koreanwarvetama [they/them]

That’s what I figure. It is unfortunately very real :(. I’d like to provide more proof but that’s not in my ability right now (from promising him and also because I’m not in a good spot in case there is backlash). Might be a big headline on some socialist papers within the next decade though, so keep an eye out assuming we all live till then…

I like to assume I’ve done pretty well. Though I definitely have a lot of problems from my upbringing.

I feel extremely conflicted emotions about him myself. The guy was genuinely helpful to me as a kid. When I told him he was a racist piece of shit, he listened and changed his words, like he genuinely cared what I said. He said some homophobic shit during one of our talks, I told him to stop, and he stopped. No questions asked, never did it again. I do genuinely feel that if he wasn’t propagandized, felt like his country was ‘right’ and ‘correct’ after WW2 and its propaganda, if there was less systemic racism, he would have been a genuinely good guy.

But he wasn’t, and turned out to be a monster. Its very disconcerting and horrifying to know this is how the world can work, especially learning that as a kid. But the only way to respond to this sort of thing is to side with the victims, of which he has many.

Yeah that tidbit was pretty wild. He said he remembered being one of the last people out through a ladder/seal despite knowing there were numerous people following him up. Said he woke up and realized what was happening after the explosion with his nose and mouth just barely out of the water. Has hearing issues to this day because of how the explosion reverberated. Didn’t stop him from piloting.

Oh and fun fact, he didn’t realize he qualified for special healthcare for combat injuries until like, two years ago because Veteran Affairs lied to him for decades. So he has been suffering a lot from that.

Agreed. He isn’t leaving behind anyone vulnerable at this point, to say the least. Personally, I think he could have been a great person if he avoided the war. Could. That’s part of what is so frustrating about him to me.

I’ve pretty much alluded to as much in the past as a kid. He still feels like he has a duty to family. I know that is hypocritical of him cause he killed a fuckton of people who won’t be able to fulfill their duty to their families, but that is how it is. Also, he is hardly put together at this point, so American media would just spin it as him going insane and the DPRK using it as an opportunity to torture a dying man.

Are you a Korean communist? If so, based.

Doubt he’d do that though.

Don’t worry :)

Also I have said this stuff before on bigger places than this with no issue for 10ish years

Yeah I have it on a lot of drives, encrypted on cloud storage, and so on. Also gave some drives to some friends with a big ‘DO NOT ERASE: VERY IMPORTANT FILES BELONGING TO X’ written on the drive lol.

Yes, though he is becoming increasingly incoherent but has random bouts of having absolutely zero filter which is a bit useful for clarifying previous questions. He even provided me with some film he took at one point in the cockpit, which afaik is very rare and has only been seen by family. I had it digitized and plan to release it when he dies. It depicts some bombing runs and carrier operations. I also have video of his stories which I told him was to help him with his notes. I’ll probably scrub identifying information out of it as a precaution at some point and attempt to give it to some socialist news sources. If it won’t fuck my life over (re: living in not America) I’d just say who I am and who he is.

He spent a lot of time with me alone is the main thing I think. It was a pretty long drive to get to school and I figure his mind wandered a lot during it and he was the only person able to take me to it for like 7 years. I was also a very curious and critical kid and I think he liked that and enjoyed encouraging it. In a fucked up way, I do think he had a good interest in mind by telling me about this at a formative age. It certainly made me very discerning about what was in my history books in school. But it was probably way too early to tell me. Maybe when I was a teen. But I also get a hint that he wanted to discourage me from joining the military, and my parents would goad me with the idea a lot citing him as a good example. So maybe it was his nuclear solution, and despite being an incredibly shitty person, he does feel regret about it or at least didn’t want me to be subjected to the PTSD he has. Which is something, I guess.

He’s written what is essentially a giant screed of notes on the war of what he did and I read through them all. Not published or anything, but I have it all digitally transcribed after a lot of work. I haven’t told anyone except people online and people not connected to my family, because his condition for telling me more stuff is that I don’t tell the family. I think its more important to get all the details, personally. He said he gave some vague notions of bad stuff happening to his kids, but nothing in detail.

It was wild. A lot of people have always described me as ‘old beyond my age’. Wonder why. Definitely wasn’t because I legitimately believed my relative was a murderer and everyone worshipped him for it and told me to stop insulting him every moment I had.

He met with the Black Sheep Squadron, notably, and described them as even crazier and wild than him, including gloating about how many dead they wracked up.

But he mentioned only meeting them briefly on a mission and talked on a radio.

edit: Part of the gloating was the pilots doing extremely reckless things in order to kill more people and getting away with it. Sort of like frat bros trying to up each other, except with war crimes.