Honoring a united nation

JOSEPH N. BELL

Memorial Day has come and gone, but not the debate over the National

World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., which was dedicated last

weekend. That’s likely to go on way past the time when there are any

World War II veterans left to go see it. Its site, price and design

-- especially its design -- have all come in for heavy criticism. But

last Saturday, several hundred thousand veterans and their families

seemed happy to use its dedication as an excuse for an enormous block

party in the nation’s capital.

They were celebrating my war, so I paid more attention to Memorial

Day -- both past and present -- this year than I usually do. When I

was growing up, my family spent every Memorial Day -- we called it

Decoration Day then -- in the county seat town of Decatur, Ind.,

where my uncle gave the same speech every year for as long as I can

remember, and there was always a parade. Most of the marchers were

World War I veterans, with a smattering of vets from the

Spanish-American War and a lone survivor of the American Civil War.

He’s the one I remember most vividly, hobbling always at the front

of the parade, leaning heavily on a cane but refusing any other help.

It was right and proper that he be first, because Memorial Day was

created to honor the Civil War dead. It has since been expanded to

embrace all American war veterans, but when I think back on those

childhood Memorial Day parades, I see that lone Civil War marcher

symbolizing the thinning ranks of World War II veterans today and

providing a bridge between the terrible fratricide of his war and the

kids, like me, who were watching him, and in less than two decades

would be fighting a war of their own.

According to news reports of last week’s memorial dedication

festivities, there were dozens of researchers on the scene collecting

oral histories from the World War II vets who had gathered there.

That got me wondering how I would respond to their questions, and the

first thought that occurred to me was what set World War II apart

from every other military action in my lifetime: the coalescing of a

nation behind a citizen military. This is the theme critics say is

lost in the design of the memorial.

It would be impossible for me to sum up my feelings about World

War II without putting it into the context of its time -- and, in my

case, to remember how the 20-year-old son of a middle-class WASP

family in a mid-size Indiana town necessarily saw those times. My

vision included none of the social injustice of the late 1930s. It

was bounded by the world in which I grew up. In that world, it was

not embarrassing to feel honest patriotism. When this country was

attacked, it was natural and normal to put aside whatever you were

engaged in and go to her defense. It was really as simple as that.

And I find efforts of politicians today to draw comparisons between

that time and the preemptive invasion of Iraq downright obscene.

This isn’t a reflection on the courageous men and women who have

fought -- and are fighting -- those subsequent wars. It is rather a

reflection on the politicians who got us into wars -- specifically

Iraq and Vietnam -- that divided rather than united this country. The

volunteers and conscripts who fought those wars without the clarity

of either personal motivation or powerful public support are heroes.

The Vietnam mea culpa of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was

small solace to the families of the 50,000 Americans killed in action

there. We lost a lot more men and women in World War II, but we

always knew why we were there and the solidity of our support back

home. And that’s what our memorial should make very clear.

I was a junior at the University of Missouri when Pearl Harbor was

attacked. I went home for Christmas and enlisted in the Navy. I was

underage, and my father -- in spite of the fact that we were at war

-- had to sign papers giving his permission. He put up only a brief

argument that I should finish college first. I joined the Navy Air

Corps not out of a consummate desire to fly but because it was the

most difficult service to get into and offered the greatest promise

of attracting young women.

There is an immediacy about wartime that precludes great thoughts.

You live day-to-day. Your life is bounded by what you can see. The

result is a paradox: I came home missing many of my close friends and

convinced that mankind’s only salvation is to find some means short

of war to settle our differences. But World War II also provided me

with human perquisites I might never have known any other way.

It taught me the value of interdependent friendship -- of being

able to trust and depend on another human being literally with your

life, and to be able to offer the same in return. It taught me that

both our physical and intellectual limits are far beyond what we

believe them to be -- that we can endure stress and physical

hardships and make decisions we wouldn’t believe possible under

normal circumstances. And it taught me another paradox: To take

intelligent risks, but always to understand the odds and weigh what I

might gain against them.

So what message, if any, does all this carry to new generations of

Americans who may be growing very tired of the canonizing of World

War II and the people who lived it? I think this is a question that

should have driven the thinking of the people who designed the

memorial.

I haven’t seen it. My reactions are based on pictures and written

comments, so maybe I should withhold judgment. But I don’t need to

see it to know that what the memorial must say is that united in

purpose and determination, this country is indomitable. And that for

a half-dozen very special years back in the 1940s, we proved it.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.