William Kastan

William Kastan was born in 1930, and he was drafted into the Army in 1952 at 22 years old. He started serving after he graduated from Brooklyn College and City College of New York. His devotion to America was unlike anything Kastan or most of his family had previously experienced, besides his two cousins, making him a first-generation fighter for freedom. One of his cousins was a POW (Prisoner of War), and his other cousin served in the USO (United Service Organizations).

Kastan’s journey did not start immediately after he got drafted. He had an interest in the Army while he was a young teen in junior high school. His seventh-grade class put on a play production to learn the roles of the countries, to get a better sense as to what in the world was going on. The next day, when his whole class was supposed to go out and celebrate with ice cream, he was about to meet his teacher’s husband who was coming home after serving as a captain in the Army. In the newspapers, Kastan would point out where the troops were heading during World War II. This was a fun way to track down the current status of the Army and Navy, since the news was not a common flow of current events back then.

Kastan remembered his friends and family were overjoyed when the war was over. The news of the Atomic Bomb made them all very excited and relieved that Victory in Europe (V-E) Day was imminent. After the Americans dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, hope came to the Kastan house. That moment propelled him as a soldier when it was their turn to protect the frontlines in Korea in the early 1950s.

Kastan achieved his highest ranking, Sergeant, after working his way up from a private at Fort Sam Houston and a trainee at Camp Pickett, Virginia. His training started at Fort Sam Houston and lasted sixteen weeks, and with the Army Medical Corps training the last two months. His wife came to meet him at Camp Pickett before he finished training and headed to Korea.

When Kastan was deployed in Taegu, South Korea for his main assignment in the Korean War, it became more important than ever to practice discipline. Describing this experience was tough for him, though, given that the sight of war was not pleasant. Taegu was headquarters for the Army of South Korea. As his unit walked about a mile from the compound to their Office of Personnel, he saw the medical school for Koreans, and other stores on both sides of the road. The stores had to dump their junk in ditches to protect their sales from the wreckage of war. This practice caused poor drainage around the compound.

To clean the uniforms, there were women by the river to do the work. When the Korean children were not in school, the American soldiers would deliver candy to the orphanages, which was very rewarding. At the end of the day, the Army would be at their base in Taegu, and that’s where they stayed back even to watch movies. They could not go out to eat a lot, as food was being fertilized with human waste. But preventing sickness was key to survival.

There were dangers and distractions around Korea as well. Rumors of snipers circulated across Korea. Objects were stolen left and right. KMAG (Korean Military Advisory Group) built buildings out of concrete stone. Black markets prevented certain aspects of trade.

There was little to be excited about in his time in Taegu. They had no major battles during his tour of duty. Their problem was theft. They could not do anything, such as buy food from children, that would go against the code of ethics for American soldiers.

Photographs that Kastan brought are shown by him. These showed what kind of experiences he had in Taegu. There was one with his helicopter flying over a K-2 Air Force airport, he and another KMAG member of the 40th division, a KMAG baseball player, English and Korean students, a South Korean lady carrying her child, a Korean man in a white outfit wearing a hat, South Korean orphans, and a Buddhist temple.

“Any time that we dealt with Korean people, at a level that I saw them, they didn’t care one way or the other who was running the country. That was an attitude that I felt was there. And they just wanted to be left alone… they wanted to have their farm…their children…they wanted to have whatever their life was…”

In 1954 Kastan was discharged from the Army and returned home. The ship that transferred him and the rest of his unit went nearly half a mile to reach a bigger ship to transport home. His daughter was born on September 1, 1954, and that made him happy to come home to her. He declined a trip to Hong Kong, China. Once they landed in Seattle, they were told to pack up and take another plane to Chicago. It was the next day that they were taken to the barracks to stay the night. The following morning, they took the bus trip to Newark but were delayed hours due to a mechanical breakdown. On Saturday night, Kastan returned to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, to stay the night and return home after service each day.

There are valuable lessons to take away from an ordinary American who served in the U.S. military. Especially, too, as a New Jersey veteran whose stories hit close to home for fellow New Jerseyans who can feel that what happened in the war seems much closer to home. The life of a soldier includes missing family, and family to miss their loved one. Based on Kastan’s oral history, he was strengthened by the support of his family at home.