Fate
of MIA spurs tireless pursuit
SEARCH:
The Seal Beach man's stepson and a retired colonel hunt for details
about the downing of his plane 48 years ago.
June 26,
2000
WON'T
GIVE UP:
Walter Stoll, 77, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, is
committed to learning what happened to Kassell Keene. Click image for
larger photo.
Photo by
JERRY HOEFER/For The Register
FATE
UNKNOWN:
Kassell Keene of Seal Beach, center of bottom row, posed with
his B-29 crew nicknamed "Kass's Kiddies" before they
flew to Japan. Keene was last seen alive when he bailed out of
a disabled B-29 on his first flight over Korea in 1952.Click image for
larger photo.
|
By
JOHN GITTELSOHN
The Orange County Register
The
last confirmed sighting of Kassell Monford Keene occurred when
he bailed out of a B-29, after a Soviet MiG shot the bomber down
over North Korea.
That was Nov. 19, 1952, and no one believes Keene, who would
turn 82 this year, is still alive. But Keene's former crewmate,
Walter Stoll, and his stepson, Sheldon Olson, are on a crusade
to find out what happened to the missing pilot from Seal Beach.
Did Keene survive the jump? Was he captured? Was Keene, as
one Air Force document suggests, kept a prisoner by the North
Koreans?
Why would the Air Force keep the report secret?
"Somebody knows," said Stoll, 77, a retired Air
Force lieutenant colonel, living in Wills, Texas. "I'm not
going to let it die."
In his hunt for the truth, Stoll has come face to face with
a web of Korean War-era conspiracy theories -- abandoned POWs,
communist brainwashing, official U.S. cover-ups.
Fifty years after the Korean War began, questions of this
far-away conflict remain unanswered and, perhaps, unanswerable.
Military officials bridle at accusations they are hiding something.
"Nobody is more anxious than we are to resolve all the
cases we can," said Larry Greer, spokesman for the Department
of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office. "We have a personal
commitment to this cause, because some of the guys we served
with are either dead or missing."
But 50 years after the Korean War began, countless questions
elude answers:
More than 8,100 U.S. servicemen are listed as missing
in action, including 20 from Orange County.
At least 21 American POWs defected to the communists,
and hundreds of others signed documents critical of the United
States. Did some come home as secret communist agents, like a
key character in "The Manchurian Candidate"?
Countless documents remain classified. What secrets do
they hold?
Keene was born in Georgia in 1918 and served as a pilot in
World War II. He received an Order of the Red Star medal from
the Soviet Union for ferrying planes from Iran to Russia.
After the war, Keene attended law school but quit before earning
a degree. He became the second husband of Ferrol Olson and stepfather
to her son, Sheldon.
They moved to 210 Main St. in Seal Beach in 1947. Keene worked
for a paper company and fathered three children.
When the Korean War started, he was called as a reservist
and served as a flight instructor with Stoll at Forbes Air Force
Base in Kansas. In the fall of 1952, the two men decided they
would rather fight than teach. They formed a B-29 crew, nicknamed
"Kass's Kiddies," and posed for a photo before heading
to Asia.
Keene and radio operator Myron "Smoky" Sestak were
the first to arrive at Yokota Air Base in Japan. Stoll came hours
later, too late to join them as observers on a bombing mission.
"I did everything I could to make the flight that night,"
Stoll said. "I'm a firm believer that the Lord looks out
for you. If I'd gone, things might have been different."
The B-29 pilot, William F. Sawyer, forgot to turn off his
navigation lights, according to declassified documents, exposing
the plane to enemy fire.
Keene was the first to bail out. Sawyer was last, landing
on an allied-controlled island off Korea's west coast. One other
crewman swam to safety. Sestak's body was recovered with a gunshot
to his head. Nine other airmen, including Keene, vanished.
Keene's widow died in 1956 of a broken heart, said her son,
Olson, now 66.
A retired air traffic controller living in Fresno, Olson has
spent the past two yearssurfing the Internet and writing letters
to learn what became of his stepfather. His search yielded documents
in Russian, Korean and Chinese that detail how a MiG pilot earned
a 1,500-ruble award -- about $53 -- for downing the B-29.
He also found a declassified U.S. Air Force intelligence report
about 137 MIAs, including Keene. One passage says: "The
Source stated that the subject (Keene) was sentenced to 21½
years for assaulting a fellow prisoner. He was sentenced in July
53. According to the sentence, he was not to be effected [sic]
by repatriation."
Getting into a fight with a fellow prisoner sounded like Keene,
Olson said.
"If you knew Kassell, he would have a fight with another
prisoner who's a rat or a stool pigeon," he said.
Olson and Stoll have requested more information about "the
Source" and demanded to know what the Air Force did about
the report.
A March 1999 Air Force response described the story of Keene's
captivity "apocryphal" and said there was no evidence
he had ever been held prisoner.
When Stoll asked the Air Force for more information, officials
told him that there were too many documents to plow through and
that many of the documents are classified. Stoll said he feels
betrayed as both a career Air Force officer and Keene's fellow
crewman.
"All I get is the runaround," Stoll said. "We're
talking 50 years later and they're still keeping secrets. It's
the Forgotten War, and they want to keep it that way."
Orange County Register news researcher Dick Glasow contributed
to this report.
John Gittelsohn can be reached at (714) 796-7969 or by e-mail
at John_Gittelsohn@notes.freedom.com.