Former submariner - Lloyd Mark "Pete" Bucher (1 September 1927 – 28 January 2004) was an officer in the United States Navy, who is best remembered as the captain of USS Pueblo (AGER-2), which was seized by North Korea on January 23, 1968.
From 1961 to 1964 he served on the submarine USS Ronquil (SS-396), rising from third officer to executive officer, after which he became an assistant operations officer on the staff of Commander Submarine Flotilla Seven in Yokosuka, Japan. Bucher loved submarines and his greatest desire was to command one. However, he was a conventional submariner not trained in nuclear power, and his career options became limited when the submarine force became increasingly populated by nuclear-powered submarines and nuclear-trained submarine officers effectively hand-picked by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover in the 1960s. As a result, when Bucher screened for command, he was slated for command of an auxiliary surface vessel outfitted for communications and signals intelligence (COMINT/SIGINT) collection, in this case, USS Pueblo (AGER-2).
While monitoring North Korea in January 1968, Pueblo came under attack by North Korean naval forces, two Soviet-era submarine chasers, four motor torpedo boats, and two Mig-21 aircraft. U.S. Naval officials and the crew have claimed the ship was in international waters all the time. North Koreans attacked and ultimately boarded the ship, killing one man and taking the ship and her remaining crew of 82 to the port at Wonsan.
For the next 11 months, Bucher and his crew were held as POWs by the North Koreans. The crew reported upon release that they were starved and regularly tortured while in North Korean custody. This treatment allegedly turned worse when the North Koreans realized that crewmen were secretly giving them "the finger" in staged propaganda photos, an action the crew had initially explained away as being a "Hawaiian good luck sign".
Bucher was psychologically tortured such as being put through a mock firing squad in an effort to make him confess. Eventually, the Koreans threatened to execute his men in front of him, and Bucher relented and agreed to 'confess to his and the crew's transgression.' Bucher wrote the confession since a 'confession' by definition needed to be written by the confessor himself. They verified the meaning of what he wrote, but failed to catch the pun when he said "We paean the North Korean state. We paean their great leader Kim Il Sung" ("We paean" sounds almost identical to "we pee on"). Following an apology, a written admission by the United States that Pueblo had been spying, and an assurance that the United States would not spy in the future, the North Korean government decided to release the 82 remaining crew members. On 23 December 1968, the crew was taken by buses to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) border with South Korea and ordered to walk south across the "Bridge of No Return". Exactly 11 months after being taken prisoner, Bucher led the long line of crewmen, followed at the end by the executive officer, Lieutenant Ed Murphy, the last man across the bridge.
The U.S. then verbally retracted the ransom admission, apology, and assurance. Meanwhile, the North Koreans blanked out the paragraph above the signature, which read: "and this hereby receipts for 82 crewmen and one dead body" (Fireman Duane Hodges was killed by North Korean gunfire during the taking of Pueblo). Upon release, several members of the crew were crippled and nearly blind as a result of the brutality and malnourishment.
On December 23, 1968, eleven months to the day of capture, CDR Bucher led his crew, one every 15 seconds, across the Bridge of no Return to freedom and the opportunity to live the rest of their lives.
Bucher died on January 28, 2004. He was buried at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego, California. The Poway-Bernardo Mortuary, which was featured in the A&E reality TV series Family Plots at the time, handled the funeral services. One of the episodes of the series was dedicated to Bucher's funeral services.
AFTERMATH
It would be shown in 1999 on the History Channel. A number of PUEBLO crewmembers were interviewed and filmed about their experiences. When the show aired on Sunday night March 28, 1999 the crew was astonished to find that the producers had presented a conclusion that the USS PUEBLO was attacked and captured by North Korean forces at the behest of the Soviet Union. The sole purpose being to obtain a working KW-7, Orestes cryptographic machine.
This assertion was based on an interview with Oleg Kalugin a former high ranking KGB officer who defected to the US in 1995. The Soviets at the time of the attack on PUEBLO were receiving month old outdated Top Secret code key cards from US Navy Chief Warrant Officer John Walker. In theory, without a working KW-7, the key cards they were receiving via Walker were useless. CWO Walker began supplying the key cards in 1967 while he was a Registered Publications Officer at the Navy's Atlantic Fleet headquarters at Norfolk, Virginia. This was the first time the PUEBLO crew had heard this assertion. Cdr Bucher was especially insensed in that he was never ever informed by CBS News Productions or the History Channel that a conclusion such as this would be put forth in the documentary program. Cdr Bucher was never offered a chance to reply to the shows assertion.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_M._Bucher
http://usspueblo.org/Aftermath/Pete_Bucher.html
http://www.usspueblo.org/Aftermath/John_Walker_KW7.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20100823225423/http://www.usspueblo.org/Prisoners/the_Farm.html
Lessons Learned: The Seizure of the USS Pueblo - YouTube Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zunoCXXJIXE
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E Pluribus OTAP - January 28, 2022 at 09:33PM
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