Ike Behar History: NY to Korea to Hawaii & Back!

Having only immigrated to the United States several months prior, Ike Behar had already met his future wife and found work as a tailor, when he was informed that all men of age were required to register for conscription. It was 1953, and Ike was drafted almost immediately, beginning the period of his army years that would forever change his life.

Ike was sent to Fort Dix, New Jersey for training, where he was first informed that he was to be sent to Korea, which had been in the midst of a vicious civil war for close two three years. His older brother, Isidore Behar, had already spent time in Korea fighting as a U.S. Marine, earning his U.S. citizenship, and Ike saw this as his opportunity to do the same. Ike recalls, “The day after we graduated from training, an officer lined up all the new privates, before walking down the line and assigning each soldier his deployment. Some people wanted to go to Japan or Europe, but most just wanted to go anywhere but Korean. They picked every tenth, or so, private for Korea, and I was one of the ten.”

 Before leaving for Korea, Ike grew worried about the places the army might take him, and began to think about how that might affect Jean. Regina and He had grown very close, but at the time his future had become too uncertain. In her memoir, Threads of My Life, Regina remembers “‘I want to be fair and honest. I don’t want to feel guilty,’ he told me on our steps, ‘my mother taught me never to tie up a girl I didn’t have honest intentions with.’” After reluctantly breaking up with Regina, Ike decided that he would tell his parents that he had been deployed to Germany. His older brother Isidore similarly lied to their parents before his deployment, and although Ike hated to deceive his parents, he thought telling the truth would only serve to worry them. They would not hear about the true nature of Ike’s military service for many years.

While in Korea, Ike was lucky enough to remain out of serious combat. The war had begun to wind down by the middle of 1953, and the United States focus shifted from war to the maintenance of the fragile armistice that had developed. Most of Ike’s time in Korea was spent on guard duty or on short patrols. He remembers that, although the war was in it’s terminal phases, at the time the soldiers in country had only moderate confidence that a true peace could be reached. He recalls the tension of constant patrol duty, where “for weeks you would be lucky if you were able to get more then two hours of sleep at any one time.” One night, after a few months in Korea, Ike was finishing his final patrol of the day when a captain, looking for a private that was to be reassigned to another platoon scheduled to ship out immediately for Hawaii, approached him. Ike jumped on the opportunity, and inquired about taking the reassignment himself. When the Captain agreed, with the condition that Ike had to be ready to leave in thirty minutes, Ike quickly grabbed his belongings, recalling, “he said thirty minutes, I was ready to go in five.”

Ike looks at his time stationed in Hawaii as one of the most fun periods of his young life. While in Hawaii, Ike honed his English, learned to drive, and bought his first car. He was initially assigned to the Scofield Barracks where he was put in charge of mail distribution. After a few weeks, Ike was called into the office of his superior, who told him that, due to an accounting error, he had been over-payed while was in Korea, and as a result would not be payed for the next several months. “It was terrible. They were sending money to my mother’s bank account, and now that I needed it there was nothing.” Not wanting to burden his parents, but needing money, Ike formed his first business. With the last bit of money he had left, Ike leased a sewing machine, and began offering tailoring services to his fellow soldiers. He set up a make shift tailor shop in the back of the mailroom, and would spend all day switching between sorting mail and sewing. Soldiers are required to wear their army uniforms trim, and the need for constant alterations, along with the fact that he charged twenty percent less than other tailors, made Ike’s nascent business tremendously successful. Aside from standard alterations, Ike helped his company maintain the barracks, sewing and repairing curtains, chairs, and doing other upholstery work. However, as Ike’s reputation on the base grew, he became best known for his ability to sew tiny seams at precisely the right places to make a uniform appear as if it had been pressed; a useful trick he learned in Cuba that understandably earned him many friends.

Though Ike had ended his relationship with Regina before leaving for Korea, his thoughts quickly returned to her during his time in Hawaii. Before leaving he told Regina not to write him, but as he still says, “I didn’t say anything about me writing her.” They began a friendly correspondence, which according to Regina grew “warmer in tone,” as his two-year stint in the army drew to a close.

In 1955, Ike was honorably discharged from the Army of the United States, before returning home to New York, where he was welcomed with U.S. citizenship. In the two years prior, he had been from New York to Fort Dix to Korea to Hawaii and back, in the next two he and Regina would be married, he would begin work as a tailor, and embark on a long and successful career as one of the best men’s fashion designers of the 20^th century.

 To be continued...