Their battles were fought in Korea more than a half century ago in the sizzling heat of summer and deep freeze of winter, while hundreds of thousands of Communist Chinese poured from the hillsides intent on killing them.

But throughout the day yesterday at Farrington High School, six Korean War veterans brought the three-year "police action" a little bit closer to home, and made a little bit more real the war in which more than 36,000 Americans died.

Nick Nishimoto, who spent 33 months as a prisoner of war in North Korea, told students that his captors fed the POWs wheat and barley infested with worms. He closed his eyes and shoved it down his throat, he said.

"When I first got caught, it was winter, and the ice from the river was at least 5 feet thick," Nishimoto, now 78, said. "And our guys started dying."

There were 3,000 men in his camp, north of the capital, Pyongyang. The dead were buried under ice and rock along the riverside. Months later, when the rains came, the bodies would be washed away.

Nishimoto buried his friend, Albert Chang, on a hillside.

The veterans were all Hawai'i born and raised, like most of the students they were talking to.

"I'm a Kalihi boy, 1949 Farrington graduate," said Francis Yasutake, 76, to cheers and applause in the school auditorium.

The Korean War Veterans Association members tell their stories at high schools around the state, battling to preserve a history and sacrifice that often gets lost between the global significance of World War II and America's controversial involvement in Vietnam.

"It's a program to remind all of you that the freedom that you all enjoy today at this moment comes at a very high price." said Moses Pakaki, one of the veterans.

It was also particularly appropriate with Veterans Day tomorrow, and as the U.S. prepares to give some thanks to those who have worn the uniform for the nation.

But yesterday's presentation for students taking social studies at Farrington showed there still is a ways to go.

Retired Army Lt. Col. Dave Carlson, who runs the JROTC program and arranged the visit, threw out a question to a group of several hundred students who listened to the 11:20 a.m. presentation.

"What happens on Sunday?" Carlson asked.

Silence. Then, "Church!"

"What else happens?" Carlson asked, reminding the group of the day's other significance.

The group of vets, still spry but with some shaking hands and gray hair under black Korean War Veterans Association garrison caps, showed a short documentary that chronicled the seesaw war in which United Nations forces were pushed back to the Pusan Perimeter in South Korea, fought all the way back up to the China border, and ended in a stalemate at the 38th Parallel amid China's entry in the 1950-53 war.

When China entered the war, "you are talking about a lot of people — a lot of people," Pakaki, 77, said. "When they attacked, it's like water flowing over the hill."

The vets brought military gear from the era — all OD green, canvas and steel and no polymers or digital camouflage. Fred Ito, a Kaimuki High School grad, pointed to a winter fur-lined hat with a red star on the front and recalled the Chinese wearing those when they entered the war.

In Korea, the Hawai'i veterans faced heat, cold, a determined enemy and lingering discrimination. Some joined the Army in Hawai'i, went through basic training at Schofield Barracks and ended up with the 25th Infantry Division.

Lucio Sanico, who was in the same unit as Nishimoto, remembered when the Chinese had surrounded their position, a company commander had told him and other soldiers to get in a Jeep and he was able to escape.

"If he didn't give that order, I would have been captured with Nick Nishimoto," Sanico said.

Nico Caberto, a 14-year-old Farrington student, said he knew the Korean War was short, "but I really didn't study up on that."

"I think the fighting in Korea was very tough," he said after seeing and hearing about the conditions.

He also was impressed to hear the veterans speak firsthand.

"I never did hear a veteran's story before, the actual thing, and not from a TV," Caberto said.

The fighting conditions, and particularly the winters, also made an impression on 16-year-old Jorge Portillo.

"I'm impressed that they survived the Korean War. It's tough," Portillo said.

Mike Inouye, 78, who was born in McCully and graduated from McKinley High School, handles a lot of the arrangements for the vets to speak at different schools. This year, the group has spoken at seven or eight schools.

In general, there's an indifference to the Korean War, he's observed.

"People don't even think about it," Inouye said. "When you mention it to them, they say, 'Oh yeah.' That's it. It's not like World War II or the Vietnam War. We're in a class by ourselves."

But the Farrington students were in rapt attention when Nishimoto spoke to them yesterday, hanging in silence on his words of desperation and eventual freedom, an account that will be hard to forget.

He told the group how thousands of men died in his camp from sickness, and of not taking a bath for eight months.

Asked what he did when he was finally freed, Nishimoto said at the 38th Parallel and present-day division between North and South Korea, he took off his Chinese Communist clothing. Everything except his underwear.

"I balled it up, and I threw it off the truck," Nishimoto said. "I don't know why I did it — just my hate for communism. I wanted to leave it back in North Korea."

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.