Sunday marks the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Kapyong, a key battle in the Korean War.
April 24, 1951 is a day Mike Czuboka will never forget.
"We were a battalion of about 700 men sitting on a hill called 677. It's actually a mountain it was quite steep," he said Sunday.
The Korean War veteran says many Winnipeggers may not know much about what happened that day, but the name may sound familiar.
The Kapyong Barracks on Kenaston Boulevard were named after the battle, which is widely regarded as a battle saving South Korea from communism.
"It's probably one of the most significant battles in the war," said Czuboka.
When he was just 19 years old, Czuboka volunteered to fight with the second battalion of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry.
Czuboka says in the Battle of Kapyong his battalion was outnumbered ten to one, but the group held their ground.
Their victory blocked Chinese forces from capturing South Korea’s capital and the rest of the country.
"The fact that we survived at Kapyong was a sort of a miracle because we didn't think we were going to get out of there because we were surrounded," he said.
Sixty-five years later, the fight is to keep the name and memory of the battle alive in Winnipeg.
"I wanted to make sure there was a park there was a space," said Scott Gillingham, city councilor for St. James - Brooklands -Weston.
The land where the Kapyong barracks sits empty is tied up in a long legal battle.
Gillingham worries its name will go if the land is ever re-developed and he wants to re-name a playground on the corner of Amherst and Ness 'Kapyong Park.'
Gillingham hopes to have the park spruced up with new benches and sidewalks and officially rename it by August.
"My hope is that future generations will play in the park or pass by the park and ask their parents why is it named Kapyong? What is Kapyong all about?" said Gillingham, who hopes stories like Czuboka’s will get passed on at the park through informational signs.
"I don't think the Chinese realized that we had so many heavy weapons, and after that they probably figured they had encountered some huge force but there were only 30 of us in that platoon," said Czuboka.
Czuboka is one of three Kapyong veterans left in Manitoba.
Last year he published a novel inspired by his own experience in the Korean War, titled ‘Manifest Destiny.’
Ten Canadians were killed in the Battle of Kapyong and 23 were injured.
In total, 500 Canadian soldiers sacrificed their lives in the Korean war.
In Manitoba the Korean War, known commonly as the ‘Forgotten War’, is commemorated with a monument at the Brookside Cemetery.
