Korean War memorial in Traverse City 49684

This monument was erected on June 25, fifty years after the outbreak of hostilities on the Korean peninsula in 1950. On each flank are dozens of local recruits from the county who were killed in action. According to the text more than 33,000 US citizens in uniform were killed and more than were 100,000 injured bodily; probably many, many more were harmed in what finally was given a DSM IV medical name, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. As well, the marker says more than 8,000 have no known remains or status. Relatively speaking, the lives destroyed are a very small fraction of the Korean-on-Korean killing of civilians and combatants, not to mention the murders from People's Republic of China troops and the pilots and technicians sent by Joseph Stalin to support the air conflict. Then there are the many nations, large and small that sent United Nations troops to fight and die on the peninsula. The recent book by Charles J. Hanley, Ghost Flames, brings to publication many of the previously hidden reports of atrocities on all sides that reverberate from one generation to the next on all sides, but especially on the landscape so abused from 1950 to 1953.

See the composite picture's source photos at https://www.flickr.com/photos/anthroview/50853010473/ and https://www.flickr.com/photos/anthroview/50853824267/