Voices of Iowa interview with Korean War Veteran, Bill Rector

Posted by Pat Kinney on Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Content Development Specialist, Pat Kinney, puts pen to paper following a Voices of Iowa video interview with Korean War Veteran, Bill Rector

"What stays with me – you’ve seen what gets to me -- is those guys we saved.”

DENVER, Ia. -- Bill Rector’s eyes reddened and moistened with tears. His voice, strong and hearty for a man of 87, faltered. He couldn’t speak.

The longtime Denver farmer was remembering patrolling Wonson Harbor off the Sea of Japan in North Korea during the Korean War. He was a U.S. Navy gunner’s mate on the 1,600-sailor heavy cruiser USS Los Angeles. He shared emotional memories, some for the first time in 65 years, in an oral history interview with the Grout Museum District.

Rector remembered firing on, and receiving fire, from North Korean shore batteries -- shell bursts, shrapnel flying and shipmates wounded.

He also remembered lives he helped save. It affects him as strongly now as then.

The Los Angeles was deployed three times to Korea, part of a large task force including the battleships USS Iowa, USS Missouri and the aircraft carrier USS Wasp. Rector was on a “3 inch/50 caliber” battery of twin deck guns.

Of the three deployments, the second, in 1953 in Wonson Harbor, was the worst.

“The (North) Koreans were there in the hills. We would go in and fire on the bunkers and their guns,” he said.  “They were shooting our planes down.”

In an initial battle, “as we went in we made a turn, they opened up on us in three different places,” he said.  “Shells were falling maybe three, four blocks from us. They got closer and closer, and one hit right underneath our gun. The next one hit on the stack. I was lucky.”

He wasn’t hurt. Many others were.

“ I was the gun captain and I had 20 loaders around the side. All them guys got hit with shrapnel. The shrapnel came down and hit these guys in the face, in their arms, and in their neck.” A half dozen sailors, ordered below deck, were more severely injured scrambling below to avoid enemy fire. Most were hospitalized. None were killed. The ship took out the enemy batteries on a subsequent pass.

In a later engagement, he said, “they shot a plane down” off the Wasp. Its two downed airmen were running on the beach fleeing pursuing enemy troops.

“We would shoot above them, and every seventh projectile would explode in the air, and it would just flatten them,” Rector said, from shrapnel from the air burst. “Hundreds were after them. We shot a lot.”

A helicopter on the Los Angeles, equipped with a sling dangling underneath, rescued the airmen, under fire.  Each dove into the sling on separate passes.

“They came back on the ship. They were so happy to be back on the ship, they kissed the deck,” Rector said, his voice breaking. “They were so happy to be on that ship, it wasn’t even funny…What stays with me – you’ve seen what gets to me -- is those guys we saved.”

Stories like Bill’s are brought to life in the Grout’s feature exhibit: The Cold War Ablaze: Iowans in the Korean War. Click here to learn more about the exhibit and visit us soon. The exhibit will close Saturday, July 14, 2018.

To hear more stories like this, check out the Voices of Iowa page.