Racing Toward Recovery. Lew Freedman
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my second oldest brother, Ted, was in the army serving in Vietnam. I think the Williams family did its service to the US Army.
After I completed my basic training in California I had a couple of weeks off and I went to the Portland, Oregon, area for a visit. I had made friends with a bunch of guys from Native communities in that area and during the time I visited they had a bunch of basketball tournaments going on different reservations. I joined up with a team. I hooked up with a squad from Chemawa school and decided to play Indian ball for two weeks before resuming my army commitment. I was a five-foot-nine guard. That was how I spent my vacation from the army. Then I went back to California and it was somewhere between six and eight weeks later that I received orders that I was going to be deployed to South Korea. After I got the orders I got another two weeks off and went back to Portland to play some more basketball.
I was a private just starting out, but while I was at Fort Ord (which was closed in 1994) I was selected to be a platoon leader. That was a new form of leadership required and again part of my overall education. It was a very, very good experience. Between the leadership school and the army I was making a lot of friends from around the country. The interesting thing is that to go to South Korea I had to go back through Alaska. I flew from California to Seattle to Anchorage and then on to Seoul.
While we were fighting in Vietnam the army had a large presence in South Korea. And all of these years later there is still concern over the DMZ between South Korea and North Korea left over from the Korean War. That goes back to the time when I was born.
It was not a high alert operation at the time, though. It was peace time in Korea, though not in Vietnam. There was some tension at all times wondering about missiles being fired between the two Koreas. We were looking at the “Honest John” rocket missiles and we had ongoing training in case North Korea fired missiles. We were there for defensive purposes. There was always concern in the military about the whole peninsula area. At that time China loomed over things. There was always the feeling that China was North Korea’s ally and that if something happened China with its huge population would get involved. I don’t think that would occur today.
But really, nothing big happened like that while I was there. I was able to move around Korea quite easily. Actually, my appearance as an Alaska Native man was similar to the Koreans’ so they would talk to me. I looked like them and I blended in very well with the Korean population. The language was different, of course, and their ways were a little different. But I took up tae kwon do, the martial arts discipline. Six days a week I trained at night after a day of work, practicing my karate-like skills. Two hours at a time six days a week. That’s what I did with my evenings.
Taking up Asian martial arts was good for my body and my mind. It is not only a physical discipline. There is a mental toughness necessary. It did actually help me on the Iditarod Trail sometimes in terms of being able to withstand adversity. Sometimes during the Iditarod when things aren’t going well and you are very tired and extremely cold and the dogs are having problems and not eating and you get dehydrated and sleep-deprived you go, What the heck am I doing here? You start to wonder if you should quit the race and go home. But that martial arts training, training consistently and training hard, made me a stronger person. I was able to defend myself—not to have a skill to beat up others—and had discipline. So I didn’t quit.
I was in South Korea for six months. I also participated in traditional Korean festivities. I got interested in the culture, a new culture for me, and observed the special dates, the traditional dancing, and activities that Elders conducted. I liked the Korean language. It was different from what I had known, but I really enjoyed what they had to offer there.
In the army I got to know all kinds of people. Some were Native Americans, white guys, black guys. Some of them also took advantage of learning the Korean culture. But I also saw some things there that were negative that I had never seen before. There was some extreme segregation. There were bars specifically for black guys and specifically for white guys. There was also voluntary segregation in the army. If you went into the dining hall you would see white folks sitting over here and black folks sitting over there. They were just not mingling. It was strange to see that and it was the same way when soldiers went off the base, with white guys going here and black guys going there.
I was able to dance between the two races. I was able to be accepted by the white side and I was accepted on the dark side, the black side. I think about that time a lot. I also had a Polish friend and we talked about it a lot. I would say he was a real Polish guy and not a white guy. We would discuss this thing about whites and blacks not socializing. I said, “You’re a Pole, not a white guy, even though your skin is white. I am an Alaska Native. I’m not a white guy or a black guy. Let’s try something.”
Since I was accepted by the black guys we decided to go over to a group of black guys and see what happened if we tried to mix. I told my friend, “You’re a strong Polish person and let’s try to convince them that you’re not white, that you’re a Pole.” He agreed to see what would happen.
We walked into this black bar and we saw a table and took it. All of these black folks were looking at us and staring at my Polish friend. We just sat down and nobody said anything, but they were looking. After a little while I was served a beer, but they would not serve him. After another little while a couple of black guys came over and said, “Hey, what are you doing in our place? You don’t see any white guys here. This is a black establishment.”
At that point I said, “We talked about it before we came over here. This guy right here is not a white guy. He is a Pole and he doesn’t consider himself to be a white guy. He’s not a white guy. That’s why we came over here.” There were some back-and-forth exchanges and the black guys said, “Nah, you’re a white guy.” And my friend would say, “Nope, I’m a Pole. I’m not a white guy.” Finally, after all of those exchanges—and we kept sitting there—he got a beer. At that bar we made lasting friends and we respected each other after that. We could return to that bar any time.
It didn’t really surprise me that it worked out that way. I was not black. I was not white. I was accepted on both sides, so I could swing both ways. Why not him? It was pretty interesting. In the army was the first time I saw racial tension between guys who were supposed to be on the same side. They were on the same side, but segregated. I had followed the civil rights movement, but then here you had a guy, a good friend of mine, who was on the other side. His skin was white, and he didn’t want to be considered a white guy, but a Pole.
I did start drinking in the army. I drank in the bars in South Korea, but not very much. After I finished my martial arts workout each night I went to a bar and had a couple of beers. I did not abuse alcohol at that time.
Being in South Korea for six months was a good experience all-around, but it was cut short. I suffered a detached retina in my right eye. I didn’t know how it happened, whether it occurred during tae kwon do practice, or on the job with the military, but my eye was going blind. I couldn’t see as well as I should have. I was losing vision and told the authorities I could only see a portion out of that eye. Within a week of me reporting it, since I couldn’t really do anything for the army, I was medevaced from South Korea to San Francisco.
Then I was shipped to Fort Lewis in Tacoma, Washington. The plan was for me to have surgery in Seattle. Then they realized they didn’t have the specialist they needed there and sent me back to San Francisco. They scheduled the eye surgery at Letterman General Hospital at the Presidio. When my eye was examined they diagnosed it as a detached retina and said that I was 40 percent blind in that eye.
They kept me around there after the operation and when I started to heal I played intramural basketball on the base. I was short, and there were all of these six-foot-seven hotshots around. But I played with them. I could jump. I was fast and I was a good shot.
What I wasn’t doing much of was being a soldier while I was recovering. I really enjoyed my time in San Francisco. I wasn’t doing them any good and after some time they decided to grant me a disability discharge. It wasn’t as if my two years was nearly up as that they felt I could not perform at a top level. I received an honorable discharge with a disability.
That ended my army service. I