Bob Chicca is a retired Marine staff sergeant whose uniform is on exhibit in the capital of North Korea. It's in a display case aboard the USS Pueblo, the only commissioned ship in the U.S. Navy held in captivity. Visitors now tour the ship, which is moored along a Pyongang river, as part of North Korea's Victorious War Museum.
Chicca was one of the Pueblo's 83 crew members. He and the 81 others who survived an artillery barrage on the high seas were taken captive by North Korea, along with their ship, on January 23, 1968.
"We were an experiment that was deemed, I don't know whether it would be a failure, but it certainly didn't work," Chicca, now 73, recalls at his home in the San Diego suburb of Bonita.
Hanging in Chicca's living room is a wide oil painting that vividly portrays North Korea's assault on the Pueblo. Two submarine-chasers, four torpedo boats and two Mig-21 jet fighters attack the ship as black smoke rises from its deck.
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