Retrieving Bones: Stories and Poems of the Korean War
The Korean War was a major event in American history. It marked an abrupt end to the euphoria Americans felt in the wake of victory in World War II, and turned out to be the harbinger of disaster in Vietnam a decade later. \ Though three years of brutal fighting resulted in millions of casualties, the final truce line of 1953 corresponded almost exactly to the positions the opponents held when the fighting began. Back home, the returning veterans met with little interest in or appreciation of...
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The Korean War was a major event in American history. It marked an abrupt end to the euphoria Americans felt in the wake of victory in World War II, and turned out to be the harbinger of disaster in Vietnam a decade later. Though three years of brutal fighting resulted in millions of casualties, the final truce line of 1953 corresponded almost exactly to the positions the opponents held when the fighting began. Back home, the returning veterans met with little interest in or appreciation of what they had endured. Consequently, literary responses to the Korean War did not find an eager readership. Few people, it seemed, wanted to read about what they perceived as a backwater war that possessed neither grand scale nor apparent nobility, a war that ended not with a bang, but a whimper. Yet an important literature has come out of the Korean War. As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of the war, these writings are well worth our attention. Many of the twelve stories and fifty poems assembled in Retrieving Bones have long been out of print and are almost impossible to find in any other source. The editors have enhanced this collection by providing maps, a chronology of the Korean War, and annotated lists of novels, works of nonfiction, and films. In a detailed introduction, Ehrhart and Jason discuss the milestones of the Korean War and place each fiction writer and poet represented into historical and literary contexts.Times LiteraryThe Korean War is also absent from literary history. . . . This is a situation that Retrieving Bones sets out to redress, and it does so successfully. There are some wonderful stories here-about contact across cultural barriers and the anguish suffered by men fighting for pointless possession of a single hill. The poems are the real revelation, though.
Ode for the American Dead in AsiaMap: East AsiaMap: Korea - July 27, 1953Introduction: Historical and Literary ContextsIntroduction: The Writers and Their WorksRice3A Long Way from Home14We Build Churches, Inc43Cold Day, Cold Fear53The Trapped Battalion63Hoengsong (from The Useless Servants)90Lost Soldier96Sailors at Their Mourning: A Memory102Graves115Indigenous Girls127A Matter of Price134From The Secret146Soldier's Leave161Korea Bound, 1952161Letter Home162The Soldiers163Shellshock164Combat Iambic164Trying to Remember People I Never Really Knew165Burning the Years166The Long March167The Eighth Army at Chongchon168The January-May 1951 Slaughter169Night Burial Details171Jacob Mosqueda Wrestles with the Angels174A Matter of Supplies176Native Son Home from Asia177The Man Without a Face178Zero Minus One Minute179Repository180Re-Runs182They Said182Flag Memoir183Korea 1953186The Korean187Without Laying Claim187I Remember188Pusan Liberty189Sure190The Day the Dam Burst191The Awakening191The Captain192... ganz in Waffen193Guerilla Camp195The Circle197The Girl198Waterfront Bars199December, 1952200Commentary202The Ex-Officer, Navy203Memory of a Victory204Works for Further Study205Chronology215Copyrights and Permissions223
\ Chicago TribuneRetrieving Bones performs a great service in linking the Korean War to World War II and Vietnam, helping Americans see themselves more clearly as consequential actors in one of the most ambiguous, and, if ever let fully out in the open, one of the grandest and most complex dramas of our century.\ \ \ \ \ Korean Literature TodayIn spite of a sizeable number of novels, short stories and poems, the literature of the Korean War has for the most part gone neglected in the U.S. Retrieving Bones, a collection of stories and poems of the Korean War . . . is a . . . timely effort to rectify the undeserved neglect. . . . The stories and poems in this collection cover a wide range of attitudes and sentiments towards Koreans and the Korean War. Therefore, the volume will stand as a truly representative anthology of literature on the Korean War. The book also has an excellent introduction to the historical background of the Korean War, as well as detailed biographical notes on the authors and annotated lists of works for further study.\ \ \ Marine Corps GazetteKorea remains our 'forgotten war' in literature no less than in life. . . . Ehrhart and Jason have gone back over that dark and bloody ground, retrieving a remarkable number of literary 'bones," many of which foreshadow the shape of things to come and most of which speak to the essential continuity of the foot soldier's experience regardless of the war. . . . Kudos to [the editors], here on the eve of the 50th anniversary, for getting to the bottom of our Korean War amnesia and for recovering some important literary memories of that otherwise forgotten war.\ \ \ \ \ San Francisco Examiner and ChronicleA book long overdue. . . . These stories are replete with napalm strikes and medevacs which many people mistake as distinctive features of Vietnam. But while most of the stories grope tentatively toward the nihilism of Vietnam, the poems in this collection come at us like lava.\ \ \ \ \ Times LiteraryThe Korean War is also absent from literary history. . . . This is a situation that Retrieving Bones sets out to redress, and it does so successfully. There are some wonderful stories here-about contact across cultural barriers and the anguish suffered by men fighting for pointless possession of a single hill. The poems are the real revelation, though.\ \
