korean war, war veterans, alliance, rok

Deborah Garris, the daughter of Korean War veteran Benjamin Garris, looks at a photo showing Camp Hialeah in 1950, which was engraved on the granite Memory Wall at Busan Citizens Park on Oct. 6. Korea Times photo by Kang Hyun-kyung

BUSAN -- Deborah Garris’s eyes were filled with tears on Friday, as she stepped into Busan Citizens Park located near the old district of Seomyeon.

Garris, 68, said she experienced a sudden surge of emotions as she touched the Memory Wall where panoramic photos tell the stories of how the area was transformed from a U.S. military base to an urban space for the public.

“This wall is important to people like me who know and understand what happened, because they have loved ones who sacrificed their lives,” she said on Friday, the first day of her two-day visit to the southern port city. “The younger generation needs to realize that what they are enjoying today was possible because someone made a sacrifice.”

Her father, Benjamin Garris, was a Korean War veteran who was stationed in Camp Hialeah, which was located where the park stands today. He was part of the non-combatant force sent to South Korea during the Korean War. He was involved in administrative duties and postal services, according to his daughter.

Nearly 1.8 million of U.S. soldiers arrived in South Korea to defend the country from the communist North’s invasion during the bloody war which lasted three years from June 25, 1950. Nearly 34,000 American soldiers were killed in battle, while over 92,000 were wounded.

Stretching over 540,000 square meters, Camp Hialeah existed from 1945 until 2006.

Garris’s father served there for four years from 1951 when he arrived in Busan as a U.S. soldier.

Benjamin Garris poses in this undated photo taken during his service at Camp Hialeah in Busan during the Korean War. Courtesy of Deborah Garris

The Memory Wall, situated near the lawn of the urban park, brought back Garris’s fond childhood memories about her late father.

“He was very kind and gentle. He liked to tell jokes. He loved to cook,” she said.

Garris's father was black and her mother is South Korean. Her father passed away in 1982 while fighting lung cancer. Her mother, Moonja Choi Garris, is still alive and lives in Texas.

Her parents were proud of Garris, who worked as a runway model representing more than 70 luxury fashion houses in Europe at the peak of her career in the 1970s and 1980s. She now lives in Switzerland.

“Being able to be here and see the wall with old photographs is helping me envision what it used to be like when my parents were here together,” she said. “I’m glad that they put this up for veterans.”

Her Busan visit was long overdue.

This is the first trip to South Korea for Garris, who was born in New York in 1955, a year after her parents married in Busan and moved to the United States for her father’s new posting in the military.

Deborah Garris on a visit to Busan Citizens Park on Friday. Korea Times photo by Kang Hyun-kyung

Garris tried to figure out what her father’s life was like at Camp Hialeah as she strolled through the park. She said she could imagine her father walking around the military compound when he was stationed in Busan in the 1950s.

After Camp Hialeah was closed, the site turned into a park in 2012.

Lodging facilities for U.S. Army officers there were transformed into art studios and a museum.

Pyo Ji-hyun, a ceramic artist based in the park, said local artists like her have benefitted a lot from the base that was turned into a park.

“I still pay rent here, but it is a lot cheaper than commercial studios outside of the park,” she said. “Studios are located in the middle of the park. It's a great location. People keep coming, which is good for artists like myself, because we find it easier to attract customers and sell our products.”

Working inside the park, Pyo said she is constantly reminded of the service and sacrifices of U.S. soldiers because she, from time to time, has visitors who had previously been stationed on the base.

“They told me about their experiences here and how they spent their days. I am grateful for their services for this country,” she said.

Garris said she was happy to hear that the city authorities turned the site into an urban space to keep the U.S. military’s legacy alive.

“I hope it can endure,” she said.

Busan is a special place for the Garris family.

She described the southern port city as her spiritual hometown. After visiting Busan, Garris said she realized that there are so many pent-up emotions that she was able to release during her trip to Busan.

Deborah Garris with her mother Moonja Garris / Courtesy of Deborah Garris

Busan is where her mother, Moonja Choi Garris, was raised following her birth in Osaka, Japan in 1930 when Korea was under Imperial Japan’s colonial rule. Choi met her husband in Busan when Garris was stationed in Camp Hialeah.

The couple married in 1954, a year after the armistice was signed that halted fighting in the Korean War.

Garris looked at old scanned photos stored on her smartphone. One photo showed her mother posing in a swimsuit with her friends near the beach when she was in her twenties. Another picture shows Choi standing in front of pine trees.

Showing those old pictures to a Busan taxi driver, she asked if he could take her to those sites. After an hour's drive from her hotel, Garris learned that a construction boom had changed the city’s skyline dramatically and that the sites where her mother posed in the 1950s no longer exist today.

Garris stopped at Dongbaek (camelia) Island and filmed the ocean. She said she will show the video to her 93-year-old mother in Texas, who was hospitalized with a bladder infection.

Garris walked down the promenade of the island, hoping to experience what her mother did when she was there, trying to understand what it was like being a young Korean woman who fell in love with a black U.S. soldier in the 1950s. Their love was deemed unacceptable among Koreans at that time, since the country was much more homogeneous and conservative than it is today.

She also tried hard to figure out how much pain her mother would have felt as the bride of a GI. In the U.S., Garris said her mother was the victim of racial discrimination and had been bullied even by fellow Korean GI brides who married white American soldiers.

They called my mom a n*gger lover.

Deborah Garris

"They called my mom a n*gger lover," she said, adding her mother tried to ignore them, rather than confront them.

Garris visited Busan as the nation celebrates the 70th anniversary of the Republic of Korea-U.S. alliance this year.

She said she is proud of her father, because his service at Camp Hialeah made him a part of the alliance.

The ROK-U.S. alliance and Garris’s family share some common traits.

The alliance has become stronger over the past seven decades. There were obstacles standing in the way of the alliance, including anti-American sentiment stoked by radical protestors during the 1980s.

But the alliance survived the challenging times and became stronger year after year.

Likewise, the Garris family went through various hardships over the past seven decades. As a GI baby, Garris said she had to endure painful experiences growing up in the southern United States.

But like the ever-growing ROK-US alliance, Garris said her family bond became more solid as the years progressed.

Moonja and Benjamin Garris / Courtesy of Deborah Garris