Opinion Letter
Thursday, 24 May 2001
World War II Memorial
Last year I was honored to present a check from South Carolina to former Senator Bob Dole. The donation was part of over $170 million raised to erect a monument to World War II on the National Mall in Washington, DC. This past week, after six years of deliberation, Congress has finally done what it should have decades ago. On Memorial Day 2003, the World War II Memorial will be opened to the public honoring the sacrifice Americans made on battlefields, in the skies, and upon the seas around the world.
There have been many folks that don’t like the Memorial’s proposed location or design. I think that they cannot see the bigger picture. They know what World War II was – and what it was about – but they have failed to grasp what it can and should mean to us today.
As a veteran combat fighter pilot of World War II, the Korean Conflict and the Berlin Crisis, it has taken me quite a long time to understand my own experience and how it relates to the concrete that soon will be poured in Washington, DC.
Exactly sixty years ago I was graduating high school in Calhoun Falls in Abbeville County. Much like our graduates over the past few weeks, there was uncertainty in the world and my path was not yet clear.
Sixty years ago my generation was struggling to see hope in the future because there was little hope in our recent past. The clouds of war were violently tossing over Europe and Asia. Our childhood was in doubt because you never knew if your family’s farm or store would be the next to be devoured by the Great Depression – we saw it happen to people everywhere, everyday.
Sixty years ago I was seventeen years old and preparing to enter Clemson College. Just seven months later I was preparing to go off to war.
Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, I hitchhiked from Clemson College to Spartanburg to sign up in the US Army Air Corps. It wasn’t for glory or adventure that millions of boys and girls signed up for military. It was, as President Roosevelt said: "We of this generation chance to live in a day and hour when our nation has been attacked and when our very existence … is at stake." We served to protect our homes, our families and our way of life – it was our duty.
Adolf Hitler believed that Democracy made us less disciplined and the Depression had made our ideology weak. He believed that we would quickly tire of war and that our people would demand a truce. Hitler had a series of victories under his belt that seemed to reinforce his theory.
Sixty years ago the Germans and their allies seemed invincible. We really did not know how much longer freedom would ring. The Second World War that ensued was a dirty, hard and horrible experience. We saw friends injured and killed.
We persevered – we won. But, this Memorial is not to a particular generation or to our leaders at that time. This will be a monument to the average and common fighting men and women and the common thread that binds us all even today.
Unlike in a dictatorship or under communist rule, we in America had to choose to fight and win. It was a choice that was made by every housewife, factory worker, political leader, and infantry soldier nationwide. Victory required millions of individual sacrifices and acts of courage – giving people around the world hope that freedom was possible.
The impact of the World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC is more than we can realize. As many as 1,100 veterans die each day and in the next sixty years even our grandchildren will be gone. The wartime experience of the United States will be lost as people become too young to remember any of it.
The National Mall – the space between the Washington and Lincoln Monuments – has become mythical, hallowed ground. It is fitting this Memorial will sit there. World War II and its implications must become a part of our collective consciousness. Sitting there – between our nation’s father and the man who tried to bring us back together – the war will be remembered for what it was then and what it means now.
This Memorial is not going to be erected to glorify one generation because it was not a War of great leaders or weapons or tactics. World War II is not only a cautionary tale; it was the ultimate demonstration of the sacrifice people in this Democracy were willing to make for freedom.
I believe this Memorial will be a constant reminder of just how strong each of us really can be when we join hands. It will be a witness for generations to come that this Democracy is greater than even the greatest odds.
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For more information, contact:
David A. Adams, 803/734-0380