Did you know that the only actively commissioned US naval vessel in captivity is docked in Pyongyang, North Korea? On January 23, 1968, the USS Pueblo, a former WW2 US Army cargo ship converted into a Navy intelligence-gathering vessel, was captured by the Korean People’s Army. Her crew of 82 men spent 11 months as prisoners during one of the most volatile periods of the Vietnam War and the Cold War. Don’t forget, the Korean War ended with an armistice and is technically still active to this day.
For this special three part series, we took our recording equipment on the road to explore the story of the USS Pueblo through the eyes of Navy veteran and Pueblo crewman John Mitchell, who turned 21 years old while in captivity. Throughout the series, John reflects with us on what has become known as the “Pueblo Incident.”
Our first episode, “The Clunker”, introduces you to the USS Pueblo, whose mission was SNAFUBAR’d from the start. We detail the challenges faced by the ship’s commanding officer, Commander (then Lt. Commander) Lloyd Bucher, as he struggled to prepare the under-equipped vessel and crew for a high-risk assignment, and hear from John about his early days in the Navy and life on the seas aboard Pueblo. This installment ends with the USS Pueblo braving the journey across the Pacific. Stay tuned for our next episodes in the series, “The Incident” and “The Return,” as we follow the Pueblo from her capture by North Korea to the crew’s eventual return to the United States.
Today’s episode is guest narrated and edited by SNAFUBAR Writer/Researcher Roman Sotomayor. John Mitchell is a member of the Arcata Veterans Hall, American Legion Post 274. Also present during the interviews with John are SNAFUBAR co-host Sara Hart, Writer/Researcher Liam Salcuni, and Producer Abigail Smithson.
SNAFUBAR is regularly hosted by Sara Hart, who is the Chair of the Applied Humanities Department at Cal Poly Humboldt, and Jeff Crane, who is an Environmental Historian and Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt. Research and writing for the show is done by Liam Salcuni and Roman Sotomayor.
SNAFUBAR is produced by Abigail Smithson and brought to you by the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt.
Sources & Resources
Lerner, The Pueblo Incident: A spy ship and the failure of American foreign policy, 2002
The American Legion, Arcata Post 274, Manual for Veterans Dependents
>> John Mitchell: It was so cold that the seawater would freeze on the ship. So we'd have to put on Arctic gear and go outside with these hammers and go around and just pound all over the ship and knock the ice loose
>> Roman Sotomayor: That's the voice of John Mitchell. John is a U.S. Navy veteran who lived through the capture of the USS Pueblo by North Korea in 1968 during the Vietnam War. This episode marks the beginning of a special three-part series where we interview John about his experience during and after the Pueblo incident. For years, John has been involved in supporting his fellow veterans as they navigate the VA system. He also participates in other veteran-led organizations like Arcata's local American Legion Post. My name is Roman Sotomayor, and along with Liam Salcuni, I am a writer-researcher for "SNAFUBAR". In our episodes with John, you'll also hear the voices and laughter of "SNAFUBAR" co-host Sara Hart, producer Abigail Smithson, and Liam himself. Our Pueblo series will take you through the Pueblo before she entered into the fighting, her capture, and the 11 months her crew spent as prisoners of war in North Korea, and what happens to prisoners of war after they return home. We hope you enjoy this episode of "SNAFUBAR, Pueblo, Part 1: The Clunker."
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>> Dwight D. Eisenhower: You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade.
>> John F. Kennedy: The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it.
>> Douglas MacArthur: Only the dead have seen the end of war.
>> Dwight D. Eisenhower: We will accept nothing less than full victory.
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>> Sara Hart: You're listening to "SNAFUBAR" at Cal Poly Humboldt.
>> Roman Sotomayor: "SNAFUBAR" team gathered for our recording with John at his home in Kneeland, California, not far from our base of operations at Cal Poly Humboldt. Packed in a car, our team drove up the mountain to meet with John, taking in the winding roads, towering redwoods, and bay views. Each day we met with John, we were blessed with clear and sunny summer weather, a rare occurrence in Humboldt County. We gathered in John's recessed dining room, where light streamed in through the windows, glinting off old glass bottles, seashells, and a garden of houseplants. It's the kind of peaceful abode one dreams of, a quiet getaway from the bustle of the world. Sarah Hart and I met John through our connections to the Arcata Veterans Hall, American Legion Post 274. In the years we've spent with John, we've come to know him as a man with quick wit and a penchant for storytelling, who is often seen wearing his camo POW hat, a leather bomber-style jacket, and a wry smile. John grew up in Dixon, California, located 23 miles southwest from Sacramento. Today, Dixon has a population of close to 19,000 people, but in the 1960s, it had a population of roughly 3,000. For John, this meant a rural upbringing surrounded by farmlands. Coming from a military family, John was destined for enlistment.
>> John Mitchell: My father was a Navy veteran, yeah, and I had cousins and stuff that were in World War II, and so I got to hear them talk a little bit. My dad was pretty adamant about it because he really had a good time. He was in between World War I and World War II, doing something he really enjoyed, and he was on the USS California, the first crew of it, so he thought that was a pretty good time. Obviously, he had a better time than I did.
>> Roman Sotomayor: Yeah.
>> John Mitchell: I signed up. I joined the Naval Reserve. That was when the lottery was on, and everybody was running in every direction, trying to get away from rice paddies. So I was lucky enough to be able to enlist in the Naval Reserve. I had two years of active duty to do. So I did a boot camp and then went home and got to work and stay home for a while. Then I was activated for my two years. And so, I never did finish the two years. I only actually did 20 months of active duty. It's kind of, we're getting at the end here, but I had 24 months to do. I did 20, and the end of 20, they didn't have a clue what to do with me and most of the crew. It was not lifers, as we used to call them. So they just said, might as well go home.
>> Roman Sotomayor: John is referring to the Vietnam War Selective Service Lottery, which was broadcast over TV and radios beginning on December 1, 1969.
>> John Mitchell: To try to -- they thought they were going to make it more fair by just pulling numbers out of a hat. And then if your number didn't come up, you didn't have to go. So I never waited long enough to see what my number was. So I just got in as quickly as possible. So I never really got to do it enough to know what all it entailed. I had previously worked before I went in the Navy for a local Chevrolet dealership and worked in their parts department and stuff. So I actually kind of had an idea what the job entailed. But like I say, I never really got to do it. The ship was so small, a lot of people were doing jobs other than their own job. So I helped out quite a bit in the engine room, which was not bad. It was nice and warm down there. And where we were at was very cold. So nice toasty little place to do your day's job. I wonder why there's not a lot to do. Sometimes it just kind of takes care of itself. The one thing I liked is I didn't have to do sea watches, which is kind of the worst thing you can have to do on a ship. Stand out in the rain and water and cold and look for something that isn't there. But they still go through the motions. I don't know if they do today. I don't think so. But they were still going through that process. And I got out of them, so.
>> Roman Sotomayor: In reading books about the USS Pueblo, I often found John listed in pages under the crew as a fireman. Because of this, I asked him to clarify what his position meant.
>> John Mitchell: Well, they either assign you to -- the fireman is someone who works in the engineering department. But you haven't got an assigned rate yet. And then, they have the seamen who work on the deck crew. And then, there's different jobs within that department. And so, most of us were very young and a lot of guys didn't know anything. So they just assigned people to whichever they wanted. But like I say, it was such a small ship and kind of a weird laid out crew and everything that, like, everybody ended up -- it was so cold that the seawater would freeze on the ship. So we'd have to put on Arctic gear and go outside with these hammers and go around and just pound all over the ship and knock the ice loose, which was a really stink job.
[ Laughter ]
Let's see, 19. Yeah, I'll say 19 when I came aboard. I turned 20 just before we went to Japan. And I turned 21 in North Korea.
>> Roman Sotomayor: At 19 years old, John becomes a crewman for the USS Pueblo. Before we get into John's experience on board the Pueblo, we're going to jump into "The SNAFUBAR" from the beginning with some general details about the ship.
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>> Roman Sotomayor: The Pueblo was originally built in 1944 for the U.S. Army as a freight and supply ship during World War II before being retired in 1954. In 1966, the USS Pueblo was transferred to the Navy and converted into a Banner-class AGER, environmental research ship. AGER here stands for Auxiliary General Environmental Research.
>> John Mitchell: When I first heard that one, I'm going, oh, cool, Jacques Cousteau. We're going to go learn about the ocean and going to have a bunch of civilians on board. We're going to have good food. The ship's going to be painted white. Boy, that was about as far off as you could get.
>> Roman Sotomayor: The Banner-class consisted of three ships, Banner, Pueblo, and Palm Beach. Like the Pueblo, each of these ships were converted army vessels. Pueblo is designated as AGER-2 in this class. In 1967, she would become a spy ship. To paint a clearer picture, the Pueblo is 177 feet long and 33 feet wide and really looks more like a transport and fishing vessel compared to the average Navy ship you may be imagining. John remembers the first time he laid eyes upon the Pueblo in San Diego. This is after the ship had departed the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard at Bremerton, Washington.
>> John Mitchell: I guess the closest you could come is, you've got to be kidding. And there was a -- I don't know how it happened. We all kind of -- a bunch of us kind of came in from different places, but we all ended up coming down the dock at the same time. And there was a really big ship sitting there. And at first, we're at a distance. We're going, damn, that's big for something, you know, for ocean research. And then we got to the other side where the actual pier was. And we looked around the corner and here's this, not much bigger than a seagoing tug. And we're going like, oh, no, this can't be real. You know, it was like, we're going to cross the Pacific in this thing? Yeah, everybody there was in shock. They couldn't have done more wrong if they tried.
[ Laughter ]
That was actually an inter-island cargo ship because it would go out like in the Pacific small islands during World War II and pick up stuff from the big ships who couldn't get in and then take it into the small docks on small islands and unload it. And I believe it's the movie "Mr. Roberts". If you want to see it, that's it. The hull, I mean, the upper structure is slightly different. But if you've seen the picture of the ship and then you watch the movie, you'll see how small it really was. It was never intended for a huge crew.
>> Roman Sotomayor: The Pueblo is capable of moving at a speed of about 13 knots or about 15 miles per hour, complemented by a crew of six officers and 70 men, though its recommended complement is about 40 crewmen. And her speed, by the way, is about one-third that of a conventional American destroyer. Armed with two M2 Browning .50 caliber machine guns, which we'll come back to later in the episode, Pueblo was certainly not the most formidable ship in the U.S. Navy at the time. But remember, she had been converted into a spy ship, and so her ability to fly under the radar was hoped to make her much better at her job. The Pueblo hit the scene at a time when the Navy was moving to smaller signal intelligence collection vessels, also known as SIGINT. Another similar vessel at this time, for instance, was the USS Liberty, which was about 456 feet long, had a larger crew, moved faster, and was more heavily armed. The Liberty is probably what you might imagine when picturing a naval spy vessel. And even though ships like the Liberty had other designations, such as AGTR, or Auxiliary General Technical Research, it was more or less known within the military that these AGTRs, like the Liberty, were spy ships. As part of a new program, Pueblo's mission as an AGER was highly classified. Due to the presence of the many antennas, the secretive intelligence personnel board, which John refers to as Spooks, and the section on board called the SOD-Hut, which we'll get into later in the episode, John and the crew didn't have a difficult time figuring out the Pueblo's true mission. Before John could encounter the Pueblo, though, she first had to make it out of the Puget Sound shipyard in Bremerton, Washington. At this point, prior to repairs, Pueblo was a mess. She had sat inactive for years. The amount of rust she had collected had damaged the hull enough that sunlight came in through the deck in the aft spaces. Air from the foghorn affected the main propulsion drive system, occasionally leaving the ship without enough air to change direction. The bridge had to send orders to the engine room through a system of bells. The steering engine failed so often that it was possible orders couldn't even be carried out. There was poor ventilation. Ship-to-shore communication systems were troubled by all manner of technical and outside forces. The list goes on. And this was all before Pueblo was converted into the spy ship the Navy dreamed of. To turn this, for lack of a better words, hunk of junk, into a functioning Navy ship would require time and, most of all, funding. Funding that, as it turns out, the Navy wouldn't be too interested in using. Originally allocated $11.5 million of a $15 million request, the Pueblo would only see $4.5 million of this after the Department of Defense re-budgeted her for $8.6 million. The ship's captain, Commander Lloyd Bucher, reflected on this in his book, where he wrote he was, "Learning naval economies the hard way." Bucher even notes funding costs of up to $5,000 associated with putting the AKL, meaning cargo ship, designation on Pueblo's bow, which he knew would have to be changed later to AGER, too. In the midst of funding problems, Bucher watched as money went into unnecessary alterations such as these. But let's take a moment to talk more about Commander Lloyd Bucher. John can still remember the first time he encountered Bucher on the ship.
>> John Mitchell: I had been on the ship maybe a couple or three weeks, and sometimes a captain on a ship will be ashore, doing a lot of things, getting it that side on shore, getting a ship ready and not be aboard. So I had not seen him, and we were going to have a movie, and I came down the passageway, went into the galley, and there's a gentleman sitting in a chair. He's got flip-flops on, shorts, Hawaiian shirt, and a straw hat. And in his lap sits a big bowl of popcorn. And I sit down, and I keep looking over my shoulder at him. I don't want to stare. And I said, "Who's that?" And the guy next to me says, "Well, that's the captain." And right there I'm going, "McHale's Navy." You know, this might turn out not to be so bad. This guy, you know, anybody that's in that vein in his brain -- he was an ex-submariner, and they're a very different breed to begin with. So yeah, he was going to run this his way. And his way was a little strange, but the crew loved it, you know. And they loved him because he'd get the job done, but he didn't make it tough to do your job. So yeah, it was a lot of respect for him in spite of how he looked there. That was the only time I ever saw him that looked quite like that.
>> Roman Sotomayor: Even prior to the Pueblo event, Bucher took his position as the commander of the ship seriously. He won the respect to the crew early, and as we'll see in later episodes, he would earn the same respect while in captivity. And certainly, there were even events prior to the Pueblo incident when this became clear.
>> John Mitchell: Yeah, I didn't come on the ship until San Diego, and I was either working or gone a lot, but we had an incident that happened where some of the guys who'd been in the Navy for a while, you weren't allowed to wear civilian clothes on shore. You had to be in uniform. Well, we were in San Diego, and San Diego's a Navy town, and there's lots of neighborhoods, active neighborhoods where there's lots of little bars and restaurants and stuff that you can get away from the downtown. And a handful of the crew was out there having a good time, and the shore patrol come and picked them up. And so Bucher gets this call, and I believe it was in the night that they had some of his crew locked up. And he threw his clothes on, went right over, and just jumped the shore patrol and told them not to ever mess with his crew members ever again and got them out, took them back to the ship. He gets called in immediately the next day, “what are you doing jumping the shore patrol? Not your job.” So they got in a big fight, and of course Bucher lost that round, but he won it with the crew. They knew he would always have their back after that, a thing like that going on. That was a pretty petty thing, and he made a big, big deal out of it. So it was his guys, you know, and when they realized how he was talking about us, you know, we knew where we stood with him.
>> Roman Sotomayor: So even before crewmen like John had the opportunity to meet Bucher, he was making repeated attempts to improve Pueblo's conditions while navigating that tricky world of security clearances that upset his efforts at every turn. To note just a few of those improvements he sought, there was engine overhaul, an emergency scuttling system, demolition charges, and a fuel-fed incinerator for document destruction. In the end, Bucher ended up using his own funds designated for crew comfort to purchase an incinerator for destroying documents. And that incinerator Bucher acquired wasn't even a formidable one. It required material to be shredded by hand first, and then it could only handle about four pounds of material at a time. Officer of the Commander Services Forces Pacific, also known as COMSERVPAC, even denied a request to reduce the ship's library of classified publications. This library contained 450 pounds of information. Lerner writes that one officer estimated the time it would take to destroy this, along with the estimated additional 150 pounds of material that Pueblo was expected to generate during operations, at an optimistic 9 to 12 hours. That's 9 to 12 hours to destroy all of the documents.
>> John Mitchell: I'm wondering how long it would have taken to read it all.
[ Laughter ]
We'd have been there and back before we could read it all.
>> Roman Sotomayor: And a lot of these documents weren't even relevant to the Pueblo's mission. They had no reason for being on board the ship, something that Bucher and his officers recognized, but no one else seemed to agree with. Folks at the shipyard were in the same bind as Bucher. They couldn't do anything without written approval. Approval, which wouldn't come down because Pueblo's mission, and therefore the reason for those needs, were so wrapped up in classifications that no one could be in the know about them, not even people whose approvals were needed. And so Bucher writes, "Actual progress on the Pueblo was hardly visible." Bucher knew he wasn't making any friends, but saw himself as having little choice in the matter. He needed this ship to be functioning, not only for the sake of the mission, but for the wellness of his crew. At the time, he was communicating with Captain of the Banner, Chuck Clark, who informed him of all the troubles Clark's ship was facing, due to its own issues that made the Banner barely seaworthy. Reflecting on this, Bucher wrote, "I could not even disclose the gist of Chuck's letters to the people working on my ship, or to her few officers and crew for that matter, and the effect was only expressed by more unreasonable proddings on my part." So we have a big snafu moment here. Having so much secrecy surrounding the Pueblo led to problems with properly preparing her for her mission. It's worth thinking about how the mess of red tape hindered Bucher's attempts at outfitting the Pueblo as an AGER, not the AKL everyone thought it would be. Bucher quotes his wife in his book as having said to him at one point, "Poor Pete, you've been made captain of the Navy's most fouled up top secret." Regarding these secrets, there's also a great moment in Lerner's text where he writes, "Ironically, shipyard workers routinely tossed top secret design blueprints and other materials into a nearby dumpster where the ship's communications technicians tried to fish them out before they fell into the wrong hands." For John, instances like this reflect what he refers to as the typical insanity of bureaucracy.
>> John Mitchell: I think you take any veteran, no matter what they did, they saw the same thing everywhere. You know, you see that with a big corporation if you work with, it's the same thing. You can't move, you know, a hammer from one end of the building to the other without a work order. You know, it's not like you can just go do it. So there was work order, work order. That's what the Navy's all about, work order. They're all, you know, never get anywhere.
>> Roman Sotomayor: Here we've seen only the start of Pueblo's troubles. Classification and funding issues got everything off to a rocky start. There's much more to say, but we won't delve too deeply into the weeds here. Instead, let's get into how the Pueblo fared on the seas.
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>> Roman Sotomayor: What follows next is a series of foreboding readiness tests, shakedown training, and travel to Japan. Pueblo's conversion wrapped up in the summer of 1967. The first test runs were set to begin in June. By this point, Bucher's men and those at the shipyard were all more than eager to be parted from one another. The Pueblo had sat in the shipyard for much longer than anyone foresaw, and Bucher struggled to maintain high morale among his crew. Bucher writes, "In many respects, Pueblo reminded me of those permanently shore-bound mockup ships set in concrete by our naval boot camps." The crew had little to do on board the Pueblo at this time other than spending their days performing what Bucher calls, "make-believe rehearsals of a real thing." While John wasn't present yet at Bremerton, he did hear about it from his fellow crewmates.
>> Sara Hart: You heard about the circus.
>> John Mitchell: Oh, we heard all this. Yeah, you're in for it. It was kind of like, guess what? You know, you're in for a good time. I heard guys talk, you know, that it wasn't very good, but really didn't pay any attention to the details. We had enough problems in San Diego to deal with. You know, you don't know what to look for and what it should be like. And only the other people who have been around for a while, like the bosun's mates, all your first-class petty officers, all those kind of people -- they really didn't want, I don't think they really wanted to discuss that with all of us, the regular crew. I think they were having enough problems in just trying to figure out what they were supposed to do to get this thing seaworthy and get across the Pacific on it, which turned out to be a pretty bad trip. I think even some of the young guys who'd come aboard and were kind of gung-ho to play Navy, you know, they were ready to get going, and then to sit in some barracks and just, you know, walk around in circles didn't seem to have made any of them very happy. And the officers, obviously, you could tell they weren't happy because nothing was being done right and they were going to have to learn to live with it. So yeah, nothing went over very well.
>> Roman Sotomayor: With the first test runs drawing near, Lieutenant Harris, officer in charge of Pueblo's communications intelligence, brought another update to Bucher. The SOD-Hut, the protected room where the communications technicians would be, had to be completely redone. Everything in the SOD-Hut had been installed upside down in a way that put their most necessary gear either overhead or at their ankles. This caused further delays in the ship's first trip on the waters and not without testing Bucher's ongoing descent into madness. Crewmen like John were not permitted to enter into this classified space.
>> John Mitchell: I remember seeing, at least, Harris, it had to be a key punch, but I'm not sure. But I remember like you would start up the passageway and if he was there going in, he'd get up against the, you know, so you couldn't see the -- I don't know what there was to see that thing was, but maybe he had a number in, I don't know what he was doing. And then they wait till you pass by and then he would punch and go in. The spooks really, really kind of had their backs up. It was kind of hard for them because they weren't supposed to talk to us. I mean, they weren't even supposed to sit down and play cards with us or anything. It's supposed to be like they weren't there. Well, in that amount of space, there's no such thing as not there.
>> Roman Sotomayor: Right.
>> John Mitchell: You know, everybody's up against each other all the time.
>> Roman Sotomayor: As the year dragged into summer, passing through June and July, Pueblo saw her first test run. On this first run, the Pueblo left the dock with mixed emotions. Bucher and the crew were pleased to no longer pantomime running a ship, albeit not without the turning of nerves brought on by the state of said ship. These nerves weren't helped by the presence of shipyard workers all watching from the sidelines with their own doubts. Pueblo pushed out of the dock, eventually making her way into sea with limited troubles. This was a cause for some celebration. After letting the high spirits linger for a while, Bucher began performing a battery of maneuverability trials. During these trials, the ship came to a top speed of 12.7 knots and a low speed of 4 knots. Bucher was pleased with Pueblo's evasive abilities. Then came the call from a helmsman. "She does not answer the helm, sir. Rudder frozen." The cable connecting the steering engine to the main rudder yoke with 30,000 pounds of tension on it had shattered. Bucher and the crew attempted repairs, hoping to avoid calling the tugboat, which had been waiting patiently on standby like a bad omen, to assist them. In the end, they would be forced to seek the tug's aid to pull them back to dock. Once again, Pueblo would wait three days while repairs were completed. During another test following these repairs, the same alarm would be sounded. The engineers went to work on repairs, successfully sparing the Pueblo from requiring the tug's assistance a second time. Bucher's officers, Lacy and Behr, described their jobs at this junction as, "a real bitch." Both confirmed for Bucher that, should this problem continue to arise, they estimated it'd take about 25 minutes in optimal conditions to resolve. This would be their only option, of course, as the Navy rejected requests to rehaul the system. Now capable of taking to the seas, Pueblo's next major undertaking would be her first inspection on August 23rd by the Board of Inspection and Survey, also known as INSURV. Over the course of three days, an 85-page report on the Pueblo would be produced. This report noted 462 separate deficiencies, 77 of which were so severe that the inspectors ordered they must be corrected before the ship's mission began. Notably, the engine had failed 180 times during testing. Even so, INSURV didn't recommend a complete engine reconversion. For Bucher, much of this report contained minor issues that were typical of a ship of Pueblo's age and in her class. The more serious items on the list were those which Bucher had been lobbying to have fixed from the start. There were some attempts made to address deficiencies listed in the report, but they hardly made an impact on the ship's abilities. Pueblo would leave Bremerton for San Diego in early September to receive shakedown training or drills and tests relevant to her mission. Once again, Pueblo's classified status would cause problems in this area as no one knew what the Pueblo's purpose was, meaning they didn't have any specific tests or training prepared for her beyond those of an AKL. For John, the experience in San Diego meant lots of waiting and spending time with his friends and family.
>> John Mitchell: You know, when you're like me, you just got there and you never really -- I had been aboard a ship for about two weeks on a training thing. It was a destroyer escort and, you know, that was more like fun. You know, you get to run on a ship, shoot big guns and do all this stuff for a little while and it's more like playtime. It's not reality. A regular ship is reality and like a lot of us, we had very little training so they could all be talking about whatever's going on that's wrong and we wouldn't have a clue what they were talking about anyway. Once we got underway, you'd understand, you know, what they were talking about was going wrong but at first you'd have no idea. It's not like you got any training.
>> Sara Hart: Who needs training?
>> John Mitchell: Yeah. Well, they didn't know what my job was so how are you going to train at first? Let's just throw a bunch of guys on board and see what happens, you know. They're all a bunch of young Americans. They'll figure it out. You know, we did. It's not like you don't. And yet we had good officers and stuff who knew what they were doing. They knew what they were doing even if the Navy didn't know what they were doing. So yeah, things go from bad to worse and then from worse to even worse. Yeah, but I tried to get away. I spent as much time at home as I could. You know, the chief I worked under in the engineering department, you know, they had a day game planned for work so many hours and I would say, "Well, you know, there's a four o'clock flight out of San Diego for Sacramento. Can I leave?" You know, and he'd go, "Well, we got this and this to do. As soon as it's done, you can leave." So, you know, it was very easy for me to get back and forth. So I didn't hang out for the weekends, you know. No telling what they might think up while you're gone. So best to be gone. You start learning these things real quick. Boot camp starts teaching you. Don't volunteer. Don't put your face forward. Try to stay as anonymous as possible. Those things all work in your favor in the long run. So you know, for me, I wanted to go home and hang out with my friends anyway. You know, we were building cars and stuff. So I didn't really want to be there until we got ready to actually leave. And I'd never been to sea like that so I had no idea what we were looking into.
>> Roman Sotomayor: The results of the training were glowing. Pueblo was deemed ready for unrestricted operations despite the continued issues on board. The steering system remained troublesome and was failing every hour by the time Pueblo reached San Diego for further inspection. Nevertheless, she received a status of good in the area of ship control. So you know, forget all of that. She also received a marker of excellent in the main propulsion and electrical areas despite the fact that her vibrations at top speed could be seen by the naked eye. Communications, though still confused and non-existent in parts of the ship, were given the satisfactory mark. All in all, Pueblo was deemed ready for her mission and so off she went. Pueblo would spend the next weeks and months traveling to Hawaii, then Yokosuka in Japan, all the way grappling with repeated failures to the steering engine, the SIGINT equipment, communications breakdowns, and ongoing issues with other ship systems. At one point, the cooks gave up attempts to make hot meals due to the danger of the ship rolling severely, which Lerner notes wasn't, "a major problem since many of the crewmen were too seasick to eat." This journey across the Pacific is one John remembers well.
>> John Mitchell: I don't know how we got to Japan with everybody throwing up the whole way. It was pretty bad, so like, who was doing the work? I don't know. It wasn't me. I know where I was at. A lot of fun to hang out in a stainless, a metal shower stall, throw up through the floor. They stand there for hours, you know. We hit two typhoons. You don't want to be in a big ship in a typhoon, let alone this thing which is top heavy. And up in the control or the bridge, where everything, the captain and everybody's at, there's a -- I don't know what they call it. It's a thing that goes back and forth that tells you how much the ship is rolling side to side. It went to rollover, over and over and over again. We were in a trough and the ship would go up one side of the trough. Everything on the ship would go one direction inside. You know, like somehow the place where all the coffee mugs was at. Later, when all this stopped and went up, there was just porcelain all over the floor and the galley everywhere. It was a mess in there, so it took a few hours to clean it up. But we tried to get behind an island to try to break some of that up. Whether it did or didn't, I don't know. I wasn't up there. But it didn't feel any better to me. And people who had been in the Navy a long time who had never been seasick were sick on this one. Yeah, it was rude. And, you know, when we finally went out on the cruise, nobody got seasick. Things were pretty flat. But, yeah, that thing was not made to do rolls. You know, a destroyer or something like that, they're made to cut the waves and go through the rolls and stay afloat. We were never really intended to be at sea. They just, you know, it would have been better just to pick it up and put it on a carrier and hauled it over there. I actually had, on that, I was lucky I had access to the galley, to the reefer. You know, they had tried to do hot meals and it wasn't working out. And there was, like, a big thing of hams and cheese and all kinds of stuff in the reefer. So I figured out little things that I personally could get down and keep down a bit. So I'd go in there on my own and eat, you know. Cooks can't watch it all, all the time, you know.
>> Roman Sotomayor: Traveling across the Pacific and spending time in Japan would soon become routine, with the crew settling into a new rhythm.
>> John Mitchell: If you weren't working, you were sleeping or trying to get a shower or trying to eat three meals a day. Things are pretty insane when you're running around the clock. You know, it's kind of like four on, four off, four on, four off. Who sleeps in four hours, you know. You can't get your laundry done in four hours, hardly. You're lucky to, you know, try to get a quick shower and a hot meal in four hours. So it's like, you don't have time to think. You just do. And a lot of it, you don't do, you know. But usually you were either at work or asleep, one of the two anyway. So it wasn't like it really mattered too much. But it was just, yeah, it was a very comfortable place to be. I mean, we did finally -- we badgered the Navy long enough. They actually put a Coke machine on our ship.
[ Laughter ]
Which we didn't really need. But it was just kind of a matter of point. Like everybody's got everything, you know, like ship store and all these things. And we kind of jerry-rigged the ship store too. But, yeah, it was kind of winging it on your own. Get anything done. There was just no space at all for -- I mean, barely enough room to sleep. There was no place, like, to hang out.
>> Roman Sotomayor: Pueblo reached the Yokosuka Channel on December 1st, where she required assistance getting into harbor after, wait for it, her electrical and manual steering systems failed.
>> John Mitchell: To that, when underway, the steering wouldn't work. So it's like up and down points that go up and down, and if it goes up, it's right, and if it goes up on the other side, it's left. It's all supposed to work electronically. We had a rope tied to each end, and we'd sit in a chair in between and pull on the ropes back and forth by hand to steer the ship at times. It was that bad. It never did work right. They never did get it to work right.
>> Roman Sotomayor: Upon arriving and settling into Japan, John managed to get himself into a little excitement over some activities he and several of his crewmates had taken before leaving Honolulu.
>> John Mitchell: Most of us had a fairly good time in Japan. We had one incident that would haunt us later on. We were young, and I won't say we believed. We chose to believe what we probably knew was a lie. These Marines told us they had a phone number that would work, and we wouldn't have to pay for long-distance phone calls. So as we got really drunk, and they have a place where you can make phone calls from the base. And so we went in, all called home, wives, girlfriends, whatever, and talked for God knows how long, and never thought another thing about it. This would haunt us as soon as we docked. Yeah, we get there, and I see these two guys come aboard, and they're in suits, nice black shiny shoes, white shirt and ties. I run down to the berthing, and I go, "Oh, guys, we're screwed." And they go, "What?" I said, "Two FBI agents just came aboard." And they said, "Well, how do you know they're FBI?" I said, "Ain't nobody walks around in a suit that way but the FBI." We'd seen the TV show, you know, so it looked just like those guys. So I'm going like, "No, you wait", and it wasn't even an hour or so. They start calling us by name to come up to the officer's wardroom one at a time. Well, of course, I was one of them. And these two guys say, "Oh, well, you made a phone call while you were in Honolulu, and it's like $200," you know, which is about three months, four months' pay, you know, or whatever. And I'm going like, "Oh, God," you know. And they go, "If you choose not to pay this, you can be escorted to Leavenworth, Kansas. And until you do come up with the money, that's where you're going." And it's not much of a choice, you know. So I had to -- okay, whatever. So I had to call my parents, which is another long-distance phone call, and have my dad wire the money to Japan to pay the bill. So that's probably why he sold my car.
[ Laughter ]
I hadn't thought of it until just then, actually. But, yeah, and, you know, this is probably eight guys. Fair number, you know. And not a really good way to start your career off, you know, is having the FBI come on board the ship and threaten you. So luckily we just had to pay the bill, you know. And there was no -- we never got to, you know, do what they call captain's mast or something, which they, you know, you go before the captain, and they'll give you some punishment that sometimes is dock your pay, which we were already in the hole on that one. So a lot of things that could have been done, and Bucher let it just -- I don't remember him ever saying even a word about it.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about him, Bucher, and thinking, like, he's navigating this Navy requisition situation where everything's wrong, and they're not answering to any of his stated needs. But at the same time, he's building relationships with his crew. This is when you're getting called in by the FBI to pay your bill and not get sent to Leavenworth, and he's backing you guys on that. So he's kind of navigating a bureaucracy, navigating a human community, trying to ride the middle there. It's got to be tough.
>> John Mitchell: It must have been really hard for him. I mean, just even on the surface, but being a submariner where life is totally different, you know. I mean, they have their act together. You're going under the water, you better have everything together, and they do. And you come out of that world, it's a totally different world. And Bucher wasn't prepared for all this BS to get everything done, you know, which made no sense. And there's all these admirals up above trying to make all these decisions, and they didn't have any idea what they were talking about, you know. They were just trying to wing it and look good, and they weren't doing a very good job of it.
>> Roman Sotomayor: The denials from higher authorities to address Bucher's ongoing concerns followed him to Yokosuka. Instead of attending to the crucial systems in need of repairs, the Navy came through in January of 1968, eight days before departure, to add two .50 caliber machine guns onto the Pueblo with three mounts for each of them. Yes, two guns for three mounts. This change wasn't amid the many requests made by Bucher. In fact, it departed from plans that AGERs, like the Pueblo, should not be armed. But it did make the brass feel a little better about concerns they had following the 1967 attack on the USS Liberty. The movements of Pueblo and the way in which the mounts were placed only created more problems. They didn't have 360-degree coverage. The crew wasn't trained on their use. They were mounted poorly, and they were dangerous to navigate around. On top of all of this, they were ordered to be covered with tarps so as not to arouse suspicion.
>> John Mitchell: Yeah, it was a dangerous spot just to put them, let alone, you know -- I don't know. They were put, you know, as far out and up as you could get in the open on each end of the ship. Then they put, I believe they were leather or some kind, covers over them, and they were padlocked. I don't know who had the key. And then when we got on station, the seawater froze them up in ice, so you couldn't use them anyway. So, you know, we'd have been better -- I don't know. Maybe we wouldn't. But they sure didn't help having them out there on site, you know, and say, "Oh, we're only doing this." Well, what do you need guns for? I don't think they figured that part out, but it's how I would have, you know. It didn't seem like it made any sense. And as we will hear later, that will all come back to bite everybody in the butt.
>> Roman Sotomayor: Outfitted now to bring more comfort to the Navy than to the crew, Pueblo departed Yokosuka for Sasebo, Japan, taking with her all the other existing problems she had, including issues with officer and crew training. Keep in mind, the average age for crew members was around 28 years old, and for many, it was their first voyage. Plus, COMSERVPAC had denied Bucher's request to send the crew to pre-commissioning training, pre-commissioning training being the training that teaches the crew how to run and organize the ship. And, in the end, the Navy would deny any of these issues contributed to the events of her capture, placing the blame solely on Bucher during what can only be described as a media firestorm upon the repatriation of the crew. But we'll save that for our future episodes.
[ Music ]
>> Roman Sotomayor: In this episode, we introduced you to John, and rifled through a short list of the troubles Pueblo faced before she became mission-ready. The list is extensive. We've left out a lot in our efforts to share it in "The SNAFUBAR" without taking too much of your time. We've covered Pueblo's origins as an army freight and supply ship, her status as a classified AGER, the onerous process of converting her into a surveillance vessel, her captain Commander Lloyd Bucher's repeated attempts to have her properly repaired and outfitted, and how she squeaked her way through inspections to be designated seaworthy. Next time, we'll turn to what is called the Pueblo Incident, or her capture and the captivity of her crew. Those interested in learning more about this period of Pueblo's lifespan are encouraged to read the books we used for today's episode, Bucher's "My Story" and Lerner's "The Pueblo Incident". You can also find past interviews with John on "Stories of Sacrifice" and "Veterans Breakfast Club" by searching his name, John Mitchell, on Spotify and YouTube. John has also contributed to the development of an extensive document titled "The Manual for Veterans Dependents: What Every Veteran's Spouse Should Know Before Becoming a Widow." This free document can be accessed and downloaded as a PDF from the Arcata Veterans Hall website at arcataveteranshall.org, then by clicking on Resources and navigating to "The Manual for Veterans Dependents." We hope you'll check out this document, should it be of any use to you or your families. And with that, we look forward to meeting you next time, here in "The SNAFUBAR".
>>Roman Sotomayor: Hello, listeners. Thank you for joining us in Part 1 of our USS Pueblo series. This is Roman here, tuning in with Sara to reflect back on Part 1 and have a dialogue before episodes two and three.
>>Sara Hart: Yes, hello everyone. Sara Hart here, one of the show's regular hosts, jumping in here to talk a little bit with Roman about the series of interviews with our good friend John Mitchell.
>>Roman Sotomayor: To be honest with you listeners, we recorded our series with John last year before we'd been adopted by the great people at KHSU. What this means is that Episode 1 wasn't constructed with the duration of our shiny new radio spot in mind. It was not quite 59 minutes long. So today, we're here to fill that gap. Don't worry, though, you won't have to put up with us for episodes 2 and 3.
>>Sara Hart: Growing pains, you know.
>>Roman Sotomayor: So many pains. We're also recording a long distance today, which we usually do not do. So we apologize if the audio sounds different or perhaps a little crunchy. By we, of course, I mean me. I'm the problem child today, Most days, but today in particular.
>>Sara Hart: Oh, Roman, you're never a problem. But, yeah, you did refuse to join us in our Humboldt studio today. And why is that? Where are you?
>>Roman Sotomayor: So I'm recording from Pristina in Kosovo, one of the places where I'm working through some graduate level field studies. Sarah, you know Kosovo, right?
>>Sara Hart: Kosovo, I do. Isn't that where NATO has been serving its longest mission since the end of the Kosovo War in 1999?
>>Roman Sotomayor: It is! Ding ding ding! Potential future episode alert. Are the listeners tired of us always referencing things, then saying they'll become some unknown future episode yet?
>>Sara Hart: Yeah. I don't think they'll ever be tired of that. You know, maybe we should get some T shirts that say Snafubar. It'll be in a future episode. Or another Snafubar, definitely coming soon.
>>Roman Sotomayor: I like that, and it does say a lot about us.
>>Sara Hart: But really, Kosovo, that would be a good future episode. There's a lot to unpack with the 1999 Kosovo War and the UN mission to the region. That mission, which is still active today, the US remains pretty involved there, am I right?
>>Roman Sotomayor: And yes, you are right. Earlier in the summer, they actually threw us a 4th of July barbecue party at the campus. It was quite touching. And I'm able to record here today because of the help of some of the folks here who, I won't name them, but they know who they are, and I'm very grateful.
>>Sara Hart: Oh. Okay. I mean, that's great. I mean, as Americans, we don't celebrate other nations' Independence Days. I don't know that we're often culturally very aware of them, or at least I'm not. So I guess it speaks to my expectations, the degree to which I'm surprised by that by 4th of July barbecues in Kosovo. Hot dogs and hamburgers, corn on the cob, red white and blue bunting.
>>Roman Sotomayor: Well, no corn on the cob or hamburgers, exactly, but someone did bring hot dogs, and there was plenty of sausage. And yes, there was bunting, balloons, and a large American flag, which we stood by for the national anthem, followed by every classic rock or country song that mentions the US of A.
>>Sara Hart: That's awesome. That's really something. Food for thought. Not today, though, not today. I think we've used our allotted sidebar time for today. Roman, let's get back to the Pueblo.
>>Roman Sotomayor: Yes, since we have this extra time, we're going to use it to get everyone thinking about what we've just learned and what we'll see in parts 3 and 3. For starters, this episode marks our first use of oral history with a veteran on Snafubar. Yay!
>>Sara Hart: Yay!
>>Roman Sotomayor: We were incredibly lucky and unendingly grateful to John for joining us to share his story.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah. Oral history is one of those fancy academic descriptions for when you preserve the memories of individuals through their own spoken testimony of the events that they experienced. So in a nutshell, we're talking about structured interviews, really.
>>Roman Sotomayor: Yes, interviews that are often then analyzed by historians to pull out common themes, make arguments about social contexts, and engage in other forms of deeper exploration about human experience. Greater attention toward the practice of oral history has largely been a product of the 20th century. The period saw a shift away from focusing solely on prominent historical figures and instead seeking to understand the lives of those whose stories were often left out of written archives.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah, it's a rich discipline, which isn't limited solely to historians, but is practiced by anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, so many ologists. Despite the recent attention, it's one of the oldest forms of historical inquiry. It's just that nowadays we can actually record audio.
>>Roman Sotomayor: Yeah, and there's a long tradition of oral history within the military itself, interestingly enough. In a 2003 article for the Oral History Review, Stephen J. Long... Gosh, that's a tough one. Okay. There's, um... I'm just going to start from “In.” In a 2003 article for the Oral History Review, Stephen J. Lofgren wrote about the history of oral history within the US Army. He dates it back to 1775 before the army even existed, but notes that the modern tradition didn't really kick off until during World War II. Initially, the purposes of these were to explore the lessons learned by officers through what was known as the Senior Officer Oral History Program, which was established in 1970. In 1980, exit interviews for senior leaders would be added. As we hit the 90s, we start to see these programs expand to include enlisted personnel and even their families. Lofgren, himself, an army historian, emphasizes that the importance of collecting oral histories is that they not only allow us to hear and reflect on the experiences of others, but that they also allow us to build an archive for future historians whose questions about the present we don't yet know.
>>Sara Hart: Huh. I mean, that's pretty awesome. Sorry, you're going to cut this out. I hadn't read. This is news I didn't read this. Okay. Huh. I mean, that's pretty awesome. I mean, who's to know what the future will want, right? And today, I mean, as part of the recording, we just- it's so awesome to get to hear these stories firsthand. So whatever the future wants, we're happy in the present. And again, we're just so grateful to John for spending time with us to participate in this project. It has meant a lot to us as his friends, to be able to record and document his story, even if it's really just a fraction of a fraction of the whole.
>>Roman Sotomayor: Yeah, I recently read a book about writing where the author uses the metaphor of imagining yourself looking through a 1 inch window when writing scenes for a book. I think that these episodes provide us with a similar 1 inch window into the life of John.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah, a teeny tiny window. All we ever really get into someone's life is a 1 inch window, you know, but that's what can make oral history and interviewing so valuable.
>>Roman Sotomayor: And now, despite the fact that you didn't hear her much in the episode due to our trying out a new style with how this episode was edited, Sara actually was present during the recording of Part 1. So, what stuck with you most about the episode in particular, Sarah?
>>Sara Hart: I was there. I was there. And well, okay. So other than the lunch, which was delicious, maybe two things. I'm a sucker for a rich backstory, you know, and I'm also very into material history or, you know, the way historians sometimes follow an item or an object as a way to understand a culture. So people have done some really good material histories with, like, oranges and clocks, for instance. And we get both of those things here with John's story. We get a backstory and we get material history. And that I found really fascinating. With this first part of the Pueblo story, we got to see how the ship itself really becomes a character in this unfolding narrative and how much that ship's character can be seen to reflect the cultural values of the time.
>>Roman Sotomayor: I like how you spun that. It's not at all how I thought of it when I was writing the episode. And now I'm a little bit upset and jealous. I didn't consider the material history idea, but maybe I was tapping into it from the collective unconscious somehow because you're right, it does become its own character. I mean, not to oversell it or anything, but one of my favorite moments was John talking about them trying not to throw up the whole way to Japan because the ship was just almost tilting into rollover.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah. I mean, and that story is great cause John and the ship, both solidly characters in that moment.
>>Roman Sotomayor: So with episode 1, we really just wanted to provide you with some background information about the Pueblo and her mission, even though John didn't experience all of the shipyard tribulations that were discussed. I still think it's important for us to have this understanding that the story of the Pueblo didn't just start and end with the incident. And, you know, we'll learn more about that as we get into Part three, as well.
>>Sara Hart: Right, it didn't. I feel like we're teasing the listeners here a bit. But what was shown in this first episode will come into play in episodes two and three. For one, we'll want to keep in mind a number of things like the lack of a proper incinerator for document destruction. That's going to come back. I mean, imagine it hundreds and hundreds of pounds of documents that you don't want to fall into enemy hands. Like, that's your mission to keep them out of enemy hands, and you've got no way to destroy them in any kind of a hurry.
>>Roman Sotomayor: Absolutely. And those 50 caliber machine guns, like, geez, in my exploration of this topic and review of the materials that came out at the time regarding the incident, I kept seeing over and over the question of why didn't the captain fight back? And I encourage listeners to keep this question in mind when you hear episode 2, those poorly mounted and placed 50 caliber machine guns that were covered with tarps. As we'll talk in episode 2, about the force... Dang lost it. Okay. I think I'm coming back. Yeah. I think I'm going to change the sentence, but yes. And we'll talk more in the next episode about the great force that the crew would be confronted with upon their capture. When we do, you'll get a sense for why they maybe did not engage with the enemy.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah, so many interesting questions. Should Bucher have ordered the crew to fight? He would have known they had no way to destroy all the documents on board. Like, he knew that. We've seen it suggested in places. Bear in mind, we're not experts on the ocean or the region off the coast of North Korea. But we've seen it suggested that even if the ship had been scuttled or intentionally sunk, the depth would have been such that anything from within the ship, the equipment, and so on, all that stuff, would have been easily recoverable. So Bucher is juggling these options. Does he risk the death of the crew over the possibility that the ship and its equipment would be kept out of enemy hands?
>>Roman Sotomayor: That's quite a decision, you know, like, and it's a conclusion that ultimately, you know, I would really like the listeners to come to themselves. You know, maybe you will conclude that he should have taken the risk. After all, everyone on board had sworn an oath to their country. I don't think our job is to tell you what to think, but to present you with the information to make your own judgments, and to get you curious about these bigger questions. That is, what is it we're asking our service members to do for us? Because, yes, it's easy for me to kick back and say, well, sure, the Navy didn't prepare the Pueblo enough for this mission, but even so, Bucher should have taken the initiative to do anything possible to prevent information from falling into enemy hands. But personally, I would submit that that's an easy assessment to make, especially here now, decades later from the comfort of my civilian study. It's much harder to put yourself in Bucher's shoes and think about the 82 people looking to you for leadership, the majority of whom were young men with their whole lives ahead of them. Would you be willing to request that they all join you in potentially sacrificing their lives?
>>Sara Hart: I do not know.
>>Roman Sotomayor: Well, you know, we don't really have to answer it, I suppose. It's just something to think about here as we get to part 2 and, you know, ponder as we move through these episodes. So from there, let's look forward to hearing more from John in the second part of our Pueblo series. Until then, listeners, thank you for joining us in this interlude between parts one and two.
