Republican U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mountjoy has claimed in his campaign biography that he served aboard the battleship Missouri during the Korean War, but his military record shows no assignment on the famous vessel, The Times has found.
In an interview Thursday, Mountjoy acknowledged that he did not serve on the Missouri. Last week, when first asked about his record, he said his Missouri stint had been "very brief" and that he otherwise served on the U.S. heavy cruiser Bremerton, which has a less celebrated history.
He said later that he occasionally boarded the Missouri during the Korean conflict and was on the ship for "a couple of days at a time."
But his name does not appear on the ship's muster rolls for those years, according to a researcher engaged by The Times. Asked about this, Mountjoy said, "I would have never answered a roll on the Missouri" because he wasn't assigned to the ship.
He said he also spent a short time on the submarine Stickleback.
The statement about the Missouri was on Mountjoy's campaign website, alongside a photo of him as a young sailor. It read:
"After graduating from Monrovia-Arcadia-Duarte High School, Dick joined the Navy and served during the Korean War aboard the Battleship Missouri."
The claim also was featured in a film on the website.
Mountjoy, who is waging a longshot campaign against Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, blamed the "mistake" about his service on misinformation from an unknown source, dating back at least six years.
"I think it was just something that somebody picked up," Mountjoy said. "It didn't come from me."
Mountjoy said he had asked his campaign staff to remove the Missouri citation from the website several months ago and did not know why it had remained there.
He said he first noticed the error when it appeared in a tribute film that was shown at a party celebrating his retirement from the state Senate in 2000. It is that film, with the Missouri claim, that has been on his website.
Late Thursday, the campaign removed the Missouri reference from the site and replaced it with one to the Bremerton.
In response to a Times inquiry, the National Personnel Records Center said in a letter that Mountjoy's Navy Reserve record "does not reflect any service aboard the USS Missouri or the USS Stickleback."
The record confirms that the coauthor of Proposition 187, the 1994 initiative to withhold many government services from illegal immigrants, was on the Bremerton in the Korean combat zone in 1953.
