several short road trips to interview curators in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. I had other sources of financial support as well, without which it would have been impossible for me to undertake the travelogue approach that I adopted, and I might never have made a single Korean War Memory Tour, let alone several. I funded my first trip to the midwest in the summer of 2015 through a combination of crowd-sourcing (for which I owe a number of family, friends, and colleagues) as well as by coordinating the trip (as I did in 2016 as well) to correspond to my annual jaunt to Kansas City to score Advanced Placement European History exams, which allowed me to put in for mileage and meal reimbursement that helped defer travel costs. Receiving the A. Charles and S. Nevada Adams Graduate Research Grant allowed me to fund a trip to the northeast as far away as Maine in the fall of 2015, several short trips through New Jersey and New York that same term, and a major trip through the southeast as far as the Gulf Coast of Alabama in early January of 2016. Moreover, funding for providing a plenary presentation at the 2015 “Collaborating Digitally: Engaging Students in Public Scholarship” conference in early November at Bucknell University let me visit upstate Pennsylvania and New York sites. Moreover, Temple University allowed me to complete the writing of this dissertation in a timely fashion by awarding me a Dissertation Completion Grant during the spring of 2018. On many of these trips I visited museum exhibitions with curators, who are noted in the body of the text, and whose insights were uniquely valuable in helping me to create my typology. I also talked with several curators on the telephone or corresponded with them via email, which while not as much public history fun as seeing the sites with the people who put them together was perhaps just as valuable. On these road trips I often stayed with family members to save on costs including my brother Joe Clayon, my uncle Bill Glaser, and my grand-mother Ruth Fondi, who more than once left the door open even though I did not get in until after midnight, as I also vi did in Chicago when my good friend Dan Krantz put me up (put up with me?) for a night. While in Hawaii we stayed with my girlfriend’s good friend Melissa Polcari, who also drove us around to historical sites that I would most likely never have gotten to visit otherwise. I must also thank the staff at the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, who showed me files I never knew to ask about in the first place, but which contained invaluable information that impacted my Korean anti-war movement chapter, and the Hamilton Township Historical Society, who seemed eager to assist in my research, as well as the many individuals who responded to my questions about their memorial activities. I also need to note that without the help of several veterans, elected officials, and active members of the local historical community I would never have made any progress on the “South Jersey Korea Vets Project,” a related public history project I hope to keep working on. I also could never have accomplished this project without the help of family. My mother, Mary Fondi, a retired kindergarten teacher who instilled in me a love of learning at an early age, also acted as a research assistant and watched every episode of M*A*S*H while taking notes, which helped me to determine which I needed to examine more closely. My girlfriend Sabrina Torres has been with me every step of the way since I first applied to return to graduate school in the fall of 2011 and has offered more emotional labor than she will ever realize, as well as acted as a research assistant and watched every episode of Mad Men while taking notes, which helped me determine which I needed to view again. Sabrina also put up with my several long road trips, taking care of everything while I was gone while being available for frantic phone calls from the road asking for help in finding monuments and local NPR affiliates, and accompanying me on shorter trips as far away as Washington, DC. My dissertation would have doubtless taken much longer than it has were it not for the steadfast support (and many cups of tea) from Sabrina, and for our cats, who both provided me with an inspiration when I wondered why I was getting up at 4 AM to write and woke me up at 4 AM to write. They have all put up patiently with my lack of attention for several years, and it is with love and appreciation that I dedicate this project to them.