September 29, 1989 

SBV/RSM News

By Amanda Wray News Staff Writer

         More than 20 years have passed since Ken Braden was a prisoner of war, but it has taken that long for him to don a POW/MIA bracelet.

         His red aluminum band reminds him that Air Force Sgt.  Joseph A. Matejov never came home after his plane was shot down over Laos in 1973.

         As recently  as 1985, Braden, 43, of El Toro, said four MIAs were sighted but skeptics say servicemen still missing in action are probably no longer alive.  Braden is not so sure.

         "I think the chances are they might not be, but I don't know... I don't know," he said, calling the historically slow release of names by the Vietnamese government a bargaining chip.  "Everything the Vietnamese do is politically expedient," he said.

         It has also been a slow process for Braden to really accept what took place during the war, and to face his own demons.

         "If I'm of service to another individual and I'm not within myself, then everything is fine with me," Braden said.  "That's the key to my life now."

         In the past few weeks, Braden has attended several flag-raising ceremonies and spoke about his POW experiences publicly for the first time.

         "It dawned on me that my time has come to be of service to the veteran," he said.  "I know that I can be a good public speaker and I can get the message out.  Maybe if its times begin making some speeches."

         "There is much that needs to be done for the vet," he said.  "They need adequate medical care-emotional and physical."

         Braden needed everything the the system had to offer.

From 1965 to 1968,Braden was flown in and out of Thailand, Vietnam  and Taiwan to build power plants aircraft arresting barriers, devices to catch planes on aircraft carriers.  He often dined on steak and lobster far from the fire fights.

         I never raised my weapon to shoot at anybody," Braden said.  "I just got hit by a rocket."

         One fateful day on the northern coast of South Vietnam, Braden was building a power plant surrounded by a 12-foot block wall and covered by a tin roof.

           "I was screwing the last light bulb in," Braden said, when a rocket came in a vent and bounced off a diesel engine..... I went through the wall.  "

         Bradens back was broken.  Then he watched a follow sergeant get killed moments later, unable to do anything.  He was tied to wooden sticks and taken prisoner where he witnessed the torture and execution of  fellow soldiers and a young girl, the daughter of the town mayor.

Scars on his wrists and toes are reminders of his ... own torture.  "I was left for 'dead,' he said recounting how he was rescued by Green Berets who the next day, started his rehabilitation by removing the leeches from his face and legs.

         Today, he is fighting the skin cancer that has formed on his arms as a result of exposure to Agent Orange.

         Yet, he calls himself just an insignificant part of the picture.

         "Any G.I. that's spent a year in Nam deserves far more respect and admiration dm I do," he said."

         "The are the ones who deserve our help.

         'I was just a victim of circumstances ," he said.  "I just happened to get caught.  When I look at the torture, that those guys went through on a daily basis.....

         Braden wavered.  He said his healing process is far from over.

         Although he is "getting his act together" with a nice new car, a cellular telephone and a hot new product to sell (3-D cameras), Braden still  cannot recount his capture without tears.

         "I hope the tears never go away, 'cause that's one of the things I've been privileged to have  - the sensitivity which I never bad before.

         "I've gone through a lot of denial" he said.  "I still suffer from some, but not like I used to."

         Braden still has nightmares, but his blackouts are a thing of the past.  For nearly six years, he has stayed off the drink and drugs that led him to a desperate suicide attempt.

         "I was able to come back after, hitting rock bottom" he said of the day he drove his car in front of a truck, asking for God's forgiveness.

         Braden destroyed his car, and continued to live in an alcoholic haze until he woke up after six weeks of continual blackouts.  Even his mother refused to see him.

         "I woke up in an orange grove in Loma Linda with black ants crawling all over me," Braden said.

         "Then I checked into the VA hospital as a crazy person"

         Dec 13, Braden will celebrate six years of sobriety, four of which he has spent with his fiancée, who supported him and endured through the nightmares.

         "Some nights I would pick her up and throw her out of bad and hold the wall up at the same time," Braden said.

         Today, Braden tries to wave and smile at people whenever possible, for he knows that our environment does a lot of things to us."

         Braden believes people make decisions based on information in their subconscious, whether real or imagined.  Describing a hypothetical situation, he said if a child saw his father kill 20 people every day, he will grow up believing 20 people ought to die on a daily basis.

October 2000

Braden resurfaced in October 2000 on AOL chatroom NAMVET   [kenwbrad].  Claimed the USAF finally recognized him and gave him "an honorary appointment to the academy"  in 1993!!!

Quotes from Braden -- " I know there is no proof"

"I have the scars to prove it"

"That's the way it was"

"I would go to Leavenworth if I told the truth"

" The North Viet Col that was in charge of my capture lives in Fountain Valley CA"