![]() “The Korean War’s kind of lost in the background there,” Wiseman said. ![]() Donald Wiseman points to himself in a picture of U.S. Since the war was fought in the early 1950s, many of its veterans are in their late 80s or 90s, so Wiseman acted quickly to use his voice to speak for others. In between World War II and the Vietnam War, the Korean War-which, like Vietnam, was an undeclared war described as a “police action”- is often overlooked and called “the Forgotten War,” yet around 5.7 million American service members were in the Korean War, according to the U.S Department of Veterans Affairs. “I see them at the store, ones when they look like they’ve lost their last friend-they just looked like they don’t have anything to live for,” Wiseman said, “and I thought, ‘I gotta do something to show them that they’re still remembered, that they did something for this country.'” Wiseman still remembers his fellow veterans and thinks about them every day. He made scrapbooks full of pictures from his time in the service and of the family he started when he came back from the war. He was a Morse code operator before, during and after the Korean War. Wiseman joined the Navy when he was just 18 years old. “I think more about the people that actually was over there getting shot at while I’m sitting there in a nice clean radio room sending messages, and they’re over there crawling around in the mud,” Wiseman said. WINK News spoke to 93-year-old Donald Wiseman, whose walls are lined with memories from a lifetime of serving his country and community.īut Wiseman said he isn’t thinking about himself when he says Korean War veterans deserve more recognition. Seventy-three years after the start of the Korean War, on June 25, 1950, a North Fort Myers veteran was eager to share his story about a conflict he feels doesn’t get much recognition.
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