The Korea War Parallel And The Continuing Need
The Korean War began in June 1950 and concluded in July 1953. This timeline overlaps precisely with the period when Blount was dealing with the VA’s rejection and making her decision to give the device to France.
American combat casualties in Korea included significant numbers of amputees. By the time the Korean War ended, tens of thousands of additional American veterans had returned with severe injuries.
These veterans entered the same VA system that had rejected Blount’s feeding device. They faced the same feeding challenges that Blount had observed in World War II veterans and had designed her device to address.
The VA’s decision in 1951-1952 not to adopt Blount’s device thus had direct, contemporary consequences for Korean War veterans entering the system. Veterans who lost arms in Korea and who might have benefited from Blount’s device were not offered it — because the VA had said no.
The French military hospitals, meanwhile, had access to it.
This temporal proximity between the VA’s rejection and the Korean War’s production of additional amputee veterans is one of the more specifically documented instances of how institutional decisions with racial implications had material costs that were borne by the people those institutions were supposed to serve.