The effort to preserve the Waikiki War Memorial Natatorium

17 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Great War centennial, Memory, Monuments and Statuary

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The Waikiki War Memorial Natatorium as it is today.

Since the start of the WW1 centennial there has been a great deal of effort to inventory and/or preserve the roughly 10,000 Great War memorials spread across the United States. One of the most unique is the Waikiki War Memorial Natatorium. Hawaii was a territory in 1917 and would not become a state until 1959. Still, nearly 10,000 Hawaiians fought in World War One, and 101 of them would lose their lives. That is itself a story that someone will hopefully tell over these next few years.

One effort that has been underway for some time is to save the natatorium. Hawaiians opened this memorial in 1927 and used it for decades in ways that reflect its island provenance. Olympian Duke Kahanamoku himself swam and surfed there, as did thousands of other Hawaiians. It eventually fell into disrepair and closed in 1979. Though the natatorium closed, its location is still an active place for memorial ceremonies and other events of the like.

Here is a recent video that depicts the current effort to preserve the natatorium. Note that my sending it does not automatically imply any position on the preservation effort. That is something the people of Hawaii will decide for themselves. It is a story that nonetheless needs to be told.

(image By Waikiki Natatorium [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons)

Who will be the last remaining WW2 veteran?

05 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Memory, WW2

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An aging WW2 veterans is escorted onto the Hermione, July 3, 2015

Here and below aging WW2 veterans are escorted onto the Hermione, July 3, 2015. Note the cameraman in the bottom image.

Some readers know of my fascination with aging soldiers. On Friday another volunteer and I conducted an oral history at Governors Island with a former trumpeter in the First Army Band. He told us that in the mid-1950s he and the band gigged in Vermont at a ceremony for a handful of aging Civil War veterans. This was on my mind a few hours later when I was at the South Street Seaport to see the Hermione. There were many things going on for the July 4th weekend, including something for World War II veterans. There is still a ways to go before the WW2 soldiers are finally no more. Generationally they are at the point where Civil War veterans were in the 1920s-30s. There were then still many thousands, which got down to the hundreds, and then finally just a handful over the next 15-20 years. I am too young to remember that, but I do remember a time when soldiers of the Great War were not that uncommon. Seeing these two being escorted onto the Hermione I could not help but wonder who will be the Frank Buckles of the Greatest Generation.

The First World War’s 50th anniversary

20 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Civil War centennial, Civil War sesquicentennial, Great War centennial, Memory

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Smoke rises visibly above the U.S. Capitol on 8 April in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Smoke rises visibly above the U.S. Capitol on 8 April 1968 in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

I was at a history-related gathering earlier this week, present at which was a representative of a New York-based military heritage organization. This gentleman was in his seventies and had obviously been involved in his organization’s activities for many years, if not decades. What struck me was that as he was discussing his group’s plans for the WW1 centennial in 2017-18 he made reference to the 1960s. Specifically he was explaining what a tough sell the Great War was at the time given the events of the period. One can imagine that it was.

Those who followed the Civil War sesquicentennial are aware that the 150th was a conscious effort to correct the failures of the centennial. The pageant that such organizers as Ulysses S. Grant III envisioned quickly collided with the realities of the Civil Rights Movement. Instead of a Cold War celebration of national strength and unity, it all turned into a convoluted mess. And for good reason. The same thing happened, in a slightly different way, for the Great War 50th. Nineteen sixty eight was the year of the Tet Offensive, the MLK Jr. and RFK assassinations, the rioting at the Democratic National Convention and so much else. The 50th anniversary of the Armistice fell obviously on November 11, 1968, less than a week after the election that put Richard Nixon in the White House.

France too was turned upside down at this time. The Events of May brought down Charles de Gaulle and nearly the Fifth Republic. What is more, in the late 1960s the French were only just grappling with the occupation–and the collaboration–they had lived through under the Germans during the Second World War, less than twenty-five years earlier. The Great War has a larger place in the memory of the French than the Americans; this is understandable given that most of the fighting on the Western Front took place in France. Given all that was taking place at the time however, I don’t know if the French had the heart to look back and commemorate the Great War. Maybe they did, finding in it some unity and solace. Again, I don’t know. It would be interesting to have a compare-and-contrast between how the Americans and the French looked back at the war through the lens of the turmoil of the late 1960s.

(image by Marion S. Trikosko / Library of Congress [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

“They deserve their own memorial.”

10 Wednesday Jun 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Great War centennial, Memory, Monuments and Statuary, Washington, D.C.

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Pershing Park is to become the location of the National WWI Memorial. The design competition is now underway.

Early this afternoon, as per most Wednesdays, I sat in on the World War One Centennial Commission weekly conference call. I can tell you that many exciting things are being planned for the coming years. One initiative that is moving along quickly is the creation of a national WW1 memorial in Washington. Such projects tend to come in waves. Over the past 35+ years we have seen the creation of the Vietnam War memorial, followed by the Korean War memorial, and then the WW2 memorial.

There is currently no national monument for veterans of the First World War either on the Mall or anywhere in the District of Columbia. What many believe to be a monument to the veterans of 1917-19 is actually a site dedicated to veterans from the District of Columbia. Tourists always walked past this monument, which is happily getting more recognition due to its proximity to the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial. Still, there has never been a national monument for veterans of the Great War.

That brings me back to the Centennial Commission. One of the Commission’s efforts is to convert Pershing Park into a national monument. The park has a number of aesthetic and bureaucratic challenges. For one thing it falls under the jurisdiction of several different local and federal agencies. Nonetheless the project is proceeding smoothly, which is a testament to the dedication and hard work of the Centennial commissioners and staff.

Pershing Park has a lot going for it. It is on Pennsylvania Avenue not far from the White House. Look closely at the image above and you can see the Treasury Building in the background. This will be a real addition to our cultural memory within our nation’s capital. The design competition opened last week. The deadline for phase one submissions is Tuesday July 21, 2015. If you or anyone you know are interested in submitting a proposal check out the details here. You have six weeks.

(image/Tim1965 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons)

In Flanders Fields

13 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Memory, Monuments and Statuary, New York City

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It has been a busy week, thus the lack of posts. Yesterday I did manage to get to DeWitt Clinton Park on 52nd Street and 11th Avenue for the annual In Flanders Fields commemoration. I ran into Mark Levitch from the World War 1 Memorial Inventory Project at the ceremony. He told me he now has about 2,000 of the nearly 10,000 Great War monuments across the country inventoried. Remember, he is looking for volunteers if one is interested in playing amateur historian. He is doing some interesting and important work. There were many folks there from last week’s Lusitania event as well.

The In Flanders Fields doughboy, sometimes called the Clinton doughboy, is just one of the dozens of Great War monuments here in New York. The sculptor Burt W. Johnson, was the brother-in-law of Louis St. Gaudens. The former U.S. ambassador to Germany, James W. Gerard, dedicated the monument in 1930. (Sixteen years earlier Gerard defeated Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the Democratic nomination in the 1914 U.S. Senate race in New York; Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the Wilson Administration at the time.) Yesterday’s program was not a centennial program per se; they do this program every year. Some regular attendees did tell me though that yesterday’s attendance was twice the average because of the 100th anniversary of the war.

Here are a few pictures.

Remembering the Lusitania

07 Thursday May 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Great War centennial, Lusitania, Memory, Monuments and Statuary

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This morning I had the good fortune of attending the World War 1 Centennial Commission’s commemoration for the Lusitania. Here are a few pics.

The event was at Pier A on the Battery. This space was refurbished about six months ago and is beautiful. I learned today the the clock tower dates to 1919 is reputedly the first permanent Great War monument constructed in the United States.

Wreaths from different nations. It is important to remember the international aspects of the Lusitania tragedy. Commemorations were taking place all around the world today, often at the same time as this event here in Manhattan at 10:00 am.

Consul General Ms. Barbara Jones of Ireland was one of the speakers. One must remember that the Lusitania was about twelve miles off the coast–easily within sight distance–of Ireland when she was struck. Many local fisherman and others were first responders.

Deputy Consul General Mr. Nick Astbury of Great Britain was another speaker.

Here are the various diplomats, descendants of Lusitania survivors, Cunard representatives, and others at the time to throw the wreaths.

Attendees were welcomed to throw individual flowers.

When it was over forty-five minutes later, there was a reception inside Pier A. The Fire Department marked the event by sailing past.

The Civil War in my life

09 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Antietam, Civil War sesquicentennial, Memory

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Longtime Strawfoot readers will recognize this post. I wrote it on September 17, 2012 for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam. I reposted it again on July 1st 2013 for the sesquicentennial of the first day’s fighting at Gettysburg. Now, for the final time, here it is on the anniversary of Appomattox. It is difficult to believe the Civil War Sesquicentennial is ending. When it began with the remembrance of John Brown’s raid in 2009 I had just gotten married and my father was still alive.

History of course is not as neat as commemorations suggest. Life just doesn’t work that way. The fighting still went on even after Lee surrendered to Grant. Joseph E. Johnston did not surrender to Sherman until April 26. Edmund Kirby Smith’s Trans-Mississippi Army finally laid down its arms on May 26. Still Lee’s army was the most significant, and logic dictates that April 9 is the day we pause and remember. I know that the blog has taken a few turns over the past four years, especially after I attended the World War One Centennial Trade Show in Washington last June. Still, the Civil War is my primary research interest and will continue so. Anyways from 2012…

Wesley Merritt’s 1897 interpretation of Lee’s surrender

Today is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American history. Last night my wife and I were watching some of the C-SPAN and other coverage, which led to a conversation about the Civil War’s role in my life. Some things have the ability to captivate us always. My list includes the Beatles, New York City, Elvis, both World Wars, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, Sinatra, and the American Civil War. Don’t ask me to explain; how does anyone know from where in the human imagination such interests arise? Now middle-aged, I have nonetheless reached that point where I am so removed from the events of my younger days to see where the roads turned. For me, the Civil War path has taken several twists.

The first was when I was ten and my uncle gave me a book of Matthew Brady photographs. I was too young to pick up on at the time but the book was a reprint of Benson J. Lossing’s History of the Civil War. Thankfully I was also too young to read the dense prose. If I had I might still be influenced by its early 20th century take on the War of the Rebellion. It was something like the Time-Life books about the Second World War many people had in their living rooms in the 1970s and 80s. Fun to look at, but not especially reliable. Still, the Civil War photo were captivating, especially to a latchkey kid whose parents had uprooted him from his home in Connecticut and transplanted to Florida before divorcing two years later. I lost the book over the years until seeing it again for $10 in a Border’s a few years ago. I shelled out the money but eventually gave the book away, worried about the accuracy not just of the text but even the captions on the photographs themselves. For starters, we now know that many “Brady” photos were actually taken by Alexander Gardner, Timothy H. O’Sullivan, or other members of Brady’s studio. The captions on old photographs are often wrong as well. I have read my Frassanito.

I got away from the Civil War during my high school and college years but had my interest piqued again when Ken Burns’s documentary was released in 1990. It is a dramatic film, beautifully choreographed, that inspired many of us to delve more into the literature. This in turn led me to purchase Bruce Catton’s American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War when it was re-released with updated maps, art work, and photographs in 1996. At this time I was going to graduate school and working fullltime at a large chain bookstore to make ends meet. Often I worked until midnight and came home too wound up to go to sleep immediately. I would sit at my tiny kitchen table eating my 1:00 am dinner and reading Catton’s lyrical prose. I was still too young and unaware that Catton was part of any historiographical “school.” Ironically, I never took a Civil War class in either grad or undergraduate school. This is especially unfortunate because I did my undergraduate work at the University of Houston and could have studied with Joseph Glatthaar.

The next turn came with the release of Tony Horowitz’s Confederates in the Attic in 1998. Many readers enjoyed it for its anecdotes about the levels of farbiness one finds at Civil War reenactments. What I most took from the book though was how little we know about the war, despite the tens of thousands of books written on the subject. Self serving regimental histories. Lost Cause mythology. The foggy memories of aging veterans visiting the battlefields of their youth. Flaws in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. It was all new to me. It was (and is) terrifying also to think that everything one knows about something could be wrong. Even worse is realizing that there might be no way ever to know the full story of something, even by extension one’s own life. The next year I visited Shiloh for the first time when I went out to visit my dad. Other than a quick one hour stop at Fredericksburg in 1997 when I got off the freeway during my move to New York, I had never visited a Civil War battlefield before. After that we visited Pea Ridge, Vicksburg, and Shiloh again. This is where I became fixated on the myths and memory of the war.

In 2008 I visited Gettysburg for the time, and the following year I went back with the woman who became my wife a few months later. That year we also went to Sharpsburg in what has become something of an annual pilgrimage. There is no substitute to walking a Civil War battlefield. On that same trip we also visited Harper’s Ferry on what was the anniversary year of John Brown’s raid. This got me thinking harder about the sesquicentennial and the opportunity it presented to think harder about American Civil War and its place in our history. I never romanticized the Civil War–and I was certainly never a Lost Causer–but I believe I think more critically and less sentimentally about that conflict than I might have when I was younger. This in turn led to another path, the one I am on now, where I started this blog to make the leap from buff to serious writer. I feel I am now finding my niche, which include the Civil War in New York, and Civil War veterans in the Gilded Age among other aspects.

In a nutshell that is the Civil War in my life. Last night, looking at the images from over the weekend on the Antietam NPS Facebook page, I couldn’t help but wonder how many of the children taken to the event by their parents will become captivated by this tragic event in our history. Some will forget almost immediately, but years from now others will look back on the commemoration of 2011-2015 as the spark that started it all.

(image/Art and Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. “The Surrender At Appomattox.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1897. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-ff16-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99)

Remembering the Great War Down Under

08 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Great War centennial, Memory

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A friend returned from an extended trip to Australia and New Zealand and brought back some handouts of places he visited relating to the Great War.

The brochure states that the eternal flame was first lit by Queen Elizabeth II in 1954.

The memorial itself was built in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

As you can see, heritage tourism is very much a part of the centennial. When we think of the Australians and New Zealanders in the Great War, we think automatically of Gallipoli. It is important to remember that they and others from the Dominions fought on the Western Front as well. I have seen my share of them in Flanders. The war did much toward severing the umbilical cord with London and creating modern Australia and New Zealand.

It is fascinating how the war penetrated the tiniest corners of the world and touched the lives of millions.

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Unlike during the 50th and even 75th anniversary of the Great War, there are no longer living survivors to tell their tale. The events of 1914-18 now belong to the next generations.

The conversation continues . . .

A brief remembrance of John W. Thomason

29 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Historiography, Memory, Writing

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I was out-and-about not long ago when I saw something that instantly seemed familiar. It was a sketch by John W. Thomason. The name may not ring many bells but Colonel Thomason was one of the great sketch artists of the early twentieth century. He also authored what many consider to be the authoritative account of American involvement in the First World War. That was why the image looked so familiar, because I had seen his work decades ago when I first read Fix Bayonets! Naturally I bought the small, framed image. It now hangs in my office.

The image shows a young French woman walking past a trio of weary marines. It is hard to make out, but the wear and tear on her shabby clothes are testimony to how difficult things had become in Europe by 1918. The duck is something of a Thomason trademark. He included them frequently in his work. Growing up in Texas, he was quite the hunter and outdoorsmen. Thomason was born in Huntsville in 1893.

I had not read or thought about Thomason for more than two decades until seeing the framed sketch. Eager to know more, I checked out a few books from the library. His grandfather was Major Tom Goree, who had served on James Longstreet’s staff. The Lost Cause is an obvious cultural reference point for Thomason. How could it not?

The bare feet are a poignant touch. Thomason grew up surrounded by many men who had fought with Hood’s Texans.

The editors of the sketchbook from which I took these photos were helpful in including the studies of the revolver, spurs, etc. Too often we think art “just happens,” not understanding how much thought and toil the artist invests in his work.

Thomason attended the Art Students League in 1914 and was a struggling artist for a few years. He found his calling as soldier/artist when the United States declared war on Germany in 1917. He was a marine with the 2nd Division and fought at Château-Thierry, Soissons, and the Meuse-Argonne.

Thomason stayed in the military after the Armistice. He was a good friend of Hemingway’s, who called Thomason the best soldier he knew. In the ensuing decades Thomason short stories were much in demand in such places as the Saturday Evening Post. He even collaborated with Ted Roosevelt, who as an officer in the 1st Division had fought in many of the same battles as Thomason.

John W. Thomason died in 1944.

“Pearl Harbor? Who’s she?”

07 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Memory, WW1, WW2

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Veterans Day, 2014: Bombardier Herman "Whitey" Lykins approaching 100

Veterans Day 2014: WW2 Bombardier Herman “Whitey” Lykins going strong at nearly 100

Longtime readers will recognize the two pieces below. The first is from 2011 and the follow-up is from 2012. I was a little surprised the 75th anniversary of the start of the Second World War in Europe did not get more coverage than it did. I guess people were so focused on the Great War 100th. The passing of the WW2 generation is something I am quite conscious of, in part because I was a little too young to remember the passing of the Great War generation in a deep way. Still, they were there. I remember seeing them on television sitting together in the stands at Wimbledon during the Borg, McEnroe, Connors years. They were not yet totally anachronistic but their numbers were dwindling fast. The world became a little smaller when Frank Buckles died in February 2011. And now we are getting there with the Second World War. Anyways, from 2012 and 2011….

I wrote the piece below for the 70th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack and am posting it again. As I said last year, I will always remember anniversaries such as December 7, June 6, and May 8 though they no longer resonate in the way they once did. I have been watching Eric Sevareid’s magnificent Between the Wars over the past several days.The sixteen part documentary, produced in 1978, provides a remarkable overview of the 1918-1941 period. What I find most striking is how recent the war, even the lead-up to the war, was as late as the 1970s. (One gets the same impression watching Lawrence Olivier narrate A World at Arms as well.) The Second World War was almost still current events in a way it obviously is not today. The highest leadership had died off by this time, but the majority of the people who fought in the war were now in full blown middle age and in the prime of their careers. Now those people have pretty much died off, or have aged considerably. I couldn’t help but think about this when I learned about the death of Congressman Jack Brooks earlier in the week. Maybe it is my own sense of aging, but I am not sure how I feel about this. Anyways, from Pearl Harbor Day 2011 . . .

Pearl Harbor 2011: the final gathering of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association

A few years ago the father of a good friend of mine happened to be in the food court of a shopping mall on Memorial Day. This is a man, now in his eighties, who served in the Air Force and later played semi-professional football. He still has his leather cleats. Lou is the essence of Old School. Like shopping mall food courts throughout the country, this one was full of teenagers. Striking up a conversation with the 4-5 at the neighboring table he asked them if they knew what Memorial Day was. After the blank stares, one offered that it was a day off from school. My friend’s dad was not impressed.

When I was in school in the seventies and eighties a visit from a World War 2 vet was a HUGE deal, even in the most cynical of times just after Vietnam. (I graduated high school just a decade after the Fall of Saigon.) One vet recounted today that during a recent school visit a girl asked who Pearl Harbor was and why he was there to talk about her.

I offer these stories not to blame our country’s historical amnesia on young people, but to emphasize the educational crisis we face.

I have written about the significance to me of D-Day and aging veterans before. Personally, Pearl Harbor Day 2011 is the end of something tangible, akin to the 75th anniversary of Gettysburg in July 1938 when aged veterans turned out for one final gathering. President Roosevelt was in attendance; three years after dedicating the Eternal Peace Light Memorial in front of the 1,800 veterans and 150,000 citizens that summer day he would tell the country that December 7 would forever live in infamy. Today in Hawaii the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association held its final gathering. There are just too few Pearl Harbor survivors left seventy years later to justify a seventy-first. There will be more World War 2 anniversaries between today and the commemoration of V-J Day in 2015, but for me they will no longer seem the same. By 2015 there will be fewer WW2 veterans, and those remaining will likely be too infirm to participate in any meaningful fashion. Time moves on. It was ever thus.

(bottom image/U.S. Navy)

The Strawfoot

~ a New Yorker's American History blog

Category Archives: Memory