John Montenegro
By Kelsey M. Boudin
A single code word kept John Montenegro out of the Korean War.
He found himself heading out to sea aboard the USS General J. C. Breckinridge troop transport ship, just beyond the San Francisco harbor.
He and his fellow enlistees were each assigned one of two code words, "Dive" and "Evil." For Montenegro, "Dive" meant that he was to be stationed in Okinawa, Japan, for the next 18 months, until his discharge on June 15, 1954.
The "Evil" group was sent to the tail end of the fight against communism in Korea.