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Interview Irvin Axelrod
ADM's Steve Sapienza
interviews this survivor
for "Survivor's Stories: Americans and Landmines" |
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MR. AXELROD: I'm Irvin Axelrod. I'm seventy years old. Today we are at the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C. Today is the anniversary of the end of the war, and it's known as Korean Armistice Day.
MR. SAPIENZA: Good. Irvin, when did you go to Korea, and what were you doing at that time? Were you single, were you a student, how old were you there at that time? What was happening in Korea that caused that?
AXELROD: I was a student at the University of Chicago in 1950 when the Korean War broke out in June. I was recalled to active duty. I had served previously. And, I was sent right to Korea after three weeks refresher training. I landed in Korea Christmas Eve of 1950 and my outfit was surrounded by the Chinese who had entered the war. The reason why we needed replacements was that one million Chinese entered the war in the last week of November. And, they started pushing the UN forces out of Korea. And, that's when I was sent as a replacement.
SAPIENZA: Tell us exactly, where did you land, were you, what kind of boat were you in? Where did you land?
AXELROD: I landed at the port of Inchon, and we crawled down some nets on the side of the boat into smaller boats. And, when we took the boat into the dock and then they put me in the replacement company to try to find the 25th infantry division, to which I was assigned, and they found out that that was surrounded by the Chinese north of the 38th parallel. So, they decided that I wasn't going to be able to reach them, so they sent me to the southern port city of Pouson to pull guard duty for a week until that division broke out from the Chinese and I joined them south of Seoul.
SAPIENZA: What was it like when you joined them in Seoul? What was the weather like? What were the conditions like, what was happening in the war at that time?
AXELROD: In the war, all the UN forces, the British Churchill tanks and the US Army was evacuating everything down to the south of Korea, because we really thought we were going to withdraw from the peninsula. But, then General Ridgeway came in and said, no, we are not going to withdraw. We're going to stay and we're going to fight. And, I felt a little, I thought it would be great if we left, because I was scared. The first night I joined my company, it was minus twenty below, and it stayed minus twenty below for three days.
SAPIENZA: Was there snow on the ground, was it -- or was it just frigid cold?
AXELROD: Just frigid cold.
SAPIENZA: So, okay, you're, uh, you're with the company south of Seoul?
AXELROD:South of Seoul. About forty miles south of Seoul.
SAPIENZA: And, what were the conditions like?
AXELROD: It was extremely frigid. It was very, very cold. The first night I slept with my company, I got frostbite. And, they mentioned something to me about being a malingerer. I didn't even know what that meant. But, they didn't realize that a couple of months before I was a civilian in college.
SAPIENZA: Okay, so let's quickly get into this. Tell us your job that you were doing right there, south of Seoul. What was your job?
AXELROD: I was assigned to the 25th infantry division signal company. And, my job was a messenger, that I would deliver to all the outfits under our command secret orders on activities going on in the war. And, I used to ride shot-gun guard. Because of what happened when we moved back, a lot of Chinese troops were left in the mountains and the hills and we had to be careful not to be ambushed by them.
And, on one Sunday afternoon, I was asked to deliver some secret attack plans because they were starting an operation called Operation Killer in mid-February of 1951. And, we had to get all of the plans to all of the headquarter companies. And, I was aiming at reaching a British infantry brigade that was attached to our division, and I was crossing a rice patty -- and, we were walking along the dike or ridge on the rice patty because it was a terraced rice patty going down to different levels. And, I was walking in front, and evidently I put my foot down and it detonated a landmine. And, it picked me up and threw me down to the next level. And, at the same time, I heard some small arms fire, machine gun fire, in the background. And, my first thought, when I landed, was that they shot me through the foot, because I felt a pain down there. And, then my buddy jumped down. He didn't get hurt.
SAPIENZA: Okay, so you've just been, you've just been blown up by the landmine. You've fallen into the terrace, and your buddy jumps down.
AXELROD: My buddy said to me that I stepped on a landmine, and I said, "no, they shot me through the foot or the ankle." And, he said, "no, look at the dirt spread out on top of the snow." He said, "That's a landmine. I'll go get help." And, he went and got some British medics that picked me up on a stretcher, and I was really scared that, while they were carrying me across that rice patty, that they would hit another mine and I would be killed because I'm lying flat to the ground. But, they took me to one of their evacuation hospitals and operated on me, and then turned me over to an American MASH unit where they did another operation.
SAPIENZA: Okay, and you were then, after some time in Korea, sent to Japan.
AXELROD: After five operations in Korea in the month of February, I was sent to Tokyo so they could put me in traction, because my bones weren't healing.
SAPIENZA: While you were in Japan, your parents received a telegram. Could you talk about the military sending your parents a telegram and what you said to your parents?
AXELROD: I didn't want my mother to know that I got hurt in action. So, I wrote her a letter that I slipped on the ice and broke my ankle. And, after she received that letter, she got a telegram, which was sent about a month after I got wounded, that I was wounded in action. And, she called me in Japan. And, to find out what was the true story. And, I had to confess to her that I had stepped on a landmine and that I'd be okay, I told her. Little did I know that I was going to spend the next four and a half years in government hospitals. But that's what happened.
SAPIENZA: That's a good segue. Let's jump to Brooklyn. Tell people where you were in Brooklyn, what it was like there. What were you doing there, rehab or surgery?
AXELROD: Okay. After spending a year and a half in Army hospitals, mostly Valley Forge Army Hospital in Pennsylvania, I was retired from the military and transferred to a VA hospital for further treatment. The physical evaluation board in the Army found me unfit for further military duty. I spent over three years in this one hospital in Brooklyn on an amputee ward, and I really wasn't an amputee at that time. They were trying to save my leg. And, all together, I had twenty-two operations.
SAPIENZA: Okay, so you weren't really an amputee, but you're on this amputee ward. Why is that?
AXELROD: Well, because they thought they might have to amputate it. But, they made every effort to try to save my leg. I was discharged in 1955 but I did have one tremendous experience in the hospital, and that is when Helen Keller came up to visit the Korean War amputees and wounded. She had done it all during World War II.
SAPIENZA: Can we start with, how long had you been in Brooklyn VA before she showed up and what was your general sort of emotional state at that point? I mean, were you tired of being there, or did you want to move on to somewhere else and then she shows up, and how did that change things?
AXELROD: I reached the Brooklyn VA Hospital in October of 1952 when I was retired from the Army. In March of 1953, right after I had surgery on my leg, being in the orthopedic post-op ward, I was asked if I would mind being part of a documentary film being made about Helen Keller's life and that she would like to visit me and come interview me. And, of course, I said, yes, and it was really the most touching and rewarding experience of my life.
Her picture was in a magazine cover concerning... she came to Washington to feel President Eisenhower's famous grin with her hands, and then, as they walked Helen Keller up to my bedside with Polly Thompson, her interpreter at the time, they, Helen Keller put her hands on my face, and I felt really great because these are the same hands that touched the President's face, you know. And, she made such an impression on me by her courage, because I realized that she lost her site, her speech, and her hearing when she was a young woman and she has gone on to be a very important world figure.
So, they put her hand on, they put Helen Keller's hand on my wet cast, and she interpreted, through her interpreter, she said that Helen Keller has had a burden to carry in her life but never one as heavy as mine. And, that made me feel that this is really nothing compared to what she's going through and I just have to concentrate on what I was left with, not what I lost. And, I still carry that message today to as many new amputees as I can.
SAPIENZA: Let's talk about your time, your direction that you went in after you got out of the hospital.
You went to school, you got your degree, you did some government work, and talk a little bit about what you did for the commerce department.
AXELROD: Well, after my leg got wounded, I felt that I couldn't be a teacher any longer because I felt that teachers had to stand a lot, and that would be difficult for me. So, I decided to go and get a degree in geology. I got a bachelor's degree in geology, and I started working at the Army map service as a cartographer.
Worked for Defense Intelligence Agency, CIA, and then I got fed up with working for the war effort, because I met some people that were wounded in Vietnam and that bothered me that I was taking part in that, so I transferred to the Commerce Department where I became the government's food processing industry specialist. And, my task was to go around the world and help introduce new technology to these lesser developed countries so they could feed their people better. And, the first time the government sent me overseas, it was to harm people. And, this time, I was going overseas to help people. So, it meant an awful lot to me to be able to do that.
SAPIENZA: I just need a quick segue from you're in the hospital to you're studying to get your degree. So, what was that transition there?
AXELROD: I just want to tell you, I bugged them to let me out of the hospital. I wanted to start school in September of 55.
SAPIENZA: So, just say, say that. You know, say I got fed up with being in the hospital and I wanted to get on with my life. You know, something like that.
AXELROD: Okay. When I got out of the hospital, I was really fed up with all the surgeries I had and I wasn't very comfortable in my walking, and what they left me with gave me a lot of physical problems with my back and my hip. And, I just decided that I want to get back to college right away. And, I was fed up after almost five years in the hospital to start my life again. And, I got my degree and came down to Washington to work for the government.
SAPIENZA: Okay, as you were, when you were working for the Commerce Department, you had an occasion where some Soviets came to visit the mid-West. They came on a mid-West tour. You were meeting with them. They noticed that you had a cane, and they asked you to help a friend of theirs. How did that unfold?
AXELROD: Yeah, yeah.
SAPIENZA: Because you had the amputation in '83?
AXELROD: Yeah, right. In my job at Commerce Department, I entertained international visitors and helped guide them through manufacturing facilities in the country. There were thirty-four Soviet food processing officials that came to the mid-West and I met them in Omaha, Nebraska. And, traveled with them, taking them to a food school and a lot of food plants, showing them how we feed our people here in this country.
And, one day it snowed in Omaha. So, when I left my room, I took a cane with me because I felt it would give me better traction on a slippery surface. And, they saw me with the cane and they said, what's the cane for? And, I said, I've got a bad leg. And, they said, no you don't, you don't limp. So, I took the cane and whacked the side of prosthesis, and they got all upset and looked over, and they pulled up my pants to see what made the noise. They did not know I was an amputee. So, out of the crowd came one company president who told me about an amputee who works for him and what can I do to help this guy? I said, I'm a food industry specialist, I don't know how to help him.
SAPIENZA: Who did they want you to help?
AXELROD: I was asked to do whatever I can to help Anatoly Misikoff, who was a twenty-nine year old Soviet veteran who lost his leg in the Afghanistani war.
SAPIENZA: Right. And, how did you facilitate this? What did you get going and what eventually happened? How did you get him to come here?
AXELROD: I tried real hard to get the food industry to help me bring this guy over here and nobody was really interested because, at the time, President Reagan was calling the Soviet Union the Evil Empire. And, nobody wanted to help the enemy. And, I said, "I'm not helping the enemy, I'm helping a human being."
And, I went to hospitals and asked them if they would donate some services. They said it's too much money that we can donate. He says, "we've already made a leg for an Afghanistani amputee, and we don't want to do one for the Russians." So, I said, "what would it take?" And, they said, "if you get all the componentry, we'll do it."
They didn't feel I could get the components to make a leg. So, I started calling all over the country and I got people to try to help this guy. And, it was, really, I think the greatest thing I ever did in my life. It changed my whole attitude.
We brought him over here with the aid of the Soviet Embassy, and with the aid of some KGB people in southern Russia who know about this guy's plight. And, they sent him over here on a marketing tour. They wouldn't send him over here for medical reasons.
I had a lawyer call him from Washington and we talked to him and he wanted to know if he could bring his brother with him to help him. And, I said, "why not." So, we got the two of them over here, with money that the plant gave for their marketing tour. And, I found a place for them in Washington to stay for six weeks, and I got the hospital, I got all the components for the leg that the hospital wanted, and so they decided.
And, once one outfit at the hospital said they would make the leg, then physical therapy department chipped in and psychiatrists chipped in and we gave him a lot of good physical therapy. And, because he never received these exercises over there in rehab, we had to extend him another six weeks. And, the Soviet embassy didn't want to do that. And, I went to the Embassy and said, you've got him all the way over here. You've got to let us make him a leg that fits him properly. So, they made him a leg that was valued at seventeen thousand five hundred dollars.
Family on Connecticut Avenue took care of him. The Soviet embassy sent their agricultural attache to the National Rehab Hospital every day to work as an interpreter so the physical therapist could train this guy. And, he finally got a leg.
I enjoyed showing him a little bit about America. We took him up to Philadelphia to see Independence Hall and did a lot of things with his brother and him and they really loved it. And, they said their idea of Americans was different than what they had been told.
SAPIENZA: And, you continued to go ahead and help.
AXELROD: -- so, in 1990, after I had arranged for some doctors at the National Rehab hospital and prosthetists who were willing to make the leg, and physical therapists that were going to donate their time to give this young man the help he needed, we brought them to the United States and he, I found a home for him to say him for six weeks, and then it was extended to twelve weeks, so in the three months he was here, he received a state of the art leg and it was just the most wonderful thing I had ever done in my life. And, three weeks after he went back, I retired from the government with thirty-six years service, and I started working more with helping people.
SAPIENZA: Excellent. So, let's talk a little bit about the National Rehabilitation Hospital and those amputee meetings. Can you pick those up from when you retired and how you got more involved in those?
AXELROD: In 1989, I was still working for the Department of Commerce, and the only amputee support group meetings that I could attend were held in the mornings at Fairfax Hospital in Virginia. I decided to start another amputee support group in Washington where I would be able to get off work and just go run the meeting. I was elected president of that group, and for the past ten years, I've been president for eight.
We try to help new amputees learn that what they're going through has occurred to every amputee. The periods of anger and depression and guilt, and it's something that every person goes through, but we want them to know that our lives go on. Once we accept the amputation, which is the primary thing to give people a positive attitude about getting on with their life and your on what Helen Keller taught me, not what you lost, but what you still have.
SAPIENZA: Okay, so what sort of people are at these amputee meetings?
AXELROD:All sorts of people come to the amputee meetings. There are thousands of amputees every month. Fortunately, for the amputees, most of them get sent to the National Rehab Hospital, which is a fantastic rehabilitation site. I was never a patient there, but I know I got the best leg made for me there when I first went there.
The people who lose their limbs, some on motorcycle accidents, people get hit by buses. We have a lot of diabetics that lose their limbs because of circulatory problems. We have cardio-vascular diseases. I would say that perhaps seventy percent of the amputees are there by disease. And, very few traumatic amputees, construction accidents and so forth, but, when a person first comes to and realizes they lost part of their body, they really go through a tough, tough time. It's a very high stress. And, by we showing how we were able to overcome that and adopt an independent lifestyle and go on with our lives, we hope that we could help them make that same decision.
SAPIENZA: Recently you had a special case where you had some Peruvian landmine survivors. Could you talk about that special case?
AXELROD: Yes. Foreign countries sometimes send their amputees to the National Rehab Hospital because of their reputation. And, there's a war between Peru and Ecuador. And, we've had maybe ten landmine victims from that war sent to this hospital. There were six of them there for the last couple of months and we didn't know how to understand their questions in Spanish, so I was able to get eleven articles translated into Spanish, which I E-mailed to them.
And, finally, at the last meeting we had, we had a Spanish interpreter, and we were able to settle a lot of their questions, most of which pertained to the phantom pain or phantom that they all, that all amputees suffer. And, I think they were very appreciative. In fact, one of them has volunteered to be the Landmine Survivors' Network director in Peru when he gets back home.
SAPIENZA: How does that make you feel to still be working with and helping landmine survivors from different countries? How does that make you feel today?
AXELROD: Helping amputees in other countries makes me feel tremendous because I have a support system that my country gave me that was not available to these other people. Out of the twenty-six thousand people that stepped on landmines, a lot of them are killed, but many of them are seriously maimed. And, they don't have what my government gave me after I got wounded in the service of my country. So, I feel very fortunate. I've talked to other landmine victims from other countries, India and Ethiopia, and they don't have what my government gave me. So, I consider myself fortunate that my country stood behind me.
SAPIENZA: You feel that the American public understands the landmines issue?
AXELROD: I do not feel that the American public understands the landmines issue. They have never really had any landmines planted in this soil. There are over a hundred and ten million landmines that are planted throughout the world in sixty-five, mostly in sixty-five countries that are third world countries. And, when a person, a farmer in Cambodia, steps on a landmine, his family disowns him because he's not worth working any longer because he's handicapped. And, I feel that, for the rest of my life, I would like to try to help these unfortunate people that are wounded by landmines. And, that's my new dedication in life.
SAPIENZA: Great. These are sort of a little more philosophical questions. But, what does it mean to be an American landmine survivor?
AXELROD: Being an American landmine survivor means that I was serving my country when I got wounded and my country stood behind me one hundred percent. I'd rather be an American with this type injury than in any other place in the world.
SAPIENZA: Okay. What would you say to other Americans who, we've already talked a little bit about how Americans really don't understand the issue. How can Americans get involved in this issue and what would you say that they could do. So, is there still, is there a need for Americans to reach out to landmine survivors? And, in what ways can Americans help?
AXELROD:I feel that all Americans should be willing to help landmine survivors worldwide. Many of the mines planted around the world have American components in them, and I just feel that we sold these mines to people, manufactured them and exported. We have banned that practice right now, but we have not banned the use of landmines. The American people out to donate their funds to helping the less fortunate landmine victims of the third world countries. That would be a very important task for us.
SAPIENZA: What about politically here in the U.S.? What should they do?
AXELROD: Well, the Pentagon has kept President Clinton from banning landmines completely because they say they need thirty-seven, they have thirty-seven thousand American troops in Korea, and the landmines will help protect them. And, I don't agree with that. I feel that landmines are a very indiscriminate weapon. And, most of the weapons hurt people that are not in the military.
SAPIENZA: You mentioned right on, early on after you met Helen Keller, you decided that you wanted to help amputees and other victims of landmines. How did you, were you doing it at that time, too?
AXELROD:I was just helping all the young amputees in the hospital, but not the way I'm helping them now. I tried, some of them were immature, and I was twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five. And, they were younger and they were getting wounded, and I just tried to teach them that, you know, life goes on. And, I still keep in touch with amputees that I was with forty-seven years ago in the hospital.
SAPIENZA: When did you yourself become an amputee? And, you told me a story about a Vietnam vet that helped nudge you along to that.
AXELROD:Yes, I had a gentleman in my carpool when I was working at Commerce Department. And, I had two further operations in 1991 and 1992 to try to relieve the suffering I was having from my foot. And, in my carpool was a gentleman who had been severely wounded in Vietnam. And, he indicated to me, why are you limping so much? Why are you in so much pain? Why don't you get rid of that foot already? And, then I started thinking, he's probably right. Why should I be suffering? Because, I had a lot of pain from the time I was discharged from the hospital. So, with that encouragement, I went into Arlington Hospital in Virginia and had my leg amputated. It changed my whole life for the better.
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