The Fellowship of the Ring

Above is Lt. Cdr. (USN) Minter Dial who died in a Japanese POW camp in the Phillipines in 1945. He gave his Naval Academy ring to a fellow POW to give to his wife Lisa after the War… well… Smithsonian Magazine has the story of this ring…. and it’s a helluva ride. Thank God for men like Minter Dial. Read the whole thing here.

In the spring of 1962, the United States Navy was excavating a site in Inchon, Korea, when the discovery of human remains led officers to believe they had come across the site of a prisoner-of-war camp. More than a decade earlier, during the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur commanded some 75,000 United Nations ground forces and more than 250 ships into the Battle of Inchon—a surprise assault that led, just two weeks later, to the recapture of Seoul from the North Korean People’s Army. But the 1962 Inchon excavation led to an unexpected find.

Yi So-young, a Korean laborer at the site, noticed that one of his fellow workers had discovered a gold ring buried in the mud. Yi took a good long look, then turned his back as the worker pocketed the ring, disobeying site rules. Under his breath, the worker said he was going to pawn it at the end of the day.

But Yi was also a driver for U.S. Navy officers, and that afternoon, he found himself chauffeuring Rear Admiral George Pressey, commander of the U.S. Naval forces in Korea. Yi was struck by the resemblance of the ring found at the site to the Annapolis class ring on Pressey’s finger. Yi mentioned the morning’s find to the admiral, and Pressey asked where the ring was.

Suddenly, the vehicle was speeding through the crowded streets of Inchon as the two men visited one pawnshop after another until they found the guilty laborer. The ring was in the process of being smelted. The admiral demanded that it be recovered. It had been partially melted down, but once it cooled and he was able to wipe away the grime, Pressey recognized that it was indeed an Annapolis class ring. Class of 1932. Pressey had been at the U.S. Naval Academy at the same time. His heart began to pound as he tilted the blue stone ring toward the light. Engraved on the inside was a name he knew: Dial.

Ed. I made a slight edit to Dial’s rank. (1/28/12)

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