Celebrating the Dedication of the National World War II Memorial

CELEBRATING THE DEDICATION OF THE NATIONAL WORLD WAR II MEMORIAL -- (House of Representatives - May 17, 2004)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, let me say what a rare privilege it is to come to the floor this evening to talk about this coming Memorial Day weekend, particularly on May 29 when we as a Nation will not only celebrate Memorial Day, but the dedication of the World War II Memorial on our Nation's Mall of Democracy.

This evening, I would like to talk a little bit about the history of that memorial, how it happened, and refer in particular to a brand new book that has just come out called "Their Last Battle," by Dr. Nicolaus Mills from Sarah Lawrence

College, which so well documents the history of this memorial's construction.

When we think about the memorial, obviously it is to the most unselfish generation America has ever known. And if we think back to our own history, the location of this memorial at the center of our Mall of Democracy, between the Washington Monument, which represents the founding of our Republic and George Washington as our first President in the 18th century, and then on the other side, close to the Potomac River, the Lincoln Memorial, representing the preservation of our union in the 19th century and President Abraham Lincoln, and then this memorial, representing the most important achievement of the 20th century, the victory of liberty over tyranny in a just war.

The World War II generation is one that never asked for anything for itself. There are those that asked, well, why was a memorial not built before? It was simply because they would never ask anything for themselves. It was up to the baby-boom generation, people like myself, who were not even born during that period of time, to say, thank you, a grateful Nation remembers.

The sad part of this memorial's unveiling and formal dedication in about a week-and-a-half is that of the 16 million
Americans who served, but 4 million are living. We have tried for so very long, 17 years, to make this memorial a reality, and this book describes the long legislative battle which began in this House for the memorial's construction. Indeed, the first 20 pages of "Their Last Battle" would be excellent reading for any history, civics or government class in our country, to understand how hard it is to do something so meritorious.

I would like to tell some of the true story tonight of what actually happened in achieving this great national monument. In Mr. Mills' book he says at the beginning of the preface, "For centuries to come, the National World War II Memorial, like the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, will be viewed as a symbol for who we are as a people."

Yes, it will help future generations place the 20th century in proper perspective, with the fulcrum of the 20th century being World War II, what preceded it and what followed it.

The United States, in experiencing the bombing of Pearl Harbor, was really unprepared for war. Our machine tool and steel industries at that point had been deteriorating, and America was not a country that sought to engage itself internationally during that period. But coming out of World War I and a peace treaty that was flawed, with no assistance for the vanquished nations that fell into economic chaos, World War II came slowly, but it resulted from extreme governments rising in places like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

America preferred to remain isolated from the world, and received a rude awakening December 7, 1941. The mobilization that occurred during the last century was something the Nation had never experienced. Sixteen million Americans were called to duty, and that does not count those who served on the home front in war industries, in factories, like our own mother, Sherry Kaptur, who served at Champion Spark Plug making spark plugs that went up into the airplanes, and making sure that the workers in that plant made no mistakes, so that plug did not sputter and a plane would not come down unnecessarily in some far remote place around the world; like our father, Stephen, in the Willys Overland plant, making the Jeep that became known throughout the world during that war.

They were representative of the millions and millions of people that came together in this country, who helped to achieve an allied victory.

[Time: 20:30]

I remember growing up as a child and our uncles, Anthony Rogowski, who was a member of the Office of Strategic Services, the OSS, and the Army, flying behind and parachuting behind enemy lines in Burma, in India, in China, the war wounds he brought home with him, the malaria that he experienced throughout his life, being knifed in a fox hole. I remember as a little girl how much his hands would shake when he would get those attacks. And he would tell me, and
I was so young and I did not really understand everything he said to me. I remember when he gave me his expert rifleman's pin and tried to understand what his stripes meant and what his promotion rank patches meant.

After his untimely death at age 57, I can remember looking at his flight jacket as an adult, and I thought how small it looks, because when I was a little girl he looked so big to me. And I remembered his valor and his patriotism. And our uncle Stanley Rogowski, I can remember him not talking about the war very much. I can remember him saying in December of 1944 how he ate frozen K rations in northern Europe after the Battle of the Bulge, having gone through that, climbing over the dead bodies over the cliffs of Dover and then moving into the campaign across northern Europe into Belgium, and ultimately moving down in the Push to Paris to free France.

It was not until a few months before his death in the early 1990s that he came to me in our kitchen at our family home in Ohio. He handed me a religious medallion, a scapular, and he said, Marcy, if anything happens to me, this has always been with me, just make sure I have it.

I kind of looked at him quizzically. I was in the Congress then. He seemed to be okay. He seemed to be doing well, but six months later he died. That was the Sacred Heart Medal he kept with him from the time he left the States as an infantry man in the U.S. Army until he died.

I mention those stories because back in 1987 when another Army veteran, Roger Durbin from the Buckeye State of Ohio, shouted across the room at me in a placed called Jerusalem Township, Ohio, where the annual Lucas County Township Trustees banquet was being held, their annual dinner. I was walking across the room, and I heard a voice say, Congresswoman Kaptur, why is there no World War II memorial in Washington where I can take my grandchildren? I remember turning around saying, Who is talking to me? And I saw this man way across the room, and he had a grin on his face. His eyes were twinkling and he had gray hair, and he was standing very sturdily there. There were hundreds of people at this banquet, and they were all paying attention. And I said, Well, sir, I think there is a memorial. He goes, Oh, yeah, what is it? And I said, Well, sir, I think it is Iwo Jima. And he said to me, Wrong. That is to one service in one campaign. Congresswoman, there is no World War II memorial in Washington where I can bring my grandchildren.

I walked up to him and then began a very long friendship with Roger Durbin of Berkey, Ohio, population, I think it is about 265. And we began an effort over many, many years to build this memorial. I thought it would be easy. I am told by the historians at the Smithsonian that actually we have achieved the construction of this major memorial in much shorter time than the other memorials, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and many of the other monuments in this city.

This one is particularly significant in its placement and its meaning. I felt we could have gotten it completed by the 50th anniversary of allied victory, which would have been 1995. But by 1995 we had only achieved the passage of two related bills to create the memorial and to fund the first several million dollars of architectural and engineering plans through the sale of memorial coins. And I want to thank President George Herbert Walker Bush who signed the first bill for the memorial and President Bill Clinton who signed the second bill after three separate Congresses had labored to pass those pieces of legislation, and it was not easy.

There were many delays. There were many questions during that early period. And I want to place on the record this evening my deep appreciation to Congressman Sonny Montgomery of Mississippi who is retired now, but who helped us so much; Congressman Bob Stump of Arizona, who unfortunately passed recently. I also want to thank Congressman Bill Clay of Missouri, who has retired now; Congressman Henry Gonzales of Texas, who has passed. His son serves here from Texas, San Antonio. I want to thank Congressman Esteban Torres, who helped us a great deal on the banking committee in those days, helped pass those coin bills. And also from the other body, I want to thank Senator John Glenn, now retired; and Senator Strom Thurmond, who has passed.

There were so many people, so many people who helped us, as we struggled up hill to get the 218 signatures on both sides of the aisle; and we did try to make it a bipartisan effort. And I also want to thank all of those people in the agencies, in the American Battle Monuments Commission, the Department of Interior, Park Service, those who helped us move the idea to the point where we can now present to the Nation.

Being a Buckeye from the State of Ohio, we are particularly proud that this idea was Buckeye-born and Buckeye-led. And in about a week and a half it will be turned to the Nation for history. Now, Mr. Durbin never said to me, I want this for our generation. He only said, he said he wanted it for his grandchildren so he could bring them to a place and show them the causes for which he had fought, and what he and his wife, Mary, and what their lives had been about.
I thought it was very coincidental, and I said a little bit earlier today, somewhat providential that when the plaza at the memorial was opened a few weeks ago, the very first group through was an Ohio group of students from Jones Junior High School in Toledo, Ohio. They were there early in the morning, and the NBC camera crew with Tim Russert was down there on the site. That was totally unplanned. And I felt Roger's hand in all of that because he would always go out to the children as we were trying to raise money for the memorial, and we would talk to them at the schools, and they would collect pennies, and they would help contribute dollars to this memorial.

It has been so heartwarming to see the children of America appreciate what their great grandparents did; and that the real strength of this country is in our families, in our memories and what we bring here and we try to have into the fabric of America for the present and for the future; and surely this memorial does that.

There is a section of this book by Mr. Mills that says the following: "At the graveside of Roger Durbin that he had chosen for himself and his wife at Wolfinger Cemetery just a few miles from their home, Mr. Durbin would however leave behind a reminder of how he wanted to be remembered and how so much of what he did in the last decade of his life depended on memories that nothing could change. There at the Durbin graveside chiseled on a blue granite tombstone would be list rank, Tech 4 U.S. Army, his birth and death dates, April 18, 1920 to February 2, 2000; and the
distinct lightening bolt and tank tread insignia of the Tenth Armored Tiger Division."

I can remember back in 1995, Veterans Day, when Roger and I stood on the site where the memorial will be dedicated
and we broke ground. And we literally dedicated that site initially, and soil was brought from 16 U.S. cemeteries around the world plus Arlington and placed there. And a flag at that the time was hoisted and was ultimately folded,
and President Clinton then presented the flag to Roger Durbin. And Roger turned from the crowd and he began to weep. And he said to his wife, Marion, Marion, I want to be buried with this flag.

And I can tell you for history's sake that Roger was buried with that flag in the year 2000. He had wanted nothing more
than to be with us this coming Memorial Day weekend to see this actually happen and to see this dream come true for all of America's grandchildren. But he somehow knew at the end that he would not make it until this point.
He called me over to his house about 2 weeks before his death in the year of 2000, and he had a rendition of the memorial above his fireplace. He said, Marcy, come here. I want to show you something. He took me to another room, and he was suffering from pancreatic cancer at that time. And he took me into his private room and he showed me all the furniture that he and his wife, Marion, had inherited from their parents and grandparents, beautiful cherry furniture. Then he pulled from under the bed a big box. It was kind of like a foot locker, and he opened it up and he took out this scrapbook. He said, Marcy, I want you to know about this in case something happens. And I said, Roger, what is that exactly? I started paging through a carefully kept diary, page by page in see-through pages, plastic pages where each letter, each bill, each news story, each letter was catalogued and documented.

He was a letter carrier after coming home from the service, and it was meticulously kept. And I know what a treasury those scrapbooks are to the Nation. They really belong in the National Archives. But Roger did not want them to go astray or be misfiled or mishandled in any way. But what a patriot. And what a citizen. He understood the importance of history and of marking history and of explaining history. And he is someone whose education was stolen from him. He could have had a Ph.D., yet he was called off to war and he had to interrupt his life when he came back. Obviously, there were adjustment issues as any battle-scarred veteran well knows, but he did all of this.

This construction of the memorial became a last calling for him in the last years of his life. And I just feel so privileged as a member of the baby boom generation, knowing the history of our family and all of the people from our country knowing the sacrifices that they have made, to have been a part of this, to have been able to be a real representative which is the way that our government should work, to take this idea from the people, to bring it here, and to make it happen and to give it to the future.

When we think about the World War II generation and that war, its causes, a world that politically could no longer hold, an extremism rising from the chaos that World War I had bequeathed to the future, and no group of political leaders internationally able enough to put the pieces back together. And then this horrendous war in which 70 million military participated from all of the allied nations and 17 million people died, 17 million; 406,000 people from our country died.

At this memorial there is a wall of remembrance with gold stars representing each 100 that died. And when you look at the wall, those stars are then reflected in the fountain and pool. In essence, you see a reflection so each star really represents every 50 that died. And over 800,000 injured just in this country. Then when you think of those that perished globally, over 50 million people died.

Historians are just beginning to tell us that inside the Soviet Union under the horrendous dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, 50 million people died just there. So I think that the numbers will increase as history begins to accurately count as well as it can what happened. But any member of the World War II generation coming from that carnage tried to create a world different than the one that they had lived.

And I guess it is not surprising then that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was set up, NATO, and became the most important military and strategic alliance globally, where the allied nations bound together in a real partnership and tried to keep the peace. And the major challenge that they faced after World War II was the Soviet Union under a very communist regime for many decades, which at the end of 50 years finally collapsed without a shot being fired because of the strength of NATO and their understanding of containment and of allied unity.
[Time: 20:45]

That was something that Mr. Durbin's generation gave to us; and then following World War II, unlike World War I, the Marshall Plan and George Marshall coming before a university audience and in a 12-minute speech, not a 25-minute or hour speech, a 12-minute speech declaring that there would be a Marshall Plan to rebuild the vanquished nations, unlike after World War I when the vanquished nations were left to fall and, from within that chaos, these extremist governments rising. So the Marshall Plan.

Then the importance of allied unity, a real alliance, a transatlantic alliance that has held until the present day, our great friends in Germany, in France, in all of Western Europe and the broadened alliance with the new nations, newly freed nations, Hungary, Poland and so forth.

Then the United Nations. Not a perfect creation, but a place where dialogue could occur in order that the carnage that Mr. Durbin and the World War II generation faced just might not happen again, trying to build the creation of the World Bank, world institutions to handle currency exchanges. They tried so hard to shape institutions so that what they had suffered would not be foisted on the world again. We have so much to learn from them.

So a week and a half from now, when we dedicate this memorial to the World War II generation and to all they built abroad and at home, we have so much to learn.

We think about the post-World War II era when they came back home and the GI bill created the financing for home ownership, and ordinary families were able to, for the first time, really own a piece of the rock; and in 1952, President Harry Truman integrating the military in deep appreciation to those citizens of color who had fought two wars during those World War II war years. They fought the military battle, but then they fought the social battle, the civil rights battle, to gain full recognition and full appreciation for their service to our country, which President Truman then finally acknowledged.

Women's rights growing out of the victory of World War II, women working in the plants, displacing those men who had been called to service, and women working outside the home becoming nationally accepted behavior, very different from before World War II. Women in the service, as well as women in the nursing corps, helping to establish a platform for themselves and be accepted in the world of employment in the way that they had never been before.
In Mr. Mills' book, in the very last chapter, and I would just like to end by reading this this evening, he says: "For an America that in the wake of the September 11 attacks has felt threatened to a degree unknown in this country since the bombing of Pearl Harbor, such homage is more than just a final tribute to a parting generation. It is also an act of self-preservation, a way of reminding ourselves of our ability as a Nation to come together in a crisis and, by extension, a way of linking ourselves with a generation that dealt successfully with years of crisis. 'Earn it,' says a dying John Miller, the Army captain played by Tom Hanks in "Saving Private Ryan," to the young Private Ryan, whom he and his squad have found at great cost to themselves so that Ryan may leave the war and return to his mother, who has already lost three sons in battle."

"Earn it," he says.

Fifty-nine years later, the National World War II Memorial has become one more way of "earning it," of acknowledging all that has been made possible by the sacrifices of the World War II generation. And on Memorial Day and the May 29 weekend, and in a ceremony to be held this Thursday here in the Capitol in Statuary Hall, there will be two handmade United States flags that have been made in the State of Ohio in our home district, the 9th Congressional District, and the headers on those flags read as follows: Made in Lucas County, Ohio, U.S.A. A grateful Nation remembers.

We have the letters of the two public laws that were passed in order to make the memorial a reality, and then there is the ruptured duck logo that every World War II veteran received upon discharge. The threads in the 17th star on that flag include threads from the sewing basket of Marian Durbin, the wife of Roger Durbin, as well as from our family, as well as from the home post of Roger Durbin, the Dean Post in Lucas County, Ohio, as well as from many of the women in the Embroidery Club of Northwest Ohio, whose parents participated in the war. That 17th star, because it is the Ohio star, is embossed just a bit, all according to regulation.

One of the flags, upon completion and having been flown over every county in the 9th District, was flown around the world to every cemetery where we have U.S. troops buried or commemorated as missing in action. The very last stop was Manila, Philippines, before it was brought back home here to Arlington and flown, and it will be here in the Capitol for this Thursday's ceremony.

The other flag remained stateside and worked its way to the Ohio State capitol and was flown over the capitol, and now has been brought here to the Nation's Capitol for official hoisting this Thursday.

When we do this, one of the flags will be flown in honor of our World War II veterans who are still serving in this Congress, including the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), whose seniority numbers one here in the House; the gentleman from New York (Mr. Houghton); the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde); the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hall); the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula); and I believe the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis).

So we pay tribute to those among us, as well as to those who have passed in service to our Nation. We remember them all, and we thank all the World War II veterans.

We thank Senator Bob Dole who has chaired the fund-raising committee for this memorial, for championing these efforts so that the funds were raised privately. It is so important to remember that of all of the contributions, nearly $190 million has been raised mainly from private contributions, from individuals, from school children, from fraternal organizations, from veterans organizations.

Our States have contributed dollars to the construction of the memorial, many private companies, many small businesses. I think in the State of Ohio the largest association that made a contribution were funeral directors, the Funeral Directors Association of the State of Ohio. Across our country, including school children, thousands and thousands and thousands of children have made this memorial possible, and there can be no finer tribute to America's most unselfish and greatest generation than the love and remembrance of those grandchildren.