Korean War Children's Memorial Founded 2003

Help from Home

When the American servicemen and women saw the condition of the children that were victimized by the Korean War and sought to address those needs they wrote home calling for help. They asked for clothes, food, toys, medicines and whatever other help they could get, including money. They wrote to parents, relatives, neighbors, home town newspapers, schools they recently graduated from, former employers and whoever else they could think of.

And the American public responded in force. Thousands of tons of aid for the children and their caregivers began arriving in small packages addressed to servicemen in Korea. Help came in boxes, then crates and then by the boatload.

Often this call for aid was in a letter a GI wrote to his mother who, on receipt of the letter, made a crusade of it, organizing neighbors, friends, church groups and, with the help of local newspapers, the entire commuinity. Later, many units organized this call for help by distributing to all members of that unit printed letters that the GIs merely enclosed with letters sent home.

I have read a lot of material on the Korean War and the role of the American Servicemen and women as they related to the war child of Korea but have yet to find any writer pick up on this phenomenon, the massive aid that folks back in the 'states sent to their servicemen and women serving in Korea to aid the children. This support from home reinforced the values being expressed by their sons and daughters who, while in combat or on a war footing, still sought to render aid to the homeless and helpless children. GIs had to be taught to aim a gun at another human being and shoot to kill. They did not have to be taught to pick up a crying child, feed a hungry child, rended aid to an injured or ill child or find shelter for the homeless child. That came with being American. And ma, pa, family, friends, neighbors and the entire community back home supported them in their desire to help the children.

This aid is truly an expression of American values at their finest. The scale of this aid and the scope of it has never before been presented as we present it here. Read these stories and be proud to be an American.

More material on "Help from Home" can be found in sections of this web site dealing with the Kiddy Car Airlift, Manassas Manor Orphanage and other topics. On occassions "home" in this context referres to US troops and dependents stationed in Japan, Guam or other military bases including military bases in the United States.

It is difficult to estimate the amount of aid sent from the 'States to the GIs in Korea for the children as no accurate records were kept but I am sure the total amounted to many thousands of tons of packages, parcels, crates and even shiploads of donated goods. This is in addition to the shiploads of goods sent by the US organizations such as the Red Cross, CARE, Korea Foundation, etc.