Posted on 08/11/2010 7:19:41 AM PDT by nuconvert
WASHINGTON: Some 25 years ago I was asked to speak at a ceremony marking the 40th anniversary of the death of the famous war correspondent, Ernie Pyle, who had been killed by a Japanese sniper on a small island off Okinawa in the last days of World War II. The memorial was held in the Punch Bowl, the national military cemetery overlooking Honolulu.
It was a mid-morning affair that attracted more than a thousand spectators, most of them veterans of the bloody campaigns in the Pacific from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima and Okinawa ― all of them "Ernie's boys.'' In the mist and sunshine of a glorious Hawaii morning with the weathered faces of America's best generation surrounding me in campaign hats and medals, it was one of the most humbling experiences I have ever had.
I recalled that day and the memories of loved ones lost during that bleak time of my boyhood as I read that Barack Obama had deployed the American ambassador to Japan as an official delegate to the 65th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, a decision that at best can only be described as insensitive to the feelings of millions of Americans who still remember vividly the pain and anguish caused by the Japanese Empire in World War II.
How surprising that Obama, who grew up not far from the sacred ground of Pearl Harbor and the cemetery where the victims of Japanese treachery lie, would become the first American chief executive to do so since the conflict in the Pacific ended in August of 1945 with the only two atomic detonations in anger in history.
(Excerpt) Read more at koreatimes.co.kr ...
How about an uncle? He was in the Big Red One in 1945 in Germany (not being sent home yet), on standby for transfer to the Pacific Theater for Operation "Olympic", the invasion of the Home Islands.
He probably wouldn't be here today (he's 94 and still kicking it), and neither would his kids: a university dean, a stationer's senior salesman, and an RN. And neither would their kids, or their grandchildren who are just now beginning to appear.
I might be here, but I would be short a lot of cousins.
Please keep me in mind for next summer's tour! Road trip!
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