Memorial Day Service at Skinner Butte Park -  May 30, 2005

 

Statement at the Lane County Veterans Memorial, Eugene, OR, May 30, 2005

By Edgar Peara,
retired minister and WWII veteran. Served as a combat engineer in Algeria, Tunisia, Sicily, Italy, France [on Utah Beach the morning of D-Day] Okinawa and Korea.

Sixty-six years ago this week a military academy class graduated in which I was a young cadet.  Two and a half years later the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred and I and my class of young officers were swept into military service.  Our involvement in WWII led to the deaths of my classmates who as expendable lieutenants were killed and left their bodies in Algeria, Tunisia, Sicily, Italy, France, Germany, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and at sea.

After the war I visited my classmates parents to extend my sympathy.  I don't remember that any of their sons who had been old enough to have wives or children.   One mother whose son was in Pappy Boyington's Black Sheep Squadron in the Pacific never recovered from her grief over the loss of her son. Bobby Alexander had been Governor of Iowa's Boys State, an all-state wrestler, class president, a neighborhood playmate from the time we were seven years old and my Kappa Sigma fraternity brother at Iowa State. His mother, submerged in grief, died the year after I visited her when I got out of the service in 1946. She was only about 50 years old.

On Memorial Day I remember Bobby, Jim Latham, Jerry Kadet, Glen Young and a line of others who parade through my mind as bright, healthy, fine youths who never returned from battlefields around the world. Their loss, my memories of them and my imagination of the lives and fulfillment they never knew makes Memorial Day an agonizing event for me.

The casualties I remember, as well as most of the American lives lost in the present war, were young who died for a way of life they did not have the time to know or enjoy.  It is no longer true that most war casualties are young soldiers.

For the hundreds of American military deaths in Iraq that we have suffered there have been thousands of Iraqi civilians killed.  We of this memorial observance effort believe that all of the victims of the war deserve to be mourned.

The casualties say, "We have given our lives but until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.  Our deaths are not ours, they are yours, they will mean what you make them.  Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say, it is you who must say this. We leave you our deaths.  Give them their meaning.  We have died.  Remember us." [adapted from Archibald MacLeish, "The Young Dead Soldiers"]

Wouldn't any response to the dead that might be worthy of their blasted hopes, thwarted talents, shattered bodies minds and painful deaths have to be efforts to prevent wars in the future?  We need to create a society worthy of their human sacrifices.  We who survive need to build a world order that doesn't call for innocent blood offerings. How much suffering from military violence, as well as growth in international humanitarianism, will have to occur before the world realizes that war can no longer be regarded as a reasonable or appropriate instrument of foreign policy?

Nonetheless research to develop more deadly atomic and hydrogen bombs continues. Efforts to limit the countries that possess them is not stopping their proliferation.  As such weapons' destructiveness, increases, the  security of the world and the survival of humanity diminishes.

How long will nations be willing to resort to mass violence whenever it suits their purpose regardless of the pain it inflicts on its victims?  The military's callous indifference to violence is as disturbing as its disposition to use it.  Military power is as corrupting to those who posses it as it is pitiless to its victims.  The world's commitment to militarism and violence diminishes the chance that peace can exist and grow.  Violent force is incompatible with freedom, incapable of guaranteeing security and ineffective in dealing with evil. Gandhi wisely said, "For nations to be truly democratic they must become courageously non-violent."

None of us were born to be non-violent or charitable.  We come to them through loving education. Thus what is of most importance if the world is to be preserved is that all humans need to be loved and cherished.  No one has the right to take the life of another person.

Peace is the heritage of the just, not of the strong.  Peace reigns when nations renounce violence and become just.  Peace depends upon the world giving the economic assistance that will raise the living standards of the poor,  hungry sick multitudes who suffer miserable lives.  Such aid extended will then enable the underdeveloped areas to help themselves.

Whatever created life obviously wants its creatures to survive, be happy and grow.  But it is not powerful enough to insure such existence for everyone.  And this is where our intentions and efforts come into play.  Our intelligent, unselfish efforts for peace and justice can make us enabling agents to bring the reign of peace into closer realization.  We need to shake off the dust of selfish living and smothering petty values so that we are more awake and dedicated to humanitarian love and caring.

Arousing dedication to that effort for  peace and justice by our supporting nonviolence is what we believe to be the best observance of Memorial Day.

Edgar Peara, May 30, 2005
 
 

Memorial Day Observance - Main Page

Our Press Release - dated May 26, 2005

More pictures and story of the day...

The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak

Text of Memorial Service