Korea Vet Wants Museum For The ‘Forgotten Conflict’

After Kenneth Cook returned from the Korean War in 1953, he tried to forget the nightmarish experience - the round-the-clock fighting, his certainty in his first month of combat that he would never see home again.

Forgetting wasn’t hard. Tired of fighting after World War II, many Americans weren’t interested in what was called a “conflict” in Korea.

“When I got back, people would say, ‘Where have you been? We haven’t seen you in a long time,”’ Cook said.

Now he’s part of a group that wants to locate a national museum and library for Korean War veterans in Tuscola, about 25 miles south of Champaign.

“A lot of veterans have saved memorabilia and mementos from the war. They’re in the attic, they’re in the basement. If we don’t preserve these now, they’re going to be lost,” said Cook, who lives in Danville.

Cook took the proposal before the National Korean War Veterans Association in February, and its board overwhelmingly approved it.

Supporters defend the choice of Tuscola, pointing to its central location in the United States, and its proximity to Interstates 70, 57 and 74.

Plus, they say, the momentum to build the museum exists here, not in Washington or other big cities.

The idea grew out of a three-month exhibit on the Korean War at the Douglas County Museum.

“The men have to have someplace to preserve their artifacts,” said county museum administrator Lynnita Sommer. “There has to be someplace to care about the Korean War veterans. This is as good as place as any.”

Sommer, 46, said she was heartbroken by the stories 110 veterans and veterans’ relatives shared with her for an oral history project.

And she was surprised at the turnout; the exhibit was the museum’s biggest moneymaker in 13 years and attracted veterans from more than 20 states.

In all, 1.5 million Americans served in the war. More than 54,000 died in Korea, and 103,000 were wounded.

One of the men Sommer interviewed was Archie Edwards of Arcola, who spent 33 months in a prisoner of war camp. During his first three months in the camp, 1,600 prisoners died, mostly of starvation.

“Sure, I was bitter people forgot about the war, on account of seeing all my friends die,” Edwards said. “And I wondered how I could come out of a place like that alive, when so many of them didn’t.”