10/13 Pago Pago, American Samoa (7)

>> Hi, I’m David Herdrich. I’m the historic preservation officer for the American-Samoa Historic Preservation office, and I was asked to do some research on Korean veterans from the Korean War, of Samoans who served in the Korean War, and one of the first things I found is that there’s very little information on the Internet or even the Department of Defense or with the National Archives. So when I searched the National Archives’ records, there was only one record of a Samoan who fought and died in the Korean War. I continued my search, and I did find a private Korean War remembrance website, and they listed three other Samoans who had died in the Korean War, and then I started doing research at our local archives, and the result of that research, I found close to 100 Samoans who were enlisted at the time of the Korean War. So there’s a large number of Samoans who served during the Korean War era, and then I also went to a private newspaper website, and I did searches on that website, and I found a number of newspaper articles about Samoans who served in the Korean War. Some of the newspaper articles include pictures of the Samoans, and so what we hope to do is contact the Department of Defense and the National Archives and see if they can update their records so there’s a record of the Samoans who served in the Korean War.

>> Wow. Anything specific, particular that you may have noticed in your research?

>> The one thing I’ve noticed is that some of the records that we do have are a little bit inaccurate. So even on the Korean, the private Korean website, they don’t have some of the burial locations down correctly. So we’re hoping with this research that we can update their records as well, and have an accurate picture of the service that Samoans provided in the Korean War.

>> Mm. Okay.