Via Fox News:
Some of the surviving crewmembers of an American spy ship captured by North Korean forces 50 years ago have a message for President Trump: bring our warship home.
“The crew of the USS Pueblo would like to get our ship returned,” Ron Berens, the lead helmsman onboard and at the wheel on January 23, 1968 when North Korean MiG fighter jets and patrol boats opened fire on the American spy ship, leading to the first capture of a U.S. Navy ship since the War of 1812.
“We would like them to deliver it to Lake Pueblo,” said Bob Hill, a 19-year-old deck seaman at the time and one of the youngest on board.
One crewmember was killed, 82 others taken captive and held for 11 months in North Korean prisons enduring hours of torture roughly 10 days after departing from Japan on espionage missions against the Soviet Union and North Korea.
“There’s nothing in the current history books about the Pueblo,” Berens said in an interview with Fox News during a gathering of roughly 40 surviving Pueblo crewmembers on the 50th anniversary of their capture this week in Pueblo, Colo., the ship’s namesake.
Today, the Pueblo remains a commissioned U.S. Navy ship on display in the Potong River inside North Korea’s capital Pyongyang, where the refurbished American spy ship hosts thousands of visitors a year.[…]
Shortly after arriving in North Korea, Hill said the American crew was met with shouts from a mob that had gathered.
“Kill Yankee!” they yelled in English, Hill recalled.
The American crew spent their first six weeks in North Korea in Pyongyang before being moved out to the countryside less than an hour from the capital city.
Over the next 11 months the crew was subjected to torture routinely.
“A typical day was met with intermittent terror. If you happened to be caught sleeping you were in a world of pain,” Hill said.
The crew learned to rely on God as well as one another.
“Your roommates were your biggest help,” said Berens.
The surviving crewmembers are split about bringing the ship back saying President Trump has more important issues to worry about such as getting North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons program.
“It’s still a slap in the face to us every day that it’s still commissioned,” Hill said. “That bothers me a great deal.”
When North Korea turned Pueblo into a museum and communist propaganda piece, “I prayed when they opened that thing with all their military officers on board we could drop a MOAB [Mother of all Bombs] or something on them and blow the whole damn thing up.”
He added: “Decommission that damn thing.”
Ron Berens disagrees.
“If they decommission the ship Americans would lose face,” Berens said. “That’s total surrender.”
“That is a hunk of metal. The crew is right here,” Hill said about the survivors that have gathered this week in Pueblo, Colo.
“The spirit of that ship is right here today at the reunion,” agreed Harris.
Cmdr. Josh Hill, a 2001 U.S. Naval Academy graduate currently assigned to the Pentagon, echoed his father’s sentiment.
“Nothing would mean more to the crew than having Pueblo returned to the U.S. for a proper decommissioning ceremony,” he said.