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Korean War anniversary marks Memorial Day 2000

America could have rejected the role of world leadership thrust upon her after the destruction and loss of human lives in World War II.

But she accepted that role and, in so doing, gave Americans an even stronger motive to celebrate Memorial Day this year.

The special significance of this Memorial Day is its proximity to the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War on June 25.

More than a million Americans have died defending their country. Memorial Day is the day we honor them.

This particular year on this particular Memorial Day, with memories of those million dead heroes in formation before us, we might justly order “front and center” to the 55,000 Americans who died in the Korea War.

I’ve never understood why such a long and brutal war should be known as the “Forgotten War.” Perhaps it’s the timing. It fell between World War II, a war that mobilized a nation, and the Vietnam War, a war that divided a nation and ended tragically. Perhaps it was the mood of a nation anxious to return to the peacetime pursuits of families and careers after World War II.

But whatever the reason, Korea never loomed as large in our historical consciousness as World War II and Vietnam. What better time than the 50th anniversary to give that war and its veterans the recognition due them?

In so doing, we take away nothing from America’s other heroes or from the families who still grieve for them. This Memorial Day will still remind us of every sacrifice ever made on every battlefield and not just to secure our own freedom.

Fifty years ago international communism seemed to be the irresistible force of the future. It was a system geared for war and conquest. While the West greeted the end of World War II with relief and dreams of peace, the Soviet and Chinese masters saw it as the signal for the next wave of expansion. Who in the peace-loving West could stop them? In theory, only the United Nations. In reality, that meant the United States.

When North Korean divisions poured across the 38th parallel into South Korea, America was not prepared. We responded anyhow. The first American units thrown into battle hung on until reinforcements arrived and the enemy eventually was forced to negotiate.

South Korea is now free because 50 years ago America kept faith with an ally. Let us now keep faith with the guardians of Korea’s freedom and our own.

At first glance, America had no stake whatsoever in the freedom of Korea, so different from us culturally and halfway around the world. But a second, longer glance reminds us of our commitment to freedom around the world. That commitment is no mere theory but a reality backed up by the blood of our citizen soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines.

Many of us knew someone who shed that blood and never came home. It will be a somber day for us because we can remember that person on our hometown streets or playgrounds, sitting next to us in class, delivering our newspaper or groceries, or pushing a lawn mower on his front lawn. We might remember his laughter, his voice over a telephone and, perhaps, even our own shock at reading the news of his death in battle. We may even have tried to comfort a grieving family.

But he isn’t really dead. It can be said that no one is truly dead until the last person who remembers him is dead. We can honor our dead heroes by remembering them every day but especially on Memorial Day.

Again this year the President or someone representing him will place a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery. But the most heartfelt Memorial Day celebrations will take place at cities, towns and villages all over America. There will be parades, speeches and decorated gravestones. It should not be the only remembrance, merely the most vivid, of our most heroic sons and daughters.

And this year a special salute should be reserved for casualties of the Korean War, the first challenge to communist expansion, and a forgotten war no longer.

(Rep. Bob Stump (R-AZ) is chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. He enlisted in the US. Navy in 1943 at the age of 16, and participated in the invasions of Luzon, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa while serving aboard the escort carrier U.S.S. Tulagi.)


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