USS Pueblo Seized by North Korea Bob Chicca Shares His Story (Part I)

Announcer
00:12 – 00:46
World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and our other wars and conflicts. America’s fighting men and women strapped on their boots and picked up their guns to fight tyranny and stand for liberty. We must never forget them. Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. These stories will touch your heart, inspire you, and give you courage. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Here’s Kim Munson.

Kim Monson
00:48 – 01:41
And welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is americasveteranstories.com. And the show comes to you because of a trip that I took in 2016 with a group that accompanied four D-Day veterans back to Normandy, France for the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day landings during World War II. and return stateside realizing that we need to know these stories and record them and broadcast them and archive them. And so hence, America’s Veteran Stories was born. And really pleased to have on the line with me, Bob Chicca. He is a Marine veteran and he was crew member on the USS Pueblo that during the Vietnam War was captured by the North Koreans, and the crew was held captive for 11 months.

Kim Monson
01:41 – 01:43
So, Bob Chicca, welcome to the show.

Bob Chicca
01:44 – 02:08
Thank you. I appreciate you having me. I was in shock a little bit this morning. The National POW Organization, former POW, is disbanding. They just sent out their last thing. Apparently, there’s less than 650 former POWs left in the country now. Goodness.

Kim Monson
02:09 – 02:19
We must never forget. Wow. Well, let’s get into it. But let’s start at the beginning, Bob. Where did you grow up? Tell us a little bit about you.

Bob Chicca
02:19 – 03:10
Well, I was born and raised in Washington, D.C. I’m the oldest of seven kids. The first six were boys, the seventh was a girl. And I want to say I was under a lot of pressure as the oldest to provide a good example for the rest of the crew. And when I turned 18, I kind of ran away and joined the Marine Corps. Time to go fight and kill, I guess. I want to say I was very repressed at that time. Went to Marine Recruit Depot at Parris Island and three months later, when I went in, I was about 110, just a skinny little kid.

Bob Chicca
03:10 – 03:19
And then three months later, I was 165 pounds of solid muscle and in great shape. I kind of blossomed on Parris Island.

Announcer
03:20 – 03:20
And

Bob Chicca
03:20 – 04:10
then they picked me for intelligence work. I had no inkling what they were doing at the time, but they sent me off to a school after infantry training at Camp Lejeune and ended up working in intelligence in the beginning. It takes a while to get into it because they have to run all the security clearances and things like that. And then in my first school down at Corey Field in Pensacola, Florida, we had the opportunity to extend our enlistment and learn a language. So it sounded like a good idea to me, so I put in for it.

Bob Chicca
04:11 – 04:25
Unfortunately, couldn’t pick my language and was given Korean. So then I went off to Defense Language Institute up in Monterey, California after I finished up at Pensacola.

Kim Monson
04:27 – 04:33
And this was all during the Vietnam War. What year did you join the Marines, Bob?

Bob Chicca
04:36 – 04:37
Sixty-one, I believe.

Kim Monson
04:40 – 04:43
Okay. So that was before the Vietnam War?

Bob Chicca
04:43 – 04:51
No, it was going on, but it wasn’t as full-fledged as it would get.

Kim Monson
04:52 – 04:52
Okay.

Bob Chicca
04:52 – 04:53
As the years ticked on. Okay.

Kim Monson
04:55 – 05:01
So after you had gone and learned this language, what happened after that for you, Bob Chica?

Bob Chicca
05:03 – 05:50
Oh, this is part of where things go awry. And there have been millions of changes, literally, since the capture of the Pueblo. We were really an experiment that failed. But after I learned the language, they sent me to an artillery battery at Camp Pendleton. They had no idea what to do with me as a Korean linguist and an intelligence. And then as they were getting ready to deploy to Vietnam, they found that there were eight of us that were lost at Camp Pendleton. So they got us all together and the slow march back into the intelligence fields began.

Bob Chicca
05:51 – 06:19
But they didn’t want to take us to Vietnam with them. We weren’t supposed to be captured alive. So they wanted to get rid of us. And then when we finally got back into the security business, I was sent off to Japan and got to work with Russian over there rather than anything to do with Korea. And while I was… Oh, go ahead.

Kim Monson
06:19 – 06:24
Well, question, why did they want to get rid of you and who’s the they in that?

Bob Chicca
06:25 – 07:15
Well, the vision itself. We were a I want to say a liability. Like I said, we weren’t supposed to be captured alive, and these people are going into war, and it would be quite a responsibility to look after us. So once they rounded us all up, like I said, and slowly we got back into the security business, the intelligence groups that we had been with before and should have been with. That’s one of the things that has changed. I went back and spoke at the Defense Language Institute a couple years ago. And they had changed their approach to linguistics.

Bob Chicca
07:16 – 07:35
And once you learn a language, by God, you’re going to stay working in that language rather than get shipped off to an artillery battery or some other thing, which would have made sense. But, you know, back when I went through, they weren’t doing it that way.

Kim Monson
07:37 – 07:42
So is Korean a difficult language to learn?

Bob Chicca
07:42 – 08:10
It’s totally different, but if you have a chance to work with it, it’s not too difficult to learn, just like Koreans learn English. And you just need to stay with it. Like once I learned it, until I was captured in North Korea, I never had a chance to use it. So that’s the difference.

Kim Monson
08:11 – 08:23
Okay. So you joined the Marines in 1961, and did you retire from the Marines? What did your career look like with the Marines?

Bob Chicca
08:24 – 09:24
Once it was all over with, I got out. It turned out that they, I kind of thought I’d have a career in intelligence, and after the court of inquiry here in San Diego, they sent me back to Fort Meade, Maryland, and the reality of our situation began to become apparent to me, and they wouldn’t let me in the building. We were a highly politicized group by that point, and Like I said, there have been millions of changes. We were the experiment that didn’t work and I got the repercussions from that. Eventually, someone took a hammer to my car and so I decided I’m bailing out of here and called a friend in Oceanside, California here and said, find me a house.

Bob Chicca
09:25 – 09:39
I’m moving west. Wow. It’s so silly now and think back on it. You know, he went out, found three houses, sent me some pictures. I picked one, bought it sight unseen and moved west.

Kim Monson
09:41 – 09:47
Wow. Well, so what was the experiment that they were doing, Bob?

Bob Chicca
09:47 – 10:38
Well, back during the Cold War, the Russians had an extensive trawler fleet that was actually intelligence collection vessels, small ones disguised as fishing vessels that cruise our coastline and all over the world. And so someone in the government decided that if they find it so neat, maybe we should give it a try and see what’ll work out. And we were the experiment. There were three ships, the Pueblo, the Palm Beach, and the Banner. They were old ships. They were World War II cargo transport ships, AKL-44s. And if you’ve ever seen the movie Mr. Roberts, that was the ship that it started with.

Bob Chicca
10:39 – 11:20
They were riverboat transport ships. And rather than sink huge funds into it, they pulled out these three mothballed ships and then refit them as intelligence collection vessels. and sent us out. Usually a ship that size might have a crew of maybe 35, 40 men, and we had 83 on board. So to get the room for the extra people, they converted the holds on the ship where they would carry cargo into berthing areas for the extra men on board, and then built what we called a sod hut, the area kind of in the center of the ship where we worked.

Bob Chicca
11:23 – 11:38
About half the 83 people that were on board were ship’s crew, sort of taken care of and running the ship, and the other half were the intelligence group that worked in what we called the sod hut.

Kim Monson
11:39 – 11:48
Okay, and did you all sail together, these three ships, or were you actually more out by yourself?

Bob Chicca
11:50 – 12:39
We were out by ourselves. Commander Booker’s theme song for the ship was A Lonely Bull. Most people, when they think of American Navy ships, think of the big aircraft carriers and destroyers and battleships and, you know, we’ve seen pictures of them heading out to the Mideast there. You know, there’ll be six or eight ships going together, supporting each other. We went out alone. My first thought when I saw the ship was, my God, they really take that out on the ocean. You see some aircraft carriers. We have Midway here in San Diego, and you could put 32 Pueblos on the deck of the Midway.

Bob Chicca
12:41 – 13:03
It gives you some rough idea of the ship. We had a flank speed of twelve and a half knots and our normal cruising speed was six knots. So when you leave your radio station and head out to your car, you’re probably walking six knots. So it gives you a rough idea of what the speed of the ship was like.

Kim Monson
13:07 – 13:38
Well, let’s get we’re going to continue the discussion here with Bob Chicca regarding the USS Pueblo, which was taken captive by the North Koreans and the crew was held for 11 months. But I did want to mention, as you know, there’s a couple of charities that I really or nonprofits that I really support on the show. One of those is the Center for American Values, and it is located in Pueblo, Colorado, on the beautiful River Walk. And in fact, Bob just recently had done an on values presentation there, which you can find on their website.

Kim Monson
13:38 – 13:59
That website is AmericanValueCenter.org, AmericanValueCenter.org. But be sure and check that out, because there’s a lot of great information. They focus on our Medal of Honor recipients, these great On Values presentations, and education of our children, and focus on these foundational principles of honor, integrity, and patriotism. So we will be right back with Bob Chicca.

Speaker 7
13:59 – 14:32
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Speaker 4
14:41 – 14:59
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Kim Monson
15:11 – 15:36
And welcome back to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is America’s Veterans Stories dot com. And we’re talking with Bob Chicca. He was a crew member on the USS Pueblo, which was taken captive during the Vietnam War. And you were a staff sergeant in the Marine Corps. Tell us a little bit more about the crew, Bob, of the USS Pueblo.

Bob Chicca
15:37 – 16:33
Well, There were 83 men on board. About half of them were the ship’s company that drove and took care of the ship, and the other half were intelligence people. The ship had been converted from an old riverboat transport ship from the Second World War, and it wasn’t very fast or very big. I was kind of surprised they actually took it out on the ocean. Whenever you see pictures of the ship, it’s always in nice, calm seas. But in actuality, it was never that way. It was always rough. And the ship would just roll around. There were times, during storms, walking down the hallway inside the ship where you’d tilt over enough you’re actually walking on the walls.

Bob Chicca
16:34 – 16:35
Oh my gosh.

Kim Monson
16:39 – 16:46
Oh my gosh. So was seasickness a problem on the ship or was everybody pretty acclimated by that time?

Bob Chicca
16:47 – 17:21
No, no, I was seasick several times. And it, you know, the small ship like that and huge waves, you’d be come up over the crest of a wave, and when the ship got halfway over, the front end would drop into the trough on the other side, you know, about a 50, 60 foot drop, and then hit the water, and it was really kind of rough. But I can’t say you get used to it, but you do get your sea legs eventually.

Kim Monson
17:23 – 17:33
that I can’t not even imagine what that was like. So tell me about intelligence gathering. What does that look like exactly?

Bob Chicca
17:33 – 18:33
Well, you can’t really talk about specifics, but what we were doing was listening and recording anything we could hear or capture on the equipment. And then that’s sent back for analysis. back at headquarters, probably Fort Meade, Maryland eventually. And before I went on the ship, I was in Japan, like I said, for a couple of years. And all the other Marines there had been sent to Vietnam for six-month TAD trips. And they all went except me, and I was trying to figure out why I’d like to go and get it over with. So I asked around and eventually the word came that this mission with the Pueblo was coming up and that I was going on it.

Bob Chicca
18:35 – 19:23
And eventually they did send me to South Korea for a couple of months and I worked with Army Intelligence over there and in the process learned that there was no way I could do what they expected me to do, that the army over there actually used South Korean nationals that they were able to grant clearances with up to a certain level to do the stuff that they wanted me to do. And I passed that word on when I got back. They said, you’re going anyway. So I was assigned to the ship on January 3rd, and then it was January 23rd that we were captured.

Bob Chicca
19:23 – 19:29
It was supposed to be a 30-day temporary mission for me that got turned in a little longer.

Kim Monson
19:30 – 19:44
So as I was doing some research on this, first of all, I guess the disguise was that this was a ship that was doing environmental research. Is that correct?

Bob Chicca
19:44 – 20:41
Yes, oceanographic research. And that’s what the two civilian oceanographers were doing on board. And they did their work. They had their work to do and did their work. I can’t call it very much of a disguise but that was it. Also, they didn’t want Marines, they didn’t want anyone to know that Marines were on the ship because that usually indicates that there’s something special on the ship. So, they wanted us to wear Navy uniforms which of course doesn’t go over very well with Marines. Eventually, we reached a compromise and we wore Navy dungarees and Marine Corps shirt, and if we went topside or outside, we’d put a Navy peacoat on to cover our Marine Corps stuff, and if we must, maybe even wear a Navy hat.

Kim Monson
20:45 – 21:00
So you, and tell me what you can, and if you can’t, that’s fine. So were you really collecting intelligence on the North Koreans, the Russians, both? Or what was that mission

Bob Chicca
21:00 – 21:53
like? All of the above. Anything that we would pick up. And you know, the North Koreans would use Russian or Chinese equipment. So you can learn about Russian and Chinese equipment just by watching what the North Koreans were doing. And I want to say this is pretty normal, and most of the work is now taken over by planes and satellites and small contingents on other larger ships. But like I said, we were experimental at the time. We were supposed to be unarmed and work on the freedom of the high seas principle. The North Koreans claimed a 12-mile limit, although the United States only recognized a three-mile limit.

Bob Chicca
21:53 – 22:33
We were under orders not to intrude into North Korean waters, and that’s always been the biggest point of contention, especially with the North Koreans, because they said, we did intrude, but we didn’t. If you just look at it from a common-sense point of view, if you’re going to intrude into the Nations are into the waters of a hostile country. You want to be on a ship that’s fast enough to get the hell out of there if you get caught, or have enough firepower on board to shoot your way out if you get caught. And in no way, shape, or form did the Puebla look like that.

Bob Chicca
22:35 – 23:10
And there also should have been some contingency plans to come to our aid if things went sideways. Until the North Koreans actually opened fire on us, the stuff that went on was just considered to be harassment. And harassment of American ships goes on even up to today all over the world. People just want to hassle us and see what they can get away with. But once they open fire, then you know they’ve got something more than harassment in mind.

Kim Monson
23:11 – 23:30
So that’s what happened with you. So you’ve set this up. So you really were not an armed ship at all. So tell me about the day, the 23rd. What happened on that day regarding the attack, the capture? What did all that look like?

Bob Chicca
23:31 – 24:13
Everyone nowadays is so tuned in to GPS and cell phones and everything. We’re talking back in the Stone Age here, of course. And back in the Stone Age, no one could tell where you were unless you were emitting a signal that they could use to triangulate and find out where you were. So we were traveling in radio silence until the actual day before our capture. And then it’s not like you’re hiding out on the ocean, because like when you were out on the ocean sailing around yourself, you can see anything for 100 miles out there.

Bob Chicca
24:15 – 24:58
But for the first 10, 12 days we were out there, no one knew we were there. And we were under orders not to break radio silence until we were officially detected. And back in the Stone Age, that meant that you were visually sighted by the enemy. And that happened the day before the capture. A couple of their fishing vessels happened to find us. And they spent the whole day out there. They would take pictures of us. pull off for a while and then come back and take more pictures and pull off for a while. They spent most of the day out there with us and then went back to port in the evening.

Bob Chicca
24:59 – 25:50
So officially we had been detected. So we broke radio silence trying to establish communications with our home base in Kamaseya, Japan. However, the atmospheric conditions in that part of the Sea of Japan were terrible. And it took us, I don’t know, most of the day and part of the next day just to get in good solid communications with our home base. And then on the 23rd, mid-morning or so, the first North Korean warships came out. Eventually they had six ships and two MiGs out there. They all came out at full general quarters, everyone manning all the weapons and all the weapons aimed at us.

Bob Chicca
25:51 – 26:37
So as they’re coming out, we double and triple checked our position to make sure we were in international waters. And we were. We were about 16 miles from the nearest piece of Korean land, which was a small island off of Wonsan. And Then they, we were anchored at the time, the oceanographers were doing their work, and eventually the Koreans were all out there, you know, just cruising around the ship and hoisted signal flags for us to halt or they’d open fire. And it was silly because we were anchored, but they’re kind of building their version of the story that they would pass on.

Bob Chicca
26:41 – 27:33
That kind of ration went on for an hour or two, and on board the ship we were kind of in a modified general quarters, weren’t doing anything specific, just continuing our work. The oceanographers were bringing their equipment back on board, and once the Koreans opened fire on us, the situation became different and we went to general quarters and it was time to try to destroy the stuff that we had on board. Now, even back in the olden days here, when we were put together, the military had the equipment that could destroy everything we had on board and all the documents we had on board.

Bob Chicca
27:33 – 28:19
However, the powers that be wouldn’t let us have that equipment on the ship. They felt either that they didn’t have the money to put it on or that it was a safety hazard for the crew. In retrospect, it was kind of silly. We should have had the equipment. But to destroy all this stuff, all we had were some fire axes and sledgehammers and trash cans and matches. So many things here. The Assad hut that we worked in, the working area was maybe three feet wide, had banks of equipment on both sides, and maybe 20 feet long.

Bob Chicca
28:21 – 28:58
And then behind the equipment, there was space where you could get back and work on the equipment if it needed working. And the ship was so rough out there when moving around, To do your work, you’d put your chair sideways in that little center section, put your feet up on one wall and push yourself back against the other wall so you’re kind of stationary and can do your work while the ship is tossing and turning around you. So when you’re in a situation like that, sometimes your grandest desire is to take a sledgehammer to the equipment and destroy it.

Bob Chicca
29:00 – 29:47
However, most military equipment like that is made so you can throw it off a building and still expect it to work. So, the other Marine, a wiry guy, Bob Hammond, grabbed a sledgehammer to go after the equipment he’d been working on, swings with all his might against the face of this equipment and it just bounced off the glass. So I figured at that point I wasn’t going to try slinging sledgehammers, that I’d work on burning documents. But to burn documents, you can’t just throw a book in a fire. All it does is singe the outside and everything that you wanted to get rid of is still good on the inside.

Bob Chicca
29:48 – 30:37
So I took some trash cans out in the hallway outside the sod hut. and with some matches started some fires in these trash camps. And you would tear pages out of a book, and you can’t just throw it in the fire. You have to sort of hold the pages in the fire until they catch on fire, and then you can let them go. And so that’s what we were doing, destroying stuff as much as we can. So at the time, we had these raging fires going in the hallway, burning the paint off the walls. And it didn’t occur to us at the moment, but we were burning up the oxygen inside the ship.

Bob Chicca
30:38 – 31:10
So we started passing out in the hallway there. So eventually we moved the fires to the fantail of the ship, which in civilian parlance would be the back porch. and it was an open area, and the hatch leading out there opened out toward the Koreans, so we could move the fires out there and stay inside and be somewhat protected from the North Korean fire, which they were shooting at us all the time during this.

Kim Monson
31:11 – 31:40
Oh my goodness, okay. Bob, we’re going to continue this discussion. This is absolutely fascinating. I’m talking with Bob Chicka. He was a crew member on the USS Pueblo that was taken captive in 1968. Absolutely fascinating. Our show comes to you because of our sponsors. One of those sponsors is Hooters Restaurants. They have five locations, Loveland, Aurora, Lone Tree, Westminster, and Colorado Springs. Great place to get together for lunch specials, Monday through Friday, and also happy hour specials. So be sure and check that out.

Speaker 1
31:42 – 32:26
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32:28 – 33:08
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Kim Monson
33:22 – 33:59
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is americasveteranstories.com. And I wanted to mention the USMC Memorial Foundation. They are raising the money for the remodel of the Marine Memorial right here in Golden, Colorado. and doing great work. Paula Sarles is the president of the USMC Memorial Foundation. She’s a Gold Star wife, as well as a Marine veteran. And Bob Chica is on the line. And Bob Chica, you are going to be coming out to Colorado again in May for the Memorial Day event that will be out at the Marine Memorial.

Kim Monson
33:59 – 34:00
That’s going to be very cool.

Bob Chicca
34:02 – 34:11
OK. Yeah, I know I’m coming. We’ll see how it goes. Looking forward to it.

Kim Monson
34:11 – 34:28
Well, looking forward to that as well. And that website is USMCMemorialFoundation.org. So, Bob Chicca, you guys are frantically burning, trying to get rid of evidence. You’re being shot at. What happens next regarding this interaction with the North Koreans?

Bob Chicca
34:29 – 35:14
Well, like I mentioned, we were burning everything and using up all the oxygen, so we started passing out in the hallway and decided we had to move everything. And so we moved the fires outside the fantail of the ship down the hall where we had some protection from the North Korean fires. And, you know, you do all these silly things at the time. Had all these burning trash cans out there, so I would grab one and move it. And I burned off all the tips of my fingers. I had let my hair grow since we were out on a little ship like this, so I burned off most of my hair and most of my beard.

Bob Chicca
35:15 – 36:03
But anyway, we got the trash cans and fires outside and would continue with the work out there. We slowly, the oxygen level came back up and we were able to continue with what we were doing. And the, we needed help. So, the engine man down there sent up two of his men, Dwayne Hodges and Steve Wolk, to come up and give us a hand with the burning. And these, you know, kids had no idea what they were doing. They were just up there to help us burn stuff. Later, Steve would joke about, you know, they’ve got all this material in their hands with top secret stamps all over it.

Bob Chicca
36:03 – 36:50
And I said, gee, do I look at this? Do I close my eyes? How do I handle this stuff? But so he, Steve Wolk and Dwayne Hodges were there helping us. I had just finished burning what I had in my hand and was turning around to pick up some more stuff off the floor behind us when the North Koreans started shooting bigger stuff at us. And the big shells just came through the side of the ship and blew up. Both Dwayne, Steve, me, and Crandall got hit by the same shell in there. Dwayne ended up dying before we hit shore.

Bob Chicca
36:52 – 37:40
Steve and I were the most serious wounded after that, and things kind of stopped. Everyone wonders what happens when you get shot. But it happened so fast. It happened so fast. We were right on top of the exploding shells, and I The only thing I felt at the time was burning, because the powder and everything in the shot was still burning. And I already got shot in the leg. So I wanted more steel between me and more shots from the North Koreans, so I moved down the hall and eventually into the chow hall in the center of the ship.

Bob Chicca
37:41 – 38:21
And people were coming out to see what happened and what they could do to help. And eventually, I dove over someone and rolled out on the floor in the chow hall. And someone asked, are you OK? And of course, I say yes. And as I’m saying it, I think in my head, who are you kidding? You know something’s wrong. And then, you know, I reach down to my leg and come back with a handful of blood. And it’s just like in the movies, they tear your clothes and bandage you up. And so I was kind of out of the fight at that point.

Bob Chicca
38:22 – 39:24
And treatment of the wounded is something else. They wouldn’t let our own corpsman work with us at all. There wasn’t anything they could really do with Dwayne. He was too badly injured to survive, actually. And eventually the Koreans came on board the ship and blindfolded and tied us all up, either down inside the ship or up on the deck. And we were in the middle of winter and off in North Korea, it was really cold. And we destroyed, the last stuff we destroyed was the communications with our home base in Japan. And the last communication was that help was on the way.

Bob Chicca
39:25 – 40:10
The only problem was it wasn’t on the way and that no one was coming to give us a hand. It probably took a good six months for me to get through my thick skull that no help was coming. I thought that for sure they would come and give us a hand here. And the incident would never have proved as embarrassing as it has and still is. The oldest ship in the United States has a constitution back there in Baltimore. It’s hard to believe, but the second oldest ship in the United States is the Pueblo. And it’s the only American ship being held captive by a hostile nation.

Bob Chicca
40:10 – 40:53
It’s still there in North Korea. So anyway, just when they started firing, we started to leave the area. But at 6 and 12 and a half knots, you don’t get very far very fast. They’re slow as vessels could do about twice our top speed. So they just kind of cruised around us and kept firing at us. Eventually they had wounded about 11 men. pretty well shot up the ship. And like I said, once they came on board, they kind of turned us around and started heading us back toward Wonsan, the harbor in North Korea there.

Bob Chicca
40:53 – 41:42
And we got there, you know, maybe 7, 7.30 that night. And they started to take us off the ship. I was one of the first off the ship. I only know that because they didn’t have a plank down for us to walk off yet, and they’d bring me blindfolded and tied up to the edge of the ship, and someone says, jump. Blindfolded and tied up, I jump, and I go down between the pier and the side of the ship, and they had hold of the ropes, so they dragged me back out and walked us down the gauntlet of pretty angry North Koreans that were not being very friendly.

Bob Chicca
41:44 – 42:26
One of the guards actually kicked me in my wound. At the time I was just worrying about survival. It bothers me now more because where I was shot it just missed the artery down there and it hit the artery and I probably died because they weren’t going to give me any medical treatment. For the first month or so, I don’t think they knew whether they were going to keep us alive or what they were going to do. I think they were surprised by the lack of a reaction as we were. And they put us in a room, we just call it a beating room, because they just kind of worked us over for a while.

Bob Chicca
42:27 – 42:50
But what they were actually doing is waiting for a bus, Eventually a bus came. They piled us all on the bus and then took us to a train for an all-night journey to Pyongyang, which is the capital of North Korea. And then it was there in Pyongyang in two different detention camps that we spent almost a year as their prisoners. It was not a good time.

Kim Monson
42:51 – 42:56
No. So when you jumped, did you end up in the water?

Bob Chicca
42:58 – 43:04
I didn’t hit the water. I was up short rope.

Kim Monson
43:05 – 43:18
Wow. Okay. Well, so what happened then next, Bob Chicca? And as you said, it took a while to realize that the Calvary wasn’t coming, was it?

Bob Chicca
43:19 – 44:01
Yep, yep. Like I said, it probably took me six months. I was incurably optimistic. I had absolutely no thought that this would occur without some retaliation. And I was sitting there on the deck, tied up and blindfolded. The guy next to me was also wounded and we’re thinking, we’re watching the guards under our blindfolds and trying to figure what we were going to do as soon as the help got there. that we knew was coming. And, you know, which guard are you going to jump? What are we going to do? And, but then nothing happened and we end up in North Korean, in Pyongyang.

Bob Chicca
44:02 – 44:48
The first place they took us, we nicknamed the barn. It does discredit to an American barn, but it was just a terrible place. It was really falling apart. The floors were just pine boards loosely kind of laying on the floor, warped, bent. Everything, nothing worked. Concrete walls, single light bulb hanging from a socket in the ceiling. And then one man sells a good eight, or four men, And so there wasn’t any room or anything like that. There were four beds in there which took up the four corners with a table in the center and then four chairs around the table.

Bob Chicca
44:49 – 45:30
And this was going to be our home for a while. They put the three wounded in the cell and had one healthy guy in there to give us a hand. Eventually, they gave us real heavy padded clothing to wear, almost like a quilt, pants, jacket, things like that. It was really cold.

Kim Monson
45:31 – 45:40
Wow. And it’s remarkable that with your wounds not being treated, that you didn’t die from infection.

Bob Chicca
45:41 – 46:11
Yeah. That’s what we figured too. Actually, it was so cold, we would probably die from the colds first. And eventually they searched around the cells and found some with a, um, radiator that somewhat worked and moved us into that so we would have a little warmth. But all that did really was kind of cause us to rot.

Kim Monson
46:12 – 46:37
Oh my gosh, Bob Chicca. Boy, as I think about those like you that have been captured because you were serving America, serving us, I’m just, this is a riveting story. So we’ll finish this up in the next segment. We’re talking with Bob Chicca. I have so many questions and I’m sure that all you listeners do as well. So we will be right back.

Speaker 5
46:39 – 47:02
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Speaker 6
47:08 – 47:24
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Announcer
47:26 – 47:31
From the mountains to the prairies ♪

Kim Monson
47:33 – 48:13
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website, that is americasveteranstories.com. We are talking with Bob Chicca. He is a Marine veteran and he was a crew member on the USS Pueblo, which was taken captive by the North Koreans during the Vietnam War. We’re talking about his experiences. And during the break, we realized there is so much more to talk about. So this now will be part one of an interview with Bob, and we will then be recording another interview with him very, very soon. So Bob Chicca, six months, you were optimistic that you were going to be rescued.

Kim Monson
48:14 – 48:28
Was there any communication with anybody? Did they know you were there? What was going on regarding the U.S. military and you guys? Did you have any communication?

Bob Chicca
48:30 – 49:19
No, we had no communication whatsoever. They really had us pretty well shut off from everything. And the only thing that we found was whatever they might want us to know about. 1968 was a bad year all around. Martin Luther King was assassinated, Robert Kennedy, the different riots in L.A. and things like that. They would tell us anything bad that went on, but as far as any kind of real information about what was going on in the world, we were completely left out of it. They real quickly moved from trying to get military intelligence to the use of us for propaganda purposes.

Bob Chicca
49:21 – 50:06
And I think, like I mentioned, for the first 40 days or so, I’m not sure they were even sure they were going to keep us alive or what they were going to do. It was a pretty bad time. They had been accused of piracy off the high seas. And so they really wanted to get out the idea that they didn’t pirate us, that we were an intelligence collection ship violating their territorial waters. It was just not true. But it was a particular point of view that they were sending out to prove as best they could anyway.

Bob Chicca
50:09 – 51:00
Again, back in the olden days here, in order to find your position, you had to emanate some form of a signal, and there was no GPS. The Loran system was just in its infantry and being tested. And we did have a Loran system on board the ship, which was similar to an early GPS. It was just with land-based stations. And so there, to find your position, you’d use three, four, or five different methods and plot them on a map. In theory, all those dots would be pretty close to the same spot, and that’s where you were, unless you fired off the radar to get a specific position.

Bob Chicca
51:01 – 51:41
And the Loran fixes, since it was experimental, or in its infantry anyway, some of the Loran fixes did put us in their territorial waters. So that’s what they used to try to prove that we did intrude. But like I mentioned before, if you’re going to intrude, you don’t intrude with a ship like the Pueblo. And to get to where the Lorraine had us, to get from one position to another, the speed of the ship had to approach over 100 knots for a couple of the locations. So it was just a fabricated thing that they had put together.

Bob Chicca
51:42 – 52:39
And they were after propaganda and eventually they did give us some treatment of the wounded. Usually it would consist of changing the bandages every three or four days or something like that. I had this big hole in my leg but it didn’t occur to me that there was still something in there. So eventually they brought in their doctors with their pliers and tweezers and probing everything, trying to find what’s in there and pull it out. But that didn’t work. So eventually they hoisted a antique Russian x-ray machine up to where we were in the barn, laid us out on the floor and x-rayed us to pick the, find where the shrapnel was.

Bob Chicca
52:41 – 53:28
And then one night they pulled several tables out of the different cells, had me bring the sheets off my bed, and with six guys holding my legs, they decided to operate and get the shrapnel out. I can’t believe they did it, but I don’t know if you’ve seen any Ollie North did a movie or a program on the Pueblo, and when they operated on me, they did take moving pictures of the whole thing and then spliced in pictures of an immaculate operating room. But it wasn’t like that.

Kim Monson
53:29 – 53:30
No.

Bob Chicca
53:30 – 54:14
And I’m thinking to myself, this can’t be happening. but I didn’t know when my legs were okay because all these guys were holding me down but I didn’t know what to do with my hands and in one of the pictures is guards showing me to grab onto my pillow and so that’s what I did and I got this thing out and then and sewed me up with two stitches. They used like a rope, like you wrap around a rump roast before you cook it. And gave me my bloody sheets and sent me back to my cell.

Kim Monson
54:15 – 54:18
Did you ever get your sheets washed? Was that ever anything that happened?

Bob Chicca
54:21 – 54:29
Eventually. Goodness. We were not in real good shape after the first 40 days.

Speaker 1
54:30 – 54:30
There was

Bob Chicca
54:30 – 54:40
no chance to wash or anything like that. Of course, in the same clothes. We really stunk. Oh my gosh. We

Kim Monson
54:41 – 54:41
didn’t

Bob Chicca
54:41 – 55:01
want to come in the cell where we were. There was a bathroom down the hall that we could go to. There might be urinals on the walls, but there were no pipes. It would just kind of go down the floor and into the floor drain.

Kim Monson
55:04 – 55:42
Goodness. Well, Bob Chick, we have just really about a minute and a half left. This is a riveting story. I know that you shared it down at the Center for American Values, and people can find that at that website, AmericanValuesCenter.org. And then you will be out in May for the Memorial Day event at the USMC Memorial Foundation, so look forward to getting to hopefully see you and meet you in person there. But I so appreciate you sharing the story with us, Bob, and we will get that part two scheduled here so that we can broadcast that as well.

Kim Monson
55:42 – 55:53
But thank you, thank you, thank you for all of this. I really, really do appreciate it, Bob Chicca. And just your final thought you’d like to leave with our listeners on this show, about 30 seconds.

Bob Chicca
55:55 – 56:09
About 30 seconds. Appreciate America. Many Americans think the rest of the world is just like us. All the signs are in a different language. But it ain’t that way. We’ve got something special here. So be patriotic.

Kim Monson
56:09 – 56:24
Oh, I love that, Bob Chicka. Thank you so much. And again, this is part one. We will be recording part two here very soon. My friends, it is a parent that we stand on the shoulders of giants. So my friends, God bless you and God bless America.

Announcer
56:26 – 56:36
Thank you for listening to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure to tune in again next Sunday, 3 to 4 p.m. here on KLZ 560 and KLZ 100.7.

Speaker 10
56:45 – 56:59
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ Management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.