F. Carl “Skip” Schumacher, Jr. and the USS Pueblo (AGER 2)

By Charles E. Valier

[Ed. Note: The recent multi-national prisoner exchange orchestrated by President Biden stimulated classmate Charlie Valier’s recollection of a 1968 incident involving the crew of the USS Pueblo, including one of Charlie’s best friends.]

[Click to read Skip’s full obituary (excerpt shown above).]

The Belvedere beach, Charlevoix, Michigan was rather somber in the summer of 1968, as Althea Schumacher, perched on her Adirondack chair near the Hickey family cabana, commanded center stage in her circle of friends, lamenting her apprehension about the fate of her son, Skip, a prisoner of war in North Korea. His ship, the Pueblo, had been captured off the east coast of the hermit kingdom that had closed itself off to the rest of the world. I was absent from the beach most of that summer, as I was trudging door-to-door in the St. Louis heat campaigning for re-election to the Missouri House of Representatives. Meanwhile, Skip was still stuck in a prison, starving on a diet of rice, and being frequently whacked by the young Korean guards who had been brought up to hate Americans.

In January 1968, Skip was the Operations Officer of the USS Pueblo (AGER 2), an intelligence gathering ship, when it was captured, January 23, on the high seas by the North Korean Navy—two sub chasers and four torpedo boats. Their first shot during the chase struck the forward compartment, killing one crew member, Hodges, and injuring several others. “The North Koreans stole our ship at gunpoint, blindfolded and tied us, and packed us on a train for an all-night ride across country to Pyongyang.” He spent eleven months as a prisoner of war. Unfortunately for the Pueblo crew, the North Vietnamese Army commenced their “Tet Offensive” one week later on January 30, 1968, thus leaving the U.S. stretched both militarily and diplomatically. The practical result after the experience was that Skip never ate rice and turnips again, but the psychological damage was far greater.

Commander Lloyd Bucher, the captain of the Pueblo, was asked to do three things: (1) admit his ship had violated North Korean territorial waters; (2) sincerely apologize; and (3) promise not to do it again. When he refused to generate a statement to this effect, he was told his men would be shot, one by one, starting with the youngest, until he agreed. When they brought in the youngest man—a 17-year-old sailor—Commander Bucher agreed with their demands. He had been brought up as an orphan in Boys Town and adhered to their motto, “He’s not heavy, he is my brother.” Bucher’s sole goal was the safety and security of his crew. The crew was constantly physically and verbally abused to confess to the crime of invading the territorial waters of North Korea—an act they never did. Despite the imprecation of the Uniform Code of Military Conduct—name, rank, and serial number—every member of the crew violated it. In order to resist, the crew dreamed up ways to comply, without alerting their captors to the deception. Bucher and Skip concocted stilted language in their confessions that defied the North Koreans’ grasp of English grammar to signal to the world that it was coerced.

The depth of despair and isolation revealed itself in Skip’s mind. “I was looking down a dark tunnel that had been cemented shut. I concluded that I had to kill myself.” Failing in his attempt to commit suicide by sticking his head in a bucket of water, Schumacher and Bucher concluded they would resist in ways that the North Koreans would not understand, but that the outside world would. “Commander Bucher realized that the best resistance we could offer was by doing whatever we could to discredit and undermine their propaganda efforts.” The most obvious form of resistance was the “Hawaiian Good Luck sign” (the raised middle finger). Skip played an important role in that deception, dreaming up the Hawaiian definition. Unfortunately, a picture was taken of some of the crew who exposed the finger when their coerced confession was read to the “behind the Iron Curtain” press. The picture was reprinted in Time magazine with a caption that read, “Three of the crewmen have managed to use the medium for a message, furtively getting off the U.S. hand signal of derisiveness and contempt.” Eventually, a copy of Time found its way to North Korea.

The Pueblo crew paid a price during what they labeled “Hell Week.” “I myself had two cracked ribs and two black eyes, along with several cuts.” “The beating lasted about half an hour.” Actually, he was beaten for 15 minutes every six hours for five consecutive days. His memory of the experience simply could not grasp the enormity of what had actually happened. Here is his description made several years later:

“Tashi sneaked up behind me while I was writing at the table. I never saw him coming. He kicked me from behind, in the rib cage, drop-kick fashion. The blow lifted me out of the chair and threw me into the table and the wall. I was still reeling when he came at me full force, using his fists and his feet, exercising his karate kicks. A right-hand cross landed on the left side of my face; a hard kick smashed into my shins; a knee drove into my groin. Having sent me to the floor, Tashi gave me a couple of kicks with his heavy boots and then waited while I slowly got up. Expecting his strong right jab again, I didn’t see his boot coming. It caught me solidly in the chest, knocking the wind out of me and sending me crashing to the floor again.”

Skip’s bravery and intrepid leadership during his captivity earned him the following awards: Silver Star, Bronze Star with a V for Valor, Navy Commendation Medal, Purple Heart, and Prisoner of War Medal. But those awards did not come immediately. The institution of the Navy resisted the ignominy of an American ship being surrendered for the first time in history. In fact, Bucher recommended Skip be awarded the Navy Cross, but that was downgraded to the Silver Star. The POW medal only came after Congress interceded in 1990.

The release of the Pueblo crew came December 23, 1968, after months of negotiation. The representative of the US signed the North Korean document that stated, “The US shoulders full responsibility and solemnly apologizes for the grave acts of espionage committed by the US ship against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea after intruding into the territorial waters of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” The caveat read by the negotiator before signing was that, “The position of the government … has been that the ship was not engaged in any illegal activity, that there is no convincing evidence that the ship at any time intruded into territorial waters claimed by North Korea …” As the members of the crew walked, singly across the “Bridge of No Return” at Panmunjom, the North Koreans blared the final confession and expression of gratitude through loudspeakers read by Commander Bucher with a subtle expression of American defiance. “Paean” is the Greek word for song of praise. “We wish to paean [pronounced ‘pee on’] the North Korean Army, paean the North Korean people, but most of all, we paean the North Korean leader, Kim Il Sung.”

After the Pueblo crew was returned to the United States, they were initially treated as heroes by the public, but within the Navy as pariahs because it was the first, and only, American Naval ship that was captured, and technically, since the Korean War never officially ended, by an enemy with whom we were at war. Never mind that its only armament was two 50 caliber machine guns mounted on the port and starboard flying bridges wrapped in canvas that had frozen. The Navy blamed the commander of the ship, Lloyd Bucher, and recommended he be court martialed for dereliction of duty. His testimony before the court of inquiry was succinct, “I was completely and totally outgunned.” “His priority was always for the safety and security of the crew. But for this attitude, I doubt that the crew would have made it through its 11 months of captivity.” It took the courage and ingenuity of the Secretary of the Navy, John Chafee, a former governor of Rhode Island, to quash the court martial of the captain of the Pueblo.… “they have suffered enough, and further punishment would not be justified.”

Yet even Chafee refused to address the Code of Military Conduct, which required prisoners to only give their name, rank, and serial number. Seaman Russell felt the code was intended to prevent collaboration with the enemy. He stated, “I never did anything for my own betterment. It was just to keep myself from being stomped on.” Subtly, he was chastising the one member of the crew, the executive officer Murphy, who had betrayed and snitched on the crew. Bucher tried to hide the betrayal and the determination of the crew to murder Murphy. Since repatriation the crew of the Pueblo has held annual reunions. Murphy was absent from the later reunions of the crew. While Skip was third in command, and Murphy second, when Bucher died Skip replaced him in charge of the crew by a democratic vote.

Skip talked about the Pueblo to me numerous times and gave talks on the incident in St. Louis and Charlevoix. That one event shaped his whole life. He told me a psychologist had told him to get past it, but his response was the Pueblo was his life. After his release from the Navy, he wrote a book about his experience, Bridge of No Return, The Ordeal of the U.S.S. Pueblo (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971). He recommended two other books to me, The Pueblo Incident, A Spy Ship and the Failure of American Foreign Policy, by Mitchell B. Lerner (University Press of Kansas, 2002), and A Matter of Accountability, The True Story of the Pueblo Affair, by Trevor Armbrister (Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 1970).

The Pueblo Incident was world news. Skip and the crew had to live with the deprivation of their liberty and the ensuing beatings for eleven months. They had been sent by the Navy to the remote North Korean shore in the dead of winter with orders to intercept military messages. They were alone and virtually unarmed. The mission had been graded, “Minimum Risk” by the Navy and there was, thus, no viable plan to support the mission in the event of attack. Such an attack in international waters was deemed improbable. Pursuant to international law, a ship found within the territorial limits of the coast of a sovereign nation was to be escorted back into international waters. After the first fusillade of fire, 30 percent of the 83-man crew were wounded or dead. Abandoned by the Navy, they were overcome, captured to avoid the sinking of the ship in freezing waters, and left isolated and imprisoned for eleven months, subject to regular beatings. Without adequate nourishment they remained loyal to the Navy and resisted as best they could. Our government spent eleven months equivocating, refusing to admit culpability, only to reverse course and acknowledge that the ship had penetrated sovereign waters to gain the release of the crew, and then reversed itself again to disclaim what it had admitted to; one wonders what the world perceived had happened.

The crew, malnourished, emotionally run down, isolated, and physically abused, traded confession for life. Upon their return, they faced a court of inquiry that was hostile to their forced confessions and thought that they should not have surrendered the ship on the high seas while under attack with no armament to resist. The irony is that our government did what they, the crew were not supposed to do, and without any coercion—confess. In fact, the crew resisted, using the Hawaiian Good Luck sign (the raised middle finger) to signal to the world what had transpired. Most importantly, they maintained military order and loyalty to their commander throughout the eleven months.

Many years later, I enlisted the help of Senator John McCain of Arizona to persuade the director of the National Park Service to allow a memorial to the Pueblo and its crew to be erected at the National Prisoner of War Museum in Andersonville, Georgia. Skip and I had flown down to Americas, Georgia for the dedication of the museum and Senator McCain came aboard our plane before driving to Andersonville. After the ceremony Skip and I asked the Park Superintendent if a memorial for the Pueblo could be erected at the museum. He said, “No.” The stigma of the capture was still alive. I wrote to Senator McCain and had the letter hand-delivered on the floor of the Senate by my senator, Kit Bond. He wrote to the Director of the National Park Service directing that a memorial be permitted. The next day after receipt by the Director, I received a call from the Park Superintendent. For Skip and the crew, McCain’s action lifted the stigma of their imprisonment.

One later event riled the crew more than the perfidy of our government. During the presidential administration of Bill Clinton, he sought to reach diplomatic rapprochement with North Korea. Madeleine Albright, his Secretary of State, even met with Kim Jong Il in North Korea. During the lead-up to those negotiations, the US permitted the transfer of the Pueblo from Wonsan to Pyongyang, a distance of one thousand miles in open waters. The diplomatic talks went nowhere, but now the Pueblo is a tourist and propaganda display. Skip never forgave Albright and Defense Secretary Perry for what he called “stupidity.” Skip and the crew knew the mindset of the North Koreans better than anyone.

Skip and I were close friends, growing up in St. Louis, attending St. Louis Country Day School, and summering in Charlevoix, Michigan. Recently we participated in a book group at the Church of St. Michael and St. George in St. Louis. He went into a coma shortly before he died in May, 2018 while I was in London. Momentarily, when he came out of the coma, he immediately instructed his daughter, Irene, “Call Charlie Valier.” Irene dutifully tracked me down in London. Irene announced to Skip that she had contacted me. Skip went blank and relapsed. When I returned from England I drove directly from the airport to Skip’s house and found him in a hospital bed in his living room. He was in a coma and barely breathing. His black Labrador Retriever, Josie, lay at the foot of his bed unwilling to leave him. We never talked. The next morning, he died. That fall I took on his task for the book group of presenting two books by John LeCarré, The Spy who Came in From the Cold, and A Legacy of Spies that Skip had selected the previous spring. That spring he had enthusiastically aided me with a presentation I had made on Cicero based on a historical trilogy by Robert Harris.

 
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