A Christmas Story

Airman, Dec, 2000 by Elaine Tarello

"He didn't say a word. He just pulled out an operations book, saying he had a wing of C-54s that needed a mission. Then he asked me when I could have the kids at Kimpo [Airport]. I told him right away." But Kimpo was 20 miles from Inchon, and his only truck was gone.

"I wasn't about to give up," he said. "The children were starving, cold and sick. I had to do something. It wasn't courage. I felt a responsibility." He sped back to Inchon and told his sergeant "we're saved." Still, he had one very significant dilemma -- no transportation.

"But then I spotted some Marines unloading a truck onto the old scow at the docks," he said. "I told the driver that he was to report to Sergeant Strang for duty. He refused. So I just whipped out my lieutenant colonel insignia and told him it was an order."

The Marine obeyed, and the chaplain and his volunteers were back in business. Each time a truck arrived at the docks, the chaplain pulled rank to acquire it. He soon had four, and the convoy was on its way to Kimpo. When it arrived, the promised planes were waiting.

A Dec. 21, 1950, New York Times article described the scene.

"Scores of small pilgrims in distress were covered with sores, and their bodies were shrunken from starvation. Some gestured at their mouths to show their hunger and mumbled, 'chop, chop."'

The planes took the children to Cheju-do, a large island off South Korea's southern coast. There, Maj. Dean Hess ran a P-51 Mustang fighter training school.

"That was the first time I breathed a sigh of relief," the chaplain said. Then he met with the mayor of Cheju-do, who donated an old agricultural building for the children.

Just in time for Christmas.

And it was the beginning of a new life for the children, like Choi Chu-ja, who was on a plane that day.

"The only memory I have of that plane ride is sitting with the other children on the floor," she said. Now named Susie Allen and the mother of four living in Chico, Calif., she owes her life to Chaplain Blaisdell and volunteers.

"I don't know how to describe the feelings in my heart. They have just always been a part of me," she said. "They were my heroes."

But Chaplain Blaisdell, who retired from the Air Force in 1964, said he's no hero.

"I did what I had to do," he said. "What any good person would have done."

One year after the rescue -- dubbed Operation Kiddy Car -- Chaplain Blaisdell returned to Cheju-do. The head of the orphanage, On Soonwhang, and the children held a parade in his honor.

The children were happy and healthy, he recalls.

"It was like night and day," he said. "Just seeing them was all the thanks I needed. And I would do it all over again in a minute."

The orphanage moved back to Seoul soon after the invasion and still operates today.