Lieutenant Schumacher had endured a brutal beating on January 26 1968, followed by an even more savage assault the next day. Dragged into the same interrogation room where the Pueblo’s officers had once been threatened with a firing squad, he was ordered to kneel and raise his arms over his head. Two guards cocked their AK-47s, pressing the bayonets within inches of his face.

“What oceanographic measurements did you take?” an interpreter with fierce black eyes demanded in precise English.

The American officer answered with defiance rather than fear:

“Why did you shoot at our ship?”

Like Commander Bucher, Schumacher held a mind full of classified knowledge. He had written the daily logs of the Pueblo’s mission, recording the positions of radar and radio sites intercepted along their route. As the ship’s communications officer, he understood the code machines and, more dangerously, which specialists handled the most sensitive electronic equipment.

Schumacher felt an unshakable duty to protect those secrets—if necessary, with his life. Alone in his freezing cell, he resolved to follow the U.S. Armed Forces Code of Conduct, revealing nothing but his name, rank, and serial number. Yet, he knew his tolerance for pain was limited. It was only a matter of time before the agony would force him past the limits of discipline and endurance.

Now, as he knelt trembling, his arms aching under the strain, the interrogator and guards closed in. Five other North Koreans stood by, observing with the detached curiosity of students watching a grim experiment. When Schumacher refused to speak about oceanographic work, one guard began striking his elbow with brutal precision while another drove booted kicks into his chest. Searing pain shot through him like electricity; his ribs burned, and each breath came shorter than the last. The beating dragged on for nearly fifteen minutes until his body felt aflame and his thoughts blurred into confusion.

He realized he could not last much longer. The information they wanted seemed trivial—hardly worth dying for. Yet revealing it would break the Code. Then again, could the Code even apply in this twisted limbo? The United States and North Korea were not technically at war. Was he even a prisoner of war? And if they beat him into madness, what might he say without meaning to? Desperate to end the pain, he gave in.

“All right,” he gasped. “Stop kicking me and I’ll tell you.”

Schumacher explained how the Pueblo measured ocean temperatures and salinity. In that moment, the North Koreans had begun to infiltrate his mind, and the realization horrified him. On January 28, consumed by despair, he tried to end his life in the same way Commander Bucher had—by drowning himself in the small water pail in his cell. But, like his captain, he found the task impossible.

The beatings were not limited to officers. The day after Schumacher’s suicide attempt, he walked the corridor and saw Harry Iredale, the Pueblo’s junior oceanographer, forced to kneel with his arms raised in the same position—another victim of the relentless cruelty that had become their daily existence.

Source “Act of War”, by Jack Cheevers