Betty Howatt will never forget the last time she spoke with her brother, Arthur King, before he went overseas to fight in the Korean War in 1951.
She was teaching in Charlottetown at the time.
“He was home, on leave from the army and he walked down to the old West Kent school with me the day that he left,” says the Tryon woman who operates Willowshade Farm with her husband and son.
King, who had just turned 18, quit school to enlist in the Canadian Armed Forces.
“I remember having a conversation with him at the time, because he had come to the realization that he needed more education. And he planned to get it when he returned home after the war.
“But Arthur never got that chance. He went into the field at Easter, was wounded at Thanksgiving and died on Christmas Eve. So it was a miserable set of holidays to remember,” says Howatt, with sadness in her voice.
Then, when family members tried to make sense of the circumstances surrounding his death, a door was shut in their face.
“There was no information for the first few days. It was Christmas and no one was answering telephones in offices. And it wasn’t until early January that he was brought home and buried.
“Even then we received little information about what had happened. It was a sad, lonely time,” says Howatt, who later learned that he died at an American army hospital on the west coast.
“There was no information and no person that would take responsibility for finding out anything. The Canadian Armed Forces did nothing to help,” she says.
Howatt says it’s a sharp contrast to the treatment of Canadian soldiers returning from their tour of duty today.
“I think of the young fellows coming back from Afghanistan now. They have a ramp ceremony in Kandahar, they are honoured in Trenton (Highway 401 is named Highway of Heroes) and they’re given a parade. But Arthur was brought home in a box and that was that.”
Howatt believes she’s not alone in her concern for those who served in the Korean War.
“They deserve some recognition, the few that are left,” she says.
While Howatt is pleased that the Canadian Senate declared July 27 as Korean Veterans Day, she says it’s still not enough.
“I do give credit to the Legion who had a service and parade to the cenotaph/memorial in Summerside and a reception afterwards.
But Charlottetown did nothing for them. And the provincial government didn’t recognize them in any way,” she said.
Howatt hopes that someone will hear her plea before it’s too late and give them the respect they deserve.
“There are so few of them left and there’s such little time left that if the government is going to do anything, it’s got to be now,” she says.
Howatt is also pleased with the work of the Korean Veteran’s Association of P.E.I.
In 1997 the organization purchased a special stone and laid it at his grave at The People’s Cemetery in Charlottetown.
“They called it tomb of a warrior. Arthur was one eight P.E.I. soldiers killed in Korea. And the only one buried in Canada.”
