Tag Archives: Memorial Day

What Were Their Names? The “Memory” in Memorial Day

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The year rolls around and our lives wend on, and Memorial Day has come again – even on May 30, as so many of us remember from our long-ago youths. In many ways, with school almost over, it seemed like the opening of summer. But of course it was, and is, so much more.
Caton’s a small town, but it took the lead once the Civil War was over, before even “Decoration Day” was solidly established. Caton created the first Civil War memorial in Steuben County. It’s an obelisk (popular in America at the time) and a cenotaph – a memorial for those buried elsewhere. And on it, they carved the names of their fellows who were never coming home.
Statues soon took the place of obelisks, and granite Union soldiers still stand guard over Corning, Hornell, Hammondsport, Painted Post, North Cohocton, and Bath. There are also Civil War memorials at Bath National Cemetery (another obelisk), and at Bath’s Nondaga Cemetery – not to mention smaller plaques and “all wars” monuments, and maybe even some stained-glass windows in churches.
Following “the Great War,” Frederick Carder created a striking glass memorial with the names of Corning’s dead – including his own son. It’s now at Corning City Hall, facing Market Street. It replaced an earlier list installed on the clock tower.
Grand Army of the Republic (Union veterans) had named their posts for fallen comrades – now American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars posts followed suit. There were also “architectural” war memorials – Bath municipal building, a library and a stadium in Corning.
During World War II many communities created displays listing their residents in the service – with gold stars added for those who died in the line of duty. After the war some of these were preserved, often little-noticed, until 21 year-old Maya Lin’s design for the Vietnam Memorial was unveiled, to public uproar. Her plan was a 500-foot wall of reflective stone, bearing the names of the American dead – now over 58,000.
Bigots, of course, screeched at the notion of an ASIAN-American designing a U.S. monument, but mostly people were just bewildered. Everyone, of course, was familiar with statues of horseborne generals, waving swords and delighting pigeons. But what in the world was this? How could we ever “honor” the dead with a goofy avant-guard creation?
The governing commission, though rattled, stuck to its guns, and compromised by adding a few discretely-placed traditional statues. When the monument opened, visitors were staggered. To walk down 500 feet of nothing but 60,000 names made an experience far beyond what anyone expected. No tugging of heartstrings, no sounds, no images, just the names. Even people who had no direct connection at all burst into tears.
We came to recognize the impact and importance of the NAMES. Each one was a person, an individual. Each one was given his or her name by delighted parents, seconds after they drew their first breath. Each name was called by friends – C’mon Johnny, Guido, Sharif! Their names were read when they graduated from high school. They’re still whispered in the privacy of darkened bedrooms.
Bath, Hammondsport, Cohocton, and Prattsburgh have created their own “name” monuments, some going back to the Revolutionary War. Hammondsport Central School exhibits the names and the photos of its fallen alumni. Many communities now have street banners with the names and photos of veterans. “At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them,” Laurence Binyon wrote in 1914. “What were their names, tell me what were their names,” sang Woody Guthrie in 1941. “Did you have a friend on the good Reuben James?”
Every war at some point passes from living memory, and all at once those names are “only” names on a list, or names cut in stone. That’s why we have memorials. Why we have Memorial Day.

Remember: Prisoners of War

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On Memorial Day we mostly bear in mind those killed in action, or who died of wounds, in the U. S. Armed Forces. But the Day recognizes all service members who died in performance of their duties, which would include non-battle causes, and causes which are INDIRECT results of battle – in particular, as prisoners of war.

Corporal Reuben Shettler of Pulteney, who died in 1942 at a prison camp in the Philippines, was one of the first World War II dead from our area.

Numbers are fuzzy, and sources differ, but I checked those World War II battles where we suffered the most men AND women (such as Lt. Eunice Young of Arkport… like Shettler, in the Philippines) taken into captivity. You’re more likely to be captured when retreating or losing, or flying over enemy territory. You’re least likely while advancing, or stalemated, or at sea away from land.

Our first substantial block of prisoners, about 400, were taken when the Japanese invaded Guam with a much larger force – plus the people of Guam were now under Japan’s harsh rule. Then some 430 were captured at Wake Island after a long fierce battle, plus 1100 civilian contractors.

Around 370 survivors (out of a thousand men) were captured when U.S.S. Houston was sunk at the Battle of Sunda Strait, along with the Australian cruiser H.M.A.S. Perth.

Like Wake and Guam, the Philippines had been a U. S. possession since the Spanish-American War. By the time of surrender in 1942, a hundred thousand U. S. and Philippine soldiers were prisoners. Brutality, neglect, and bad staff work killed thousands. Survivors suffered years of torture, slavery, and privation. But that was the last large group of ground forces to be taken in the Pacific war.

Over on the other side of the globe, “green” American troops were bowled over at the Kasserine Pass (1942) in North Africa, and 3000 surrendered. At the Battle of the Bulge (1944-45), the captured and missing came to 26,600.

Then there was the air war. I knew a fighter pilot in the 9th Air Force who was told that if he went down and had to surrender, try to turn himself in to the German Air Force, for there was still some fellow feeling among fliers. If that was not possible, surrender to army or navy, which had a history and culture that included taking prisoners and the rules of war. If need be, surrender to S.S. or to civilian police, which at least were under some form of discipline. At all costs try to avoid being taken by civilians, who might well take reprisals against the destruction being rained on them from the sky. About 35,600 Americans were taken in the European air war.

The Pacific air offensive got going later – we had to fight our way closer to Japan – and at a time when Japan had lost much of its capacity to fight against the big bombers. About 5400 were captured. Jere Baker of Bath was starved and tortured, as were a great many others.

Germany more or less followed traditional rules of war with prisoners from western nations such as Britain, Canada, and the U.S., in part because we held many of THEIR men captive, and they didn’t want reprisals. As the end approached, though, suffering increased in the prison camps. Food and medicine weren’t getting delivered, and some guards began to take revenge. Others, though, tried to get chummy in hopes of better treatment when THEY became prisoners.

In Japan, on the other hand, if a soldier surrendered his own parents might commit suicide, so appalling was the disgrace. ANYONE who surrendered was disgusting and contemptible, so they had no concern for their own men in our hands. There weren’t very many in the first place, and to most Japanese they deserved any suffering that came to them. Japan had no incentive to treat our people well.

So even in this one war, tens of thousands of American military personnel died as prisoners – directly murdered, or killed through mistreatment, neglect, poor conditions, even through despair or suicide. Tens of thousands who survived suffered shortened lives, or blighted lives. They should be remembered too.

Memorial Day, and the Cost of War

After the Great War, master glass artist Frederick Carder created the beautiful memorial to Corning’s war dead, now exhibited at city hall. Among 30 names was that of Carder’s own son.

*If in 1920 you had killed every man, woman, and child in the state of Nevada… then killed another 40,000 in Delaware… then maimed every person in Wyoming… then wounded 10,000 more in Delaware… you’d just about equal America’s losses in the First World War.

*World War II, of course, was even bigger. Simon Winchester wrote, “The remains of sixty thousand young seamen now lay at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. More men had died there in the six years of the Second World War than in all the conflicts in the ocean since the first Romans had set out on their invading expeditions nearly two thousand years before.”

*By the 1940 census you’d need to add up the populations of Wyoming, Nevada, and Alaska to make up America’s dead in that war, while the wounded could be paired one-to-one with the people of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

*Others suffered worse. You’d have to kill the entire populations of 22 states, two territories, and the District of Columbia to reach the LOW estimate of Soviet deaths. They had more civilians killed in a single city than we had TOTAL deaths worldwide, and Winston Churchill claimed that residents of London were killed at a higher rate than American military personnel were. Fifty percent of the World War II dead were civilians, compared with 10% in World War I.

*But even here in mostly-shielded America, the cost was still heartbreaking. The small Hammondsport school endured the deaths of 14 alumni. All four of Theodore Roosevelt’s sons fought in the First World War, where one died. The three survivors fought again in the Second War, where two of them died. Joseph P. Kennedy had three sons and a son-in-law in World War II. Two died, and one was gravely injured. The five Sullivan brothers all served, and all died, on the same ship.

*While the Second World War was a time of great unity and great opportunity, it also stressed Americans to the breaking point. Divorce went up, and so did illegitimacy. So did premarital sex, extramarital sex, prostitution, venereal disease, and juvenile delinquency. Some families gingerly stitched themselves back together afterward, but others broke into shards, or spewed forth rancor for decades. Race riots broke out as bigots murderously tried to hammer African Americans back into “their place,” even if it hurt the war effort.

*For the almost 900,000 Americans who were wounded in the two world wars, at least their pain was obvious and to some extent comprehensible. Emotional and psychological suffering did not even have a vocabulary yet. Those who suffered were considered moral failures, and looked on with pity or contempt. These were the men sitting by themselves at opposite ends of the bar, speaking to no one and self-medicating with alcohol. The highest veteran suicide rates were not from Vietnam vets, or Gulf War vets, but from World War II vets.

*Some estimate the financial cost of the War at almost 15 trillion in today’s dollars. But THOSE bills are long since paid off. And they count for nothing beside the human cost. The bills for THAT are still falling due.