The picture of the young soldier with the ears sticking out graced my mother-in-law’s kitchen forever. When asked, she would reply that her younger brother Donnie disappeared during the Korean War at the tender age of eighteen. In 2010, my wife, Sandy, and I set out to discover what happened to Corporal Donald Matney and to bring him home. Our journey took us to Washington, DC; Seoul, Korea; and many places in between. But slowly, carefully, step-by-step, we reconstructed the short life of Sandy’s uncle Donnie, identified his remains, and returned him to rest by his mother’s side in Missouri. A Korean War Odyssey is this story. The saga begins with a Korean history lesson told through the eyes of a fictional young refugee family fleeing the North Korean invasion. It continues from the viewpoint of a soldier on occupation duty in Japan suddenly thrust into a violent “police action”. Both witness the atrocities of war until one disappears. Through alternating perspectives, the account continues weaving what happened during the war with how we identified this missing young soldier and brought him home. A Korean War Odyssey provides much needed insight for today’s headlines. Those with friends and relatives lost during the Forgotten War will learn what may have happened. Anyone who desires to understand the Korean War and why the US still has a presence on this Asian peninsula today will gain a new viewpoint.

For more than half of the twentieth century, the Korean peninsula has been divided between two hostile and competitive nation-states, each claiming to be the sole legitimate expression of the Korean nation. The division remains an unsolved problem dating to the beginnings of the Cold War and now projects the politics of that period into the twenty-first century. Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey is designed to provide readers with the historical essentials upon which to unravel the complex politics and contemporary crises that currently exist in the East Asian region. Beginning with a description of late-nineteenth-century imperialism, Michael Robinson shows how traditional Korean political culture shaped the response of Koreans to multiple threats to their sovereignty after being opened to the world economy by Japan in the 1870s. He locates the origins of both modern nationalism and the economic and cultural modernization of Korea in the twenty years preceding the fall of the traditional state to Japanese colonialism in 1910. Robinson breaks new ground with his analysis of the colonial period, tracing the ideological division of contemporary Korea to the struggle of different actors to mobilize a national independence movement at the time. More importantly, he locates the reason for successful Japanese hegemony in policies that included—and thus implicated—Koreans within the colonial system. He concludes with a discussion of the political and economic evolution of South and North Korea after 1948 that accounts for the valid legitimacy claims of both nation-states on the peninsula.

Captain Sad Sam Gerdine is marking time at Camp Pendleton in the summer of 1950. He's finally been given command of the rifle company he worked for with such focus that he lost both his wife and the child he loves. It's not much of a command in the diminished post-World War II Marine Corps, but he's doing his best with an outfit that includes rascals, rejects, and-fortunately-a solid cadre of anxious young officers and savvy, combat-hardened senior NCOs. And then-in the words of Elmore Bates, his competent and colorfully profane Company Gunnery Sergeant-the “defecation strikes the oscillation.” War in Korea and the Marines will be the allied fire brigade against a North Korean juggernaut rolling across the Land of the Morning Calm. In short order, mostly by ignoring rules and regulations, Captain Gerdine proceeds to make Able Company, 5th Marines a combat-ready outfit prepared to face the rigors of war in Korea. From the Pusan Perimeter to the audacious landing at Inchon and on into the frigid, intense combat at the Chosin Reservoir, Sad Sam's Marines mold and meld into a shining example of how U.S. Marines get the job done despite formidable odds.

The horrors of WWII were still fresh in our minds when the Korean War broke out. June 25, 1950, when the North Korean Communists crossed the Thirty-Eighth Parallel to invade South Korea, changed the course of my life. Betty, her roommate Marian Ott, Richard?s old Trenton buddy and roommate Harvey Seeman, and Richard were driving to ?Old Man?s Cave,? which is about a hundred miles southwest of Columbus. It was a day made for poets and we couldn?t have been in a more festive mood. The radio was tuned to the classical music station on WOSU when the program was interrupted with the news that the North Korean Communist troops had crossed the Thirty-Eighth Parallel to invade South Korea. Korea? Where?s that? Richard flunked his physical for induction into WWII but would pass muster to fight in what was tragically mislabeled as a mere ?police action.? Richard had proposed marriage to Betty earlier that spring, with plans for a wedding the following December of ?50. Little over eight months since their trip to Old Man?s Cave, Richard was among the first draftees to enter the war. The title of this book is apt. Had I been identified, it could never have been used as a symbol of American fighting forces throughout the globe. Since it was used as a symbol at the peak of the Cold War, the advertising executive who handled the USO account had no way of knowing that I was not one of the 36,0000 who were KIA in the war. And he also presumed that if I survived the war I could never prove it to be me. The AP release stated the photograph was taken by a man with the initials JM. An elderly woman in the World Wide AP photo department said, ?Why, that?s Jimmy Martenhofff!?

Captain Sad Sam Gerdine is marking time at Camp Pendleton in the summer of 1950. He's finally been given command of the rifle company he worked for with such focus that he lost both his wife and the child he loves. It's not much of a command in the diminished post-World War II Marine Corps, but he's doing his best with an outfit that includes rascals, rejects, and--fortunately--a solid cadre of anxious young officers and savvy, combat-hardened senior NCOs. And then--in the words of Elmore Bates, his competent and colorfully profane Company Gunnery Sergeant--the "defecation strikes the oscillation." War in Korea and the Marines will be the allied fire brigade against a North Korean juggernaut rolling across the Land of the Morning Calm. In short order, mostly by ignoring rules and regulations, Captain Gerdine proceeds to make Able Company, 5th Marines a combat-ready outfit prepared to face the rigors of war in Korea. From the Pusan Perimeter to the audacious landing at Inchon and on into the frigid, intense combat at the Chosin Reservoir, Sad Sam's Marines mold and meld into a shining example of how U.S. Marines get the job done despite formidable odds.

Sam Gerdine has finally been given command of a rifle company, an outfit that includes rascals, rejects, and-fortunately-a solid cadre of young officers and combat-hardened senior NCOs.