Christmas between the wars

The tree at the the Christmas party in 1952 near Gapyeong

• Published Dec 24, 2017 12:19 PM KST
• Updated Dec 24, 2017 12:19 PM KST

By Robert Neff

In the fall of 1945, many American soldiers stationed in Korea were scrambling to buy Christmas gifts for their families and friends. While there may have been no shortage of unique (at least in the eyes of the American service members) items to send, there were shortages of stamps. In a letter to his wife, George Hopkinson, a young soldier, wrote:

“The Post Office is out of stamps and I hope that my package to you will get home for Christmas when stamps get here but I don’t know. One present I got for you tonight I don’t dare to mail until after the Christmas rush of packages is over for fear it will break. I do hope you’ll like it, although I have a hunch it will make a real hit.”

Apparently, Christmas cards were also hard to acquire. Hopkinson drew his own Christmas cards, complete with season’s greetings in Korean. Lieut. Hacskaylo, an American officer assigned to an engineer unit, rather than try his hand at drawing, elected to use a picture of a Korean church and also included a Christmas greeting in Korean.

Homemade Christmas cards were also popular during the Korean War. One of my favorites is one issued in 1952 showing service members from the various British Commonwealth nations.

Despite the war, civilians and soldiers still managed to celebrate Christmas. Fred Dustin, a young soldier with the military band, recalled that Christmas was one of the busiest times of the year for his unit. They traveled to the various forward units and provided not only entertainment for the soldiers but also to local Korean communities. And, in turn, the Korean communities entertained the American soldiers with the sweet voices of their children.

I would like to thank Diane Nars for providing the sketches of Hopkinson’s cards and Fred Dustin for providing images of the Christmas concert in 1952.