Stars and Stripes, December 26, 1954 

Santa Flies Presents to Seoul Orphanage

S&S Korea Bureau 

SEOUL-Christmas came by airlift to 120 orphans here Friday.  A giant C-54 loaded with food, clothes and toys sat down at Seoul City Airport at 8 a.m. and two and a half hours later the children of Myong Jun Orphanage were getting the biggest Christmas present of their lives.  And their Santa Claus was just about the biggest, too-6,000 Tokyo area airmen of the Far East Air Forces Base Hq. and 600 students of Tokyo's Green Park Dependent School. 

The big plane used for the airlift was full of more than 2,000 pounds of clothing, 250 suits of winter underwear, 300 yards of black school uniform material, more than 1,000 toys and enough turkey and trimmings to feed the orphans twice over.  A nine-man group headed by FEAF Base commander Lt. Col. Robert F. Perkins, helped shuttle the gifts from Seoul Air Base to the orphanage.  To each of the toys was attached a note from an American school boy or girl who had given the gift to his/her less fortunate counterpart in Korea.

SSS-547