Rocky (bear)

She was purchased from a Kumamoto zoo to serve as a mascot for the U.S. 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team during the Korean War.

After she was discharged, Rocky was shipped to the United States where she was a guest on the television program Zoo Parade.

Members of the U.S. 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team's AAA Battery were stationed in Kumamoto during the Korean War.

[2] Master sergeant Gene Castle, a paratrooper from Paintsville, Kentucky, raised Rocky from the time she was a cub.

He elected to donate her to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago because many of the soldiers who served in the battalion were from the Midwest.

[3] Rocky was discharged and travelled on the Japanese transport ship Arimasan Maru to the Oakland Army Terminal,[2] where she nipped at a dockworker.

Then about 16 months old and weighing 120 pounds (54 kg), she was the subject of a newspaper article which announced that "Rocky, the world's youngest lady paratrooper, was locked up Saturday in Lincoln Park Zoo—and there she'll stay.