IVINS, Washington County — Any minute now, Dale E. Rigby could be back in a North Korean prisoner of war compound where 38 years ago today he endured brutal beatings, bitter cold and bowls of swirling gray turnip soup.
"It never goes away," says Rigby of the 11 months of terror he and 81 crewmates of the USS Pueblo endured before their release. "It raises its ugly head when it's cold outside, on anniversary dates, whenever. I don't know."
Rigby was a 19-year-old farm boy from Clearfield, Utah, with 1 1/2 years as a baker's apprentice under his belt when the U.S. Navy came calling. Not long after his enlistment, Rigby was assigned to the USS Pueblo AGER 2, a light cargo vessel purportedly serving as a research ship in international waters off the east coast of Korea.
In reality, the Pueblo was a spy ship on a secret intelligence-gathering mission for the National Security Agency. Half of the crew seemed to know the purpose of the ship's mission, said Rigby, while the other half did not.
"I didn't know it. When they said the crew was chosen for this mission, I just scratched my head and thought, 'What do you want with a dumb farm boy from Clearfield, Utah?' " he says now. "I was a shy, ill-prepared and naive young man."
It was Jan. 5, 1968, when the Pueblo first began its fateful journey from a U.S. base in Japan toward the choppy, open water where events occurred that ultimately would change the lives of the crew. Below deck, said Rigby, electronic surveillance and recording equipment began documenting the North Koreans' naval activity.
"We had a huge crew for such a small ship. It was really a rusted old bucket," says Rigby of the Pueblo, which remains docked as a floating museum at a North Korean shipyard to this day. "I tried to tell them they were wasting my talents. I was a baker, so they finally assigned me to the kitchen."
On the morning of Jan. 23, 1968, after a stressful week of unreliable communications to a base in Japan and wary watching of a couple of North Korean fishing trawlers approaching their ship, the Pueblo crew settled down for lunch.
The cloud cover began to thicken and the sky was a dreary shade of gray that day as several North Korean patrol ships began closing in on the virtually unarmed Pueblo.
"We started destroying classified information as fast as we could," said Rigby, who recalled he was nursing a mangled hand at the time.
The North Koreans opened fire on the defenseless Pueblo, wounding the captain and two other men. No attempt was made by U.S. forces to protect the crew and their ship, even though one message from headquarters indicated air support was winging its way. One sailor, Duane Hodges, was killed during the final moments of gunfire.
Once the North Koreans boarded the Pueblo and captured its crew, said Rigby, life for each man became a living hell. As prisoners of war, the crew members were routinely beaten and mentally abused. They were forced to attend propaganda sessions, told to write letters and made to appear in staged news conferences.
The sailors, who included two civilian oceanographic researchers, were isolated into groups and given little reason to hope for their release. Fighting back wasn't an option, Rigby said, although several crewmen found a subtle way of relaying their real feelings of defiance and contempt for their captors.
"They used to make us watch propaganda movies," Rigby recalls. "In one of them this old proper gentleman in London gave the visiting North Korean speed skating team the finger, or what we called the 'Hawaiian Good Luck Sign.' One of our guys noticed the North Koreans didn't seem to know what that meant, so they would give the sign during photo sessions at the news conferences."
Several official photos circulated around the world of the Pueblo crew displaying the so-called "good luck sign." It wasn't until Time Magazine published one of the photos, with a caption explaining the real meaning of the offensive hand signal, that the prisoners' motives were exposed, he added.
That's when the real week of hell began.
"They beat the snot out of us. One of our guys, Chuck Law, was beaten so badly he lost his sight in one eye," said Rigby, who stopped and struggled to remain composed before continuing. "He took a lot of beatings for the crew."
No one from the Pueblo escaped injury at the hands of their captors, and much of the pain inflicted still haunts the crew in both obvious and subtle ways. Even after the men were released to U.S. forces on Dec. 23, 1968, Rigby said the nightmare continued when military leaders criticized the Pueblo and its crew for failing to protect the ship and its sensitive cargo.
Various medals and certificates for the crew's service were downgraded and mailed to the men, a decision that still offends Rigby and the others. Flashbacks are universally reported among the surviving Pueblo crew, and Rigby suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. The first week of December, for instance, is particularly difficult since it signifies the beginning of "Hell Week," he said.
"I've been through years of counseling, trying to understand what I was packing around inside of me," says Rigby, who retired as a baker and spent several years working as a power tool salesman. "I will never forget what they (his captors) did to me, but I have forgiven them. That's the only way I can deal with this."
Rigby and his wife, Julie, have four grown children, two of whom entered military service. Their parents are, understandably, very proud of each one and the loving support they show to their dad.
"It had been interesting (being married to Dale)," says Julie. "It has been a roller coaster at times. When the flashbacks happen, you know it's not about you, but sometimes you still wonder."
About 15 years ago the Rigbys, who were living in the Salt Lake area, bought a lot in Ivins just across from the city cemetery.
"It was the openness that appealed to me," says Rigby of the couple's decision to move to Ivins and build a home there. "I couldn't see blue sky in northern Utah in the winter any more, which is pretty much the same as being in North Korea for me. Gray skies, gray people, gray everything."
The friendly red hills of Ivins beckoned and the Rigbys adjusted their lifestyle and moved to this rural community
Julie's suggestion that her husband build a winding retaining wall in their backyard has been therapeutic, said Rigby.
"At first I thought it would just be a bunch of hard labor. After a while it seemed like every rock I put in was like I was chipping away at my anger," he says. "Now I look at it and smile. It's my wall of anger."
For more on the USS Pueblo go to www.usspueblo.org, the official site of the USS Pueblo Veterans Association.
E-mail: nperkins@desnews.com