Interview with Leonard Pelletier

My name is Leonard Pelletier. I'm a former US Marine. I was in Boston, living with my brother and I was going to college and I passed by one day, recruitment. And, as you know, in the US you could be drafted and I did not want to be drafted, so I enlisted in the Marines thinking it was the thing to do 'cause my brother had served in the US Navy during the Second World War. And he said, "Don't join the Navy because", he says, "you'll be at sea all the time." So I joined the Marines, which was a part of the Navy and that main reason for my enlistment. I left for Korea at the age of 18 from San Diego, California to Sasebo, Japan. From there we transferred to smaller ships. And at the time that I arrived in Korea, the Inchon landing was planned by headquarters and we landed at Inchon and we were supposed to have a lot of opposition, but it turned out opposition was very, very light. And so we landed and we cut the supply line from the North. The object of the landing was to cut the supply line from China to the North Korean Army, which was mainly Chinese. And my job was to look for the enemy and try to contain and break their supply line. I spent 13 months in Korea and then I returned to the USA. And nothing very eventful happened except the regular patrol duty and other duty we had to perform in the war zone. And that's about my story.