The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

That was the moment at which World War I largely came to end in 1918. One of the most tragically senseless and destructive periods in all history came to a close in Western Europe with the Armistice –or end of hostilities between Germany and the Allied nations — that began at that moment. Some 20 million people had died in the fighting that raged for more than four years since August 1914. The complete end of the war came with the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919.

The date of November 11th became a national holiday of remembrance in many of the victorious allied nations –a day to commemorate the loss of so many lives in the war. And in the United States, President Wilson proclaimed the first Armistice Day on November 11, 1919. A few years later, in 1926, Congress passed a resolution calling on the President to observe each November 11th as a day of remembrance:

Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and

Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations; and

Whereas the legislatures of twenty-seven of our States have already declared November 11 to be a legal holiday: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), that the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.

Of course, the hopes that “the war to end all wars” would bring peace were short-lived. By 1939, Europe was again at war and what was once called “the Great War” would become World War I.  With the end of World War II, there was a movement in America to rename Armistice Day and create a holiday that recognized the veterans of all of America’s conflicts. President Eisenhower signed that law in 1954. (In 1971, Veterans Day began to be marked as a Monday holiday on the third Monday in November,  but in 1978, the holiday was returned to the traditional November 11th date).

Today, Veterans Day honors the duty, sacrifice and service of America’s nearly 25 million veterans of all wars. We should remember and celebrate those men and women. But lost in that worthy goal is the forgotten meaning of this day in history –the meaning which Congress gave to Armistice Day in 1926:

to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations …

inviting the people of the United States to observe the day … with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.

The Veterans Administration website offers more resources on teaching about Veterans Day.

You can read more about World War I history as well as all of America’s conflicts in Don’t Know Much About History

Don't Know Much About@ History (2011 Revised and Updated Edition)

It was on March 23, 1775 that Patrick Henry offered his famous “Give me liberty or give me death” speech in colonial Virgina.

On Mach 23, 1942 –167 years later– the United States government began taking away the liberty of more than one hundred thousand people–the Japanese Americans viewed as a threat after Pearl Harbor. On that date, the U.S. Army began removing people of Japanese descent from Los Angeles.

Photo by Dorothea Lange of Japanese-American grocery store on the day after Pearl Harbor Source: Library of Congress

Following the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan, there was a wave of fear and hysteria aimed at Japanese and people of Japanese descent living in America, including American citizens, mostly on the West Coast. In February 1942. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 which declared certain areas to be “exclusion zones” from which the military could remove anyone for security reasons. It provided the legal groundwork for the eventual relocation of approximately 120,000 people to a variety of detention centers around the country, the largest forced relocation in American history. Nearly two-thirds of them were American citizens. (Smaller numbers of Americans of German and Italian descent were also detained.)

Photo Source: National Archives

The attitude of many Americans at the time was expressed in a Los Angeles Times editorial of the period:

“A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched… So, a Japanese American born of Japanese parents, nurtured upon Japanese traditions, living in a transplanted Japanese atmosphere… notwithstanding his nominal brand of accidental citizenship almost inevitably and with the rarest exceptions grows up to be a Japanese, and not an American…” (Source: Impounded, p. 53)

There were several types of camps run by the government but the most notable, including Manzanar, were the “Relocation Centers” run by the War Relocation Authority. The camps were located in remote often desolate areas, some on lands purchased from Native American nations. Surrounded by barbed wire, they featured tar paper shacks with no toilets or cooking facilities.”Spartan” would be a kind description.

In 1943, the Army invited Japanese Americans to enlist, and during the war, 30,000 Japanese Americans volunteered to serve in the U.S. military. (Source: National Archives)

The exclusion order was rescinded in 1945 and internees were allowed to leave, although many had lost their homes, businesses and property during their confinement. However, the last camp did not close until 1946.

In 1980, Congress established the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians to investigate the internment and, in 1988, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which provided for a reparation of $20,000 to surviving detainees.

One of those detainees was Albert Kurihara who told the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians in 1981:

“I hope this country will never forget what happened, and do what it can to make sure that future generations will never forget.” (from Impounded, Norton)

The National Parks Service offers a Teaching With Historic Places lesson plan based on the camps some of which are now part of the National Parks System including Minidoka in Idaho and the Manzanar camp in California.

Archival Research Gallery (National Archives) of Japanese-American Experience

Library of Congress Collection of Ansel Adams photographs of internment camp at Manzanar

Photographer Dorothea Lange also photographed the internment camps and her censored images were published in 2006 in the book Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment (WW Norton, 2006).

On April 3, 1948, President Truman signed into law the Foreign Assistance Act of 1948, otherwise known as The Marshall Plan, widely considered the most important foreign policy success of the postwar period.

In the current climate of the GOP’s “Just Say No” deficit-cutting stance and widespread opposition to foreign aid of any kind, would this legislation get through Congress today? It is an ominous thought.

Despite critics of the “Nanny Government,” there are things that only Big Government can do. Saving war-torn continents is one of them.

On June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall gave Harvard’s commencement address, introducing and justifying the European Recovery Program, which became known as the Marshall Plan. Marshall had been the Chief of Staff of the Army during World War II and Winston Churchill hailed him as the “true organizer of victory.”.  This plan, part of the Cold War program of “containment” championed by George F. Kennan, is credited with restoring the economies of post World War II western Europe.

At Harvard, Marshall said:

The truth of the matter is that Europe’s requirements for the next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products—principally from America—are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help, or face economic, social and political deterioration of a very grave character.
…Aside from the demoralizing effect on the world at large and the possibilities of disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned, the consequences to the economy of the United States should be apparent to all. It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.

Conceived by Undersecretary of State Will Clayton and first proposed by Secretary of State Dean Acheson (1893–1971), the Marshall Plan pumped more than $12 billion into selected war torn European countries during the next four years. (The countries participating were Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, West Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.) It provided the economic side of Truman’s policy of containment by removing the economic dislocation that might have fostered Communism in Western Europe. It also set up a Displaced Persons Plan under which some 300,000 Europeans, many of them Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, were granted American citizenship. By most accounts, the Marshall Plan was the most successful undertaking of the United States in the post-war era and is often cited as the most compelling argument in favor of foreign aid.
To some contemporary critics on the left, the Marshall Plan was not simply pure American altruism —the goodhearted generosity of America’s best intentions. To them it was simply an extension of a capitalist plan for American economic domination, a calculated Cold War ploy to rebuild European capitalism. Or, to put it simply, if there was no Europe to sell to, who would buy all those products the American industrial machine was turning out?
By any measure, the Marshall Plan must be considered an enormously successful undertaking that helped return a devastated Europe to health. allowing free market democracies to flourish while Eastern Europe, hunkered down under repressive Soviet controlled regimes, stagnated socially and economically.

Marshall won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953. For more about Marshall, here is a link to the nonprofit Marshall Foundation:

Read more about World War II and the Cold War in Don’t Know Much About® History

Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
. . . The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost.
. . . No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.
–Franklin D. Roosevelt’s War Messsage to Congress (December 8, 1941)

At 7 A.M., Hawaiian time, on Sunday, December 7, 1941, two U.S. Army privates saw something unusual on their radar screens. More than 50 planes seemed to be appearing out of the northeast. When they called in the information, they were told it was probably just part of an expected delivery of new B-17s coming from the mainland United States. They were Japanese warplanes.

At 0758 the Pearl Harbor command radioed its first message to the world. AIR RAID PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. An hour later, a second wave of 167 more Japanese aircraft arrived. The two raids, which had lasted only minutes, destroyed or damaged nineteen ships, eight of them eight battleships, and 292 aircraft, including 117 bombers. And 2,403 Americans, military and civilian, had been killed, with another 1,178 wounded.

Few questions have tantalized historians and students of the period more than this: Did FDR or members of his administration and military command know the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor, and did they deliberately allow the attack that took more than 2,000 American lives in order to draw America into the most deadly, destructive war in history?

Some say FDR was preoccupied with the war in Europe and didn’t want war with Japan. Others hold that FDR viewed Japan—allied to the German-Italian Axis—as his ticket into the European war. The ultimate conclusion to this view is that FDR knew of the imminent Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and not only failed to prevent it, but welcomed it as the turning point that would end obstruction of his war plans.

There is no longer any doubt that some Americans knew that “zero hour,” as the Japanese ambassador to Washington called the planned attack, was scheduled for December 7. According to John Toland’s account of Pearl Harbor, Infamy, Americans had not only broken the Japanese code, but the Dutch had done so as well, and their warnings had been passed on to Washington.

Here is where human frailty and overconfidence, and even American racism, take over. Most American military planners expected a Japanese attack to come in the Philippines, America’s major base in the Pacific; the American naval fortifications at Pearl Harbor were believed to be invulnerable to attack, as well as too far away for the Japanese.

While the conspiracy theorists persist, a convincing case for Roosevelt trying to avoid war with Japan has been made by many prominent historians. Among them, eminent British military historian John Keegan dismisses the conspiracy notion.

“These charges defy logic,” Keegan wrote in The Second World War. “Churchill certainly did not want war against Japan, which Britain was pitifully equipped to fight, but only American assistance in the fight against Hitler. . . .”

The U.S. Navy’s History and Heritage Command has an extensive collection of online documents and resources related to the Pearl Harbor attack:
http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq66-1.htm
This is the National Park Service link to World War II Pacific sites;
http://www.nps.gov/valr/index.htm

Find more on Pearl Harbor and World War II in Don’t Know Much About History

But this Memorial Day comes with darker news– the announcement that the United States military had surpassed more than 1,000 service members killed in Afghanistan, a war begun October 7, 2001 following the 9/11 attacks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/us/19dead.html?fta=y

The combat deaths in Afghanistan, which have accelerated recently with a “surge” of US troops in the troubled nation once ruled by the Taliban, goes along with the 4,401 Americans who have died in Iraq (Source: DoD, 5/18/10) since the invasion there began on March 20, 2003.

These black and white numbers don’t tell the true story behind the casualty figures. Every one of those numbers stands for an individual –a son, a sister, a mother, a brother, a father. But the stark numbers do remind us that Memorial Day is ultimately a day about loss.

Memorial Day has its roots in the Civil War –the nation’s bloodiest conflict with more than 600,000 dead and countless more wounded and maimed. Memorial Day began with the simple act of placing fresh flowers on the graves of fallen soldiers – in other words, “decorating” the graves, which gave rise to a national holiday of commemoration called Decoration Day. Once traditionally celebrated on May 30, it was a date chosen because the most flowers were in bloom in the North. But many states in the former Confederacy, viewed this as a “northern” holiday and created their own Confederate Memorial Days.

Given a semi-official launch in 1868 by the Grand Army of the Republic, a politically powerful fraternal organization, the holiday grew over the years, only to be forgotten in the early 20th century as the Civil War generation died off. It was given fresh urgency in the wake of World War I and the tremendous losses in the trenches of Europe. It was after that conflict that America began to recognize a need for reviving a holiday that honored the sacrifice of those who died in all of America’s wars, not just the Civil War. Memorial Day, as it eventually became known, was made a national holiday and was fixed on the last Monday in May date by a 1968 act of Congress that took effect in 1971. (Some traditionalists want to restore the original May 30 date.)

Memorial Day’s history and meaning have been obscured for many Americans. And as the holiday weekend approaches, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also seem mostly hidden from view. A numerical landmark –such as the 1000th death—or an act of Taliban terror –such as a suicide bombing in the capital of Kabul—puts the war back on the front pages for a day or so. The fighting in Iraq, where US troop numbers are slowly being drawn down, is even more hidden.

Which brings me to some of America’s hidden wars. Most of us are well schooled about World War II, which gets most of the glory –with lavish HBO productions like The Pacific. And the Civil War still occupies a central –if still overly “mythified” place—in America’s consciousness.

But there are many wars from the past that have fallen into the black hole we call “American History.” Most of us, for instance, have never heard of the “Creek War,” a vicious conflict fought in Alabama between Creek Indians and American troops led by a relatively unknown Tennessee planter named Andrew Jackson. Jackson’s ruthless victory over the Creek, led by a half-Scot, half-Creek warrior named William Weatherford, or Red Eagle, helped established Jackson’s heroic reputation. His ruthlessness in dealing with the Indians helped establish his nickname as “Sharp Knife.” The Creek War, a complicated struggle over land and freedom, took place even as America was fighting against England during the War of 1812.

The warfare between the federal government and Native American nations and their African-American allies continued in Florida in the long, costly series of wars called the Seminole Wars. Fought between 1835 and 1842, the Second Seminole War was America’s longest war between the Revolution and Vietnam, as the Seminoles, led by their war chief Osceola, kept American armies at bay for years in an an expensive, deadly guerrilla war.

No wars –or the losses and sacrifice they demanded – should be forgotten or overlooked, especially as we approach Memorial Day. This year, let’s remember all the fallen and forgotten fighters.

With Presidents Day around the corner, it seems like a good time to think about some other great books about the Presidents and Presidency. Here is a short list of some of my favorite Presidential biographies –all what I call “must reads.” Obviously, this not an exhaustive list, and some may already be familiar. Not all of them focus on the presidential years of the subjects. But this is a good place to start with a collection of accessible and fascinating views of the lives and careers of some of the most significant Commanders in Chief –all told by great storytellers, great writers and great historians.
Since Presidents Day exists to honor Washington and Lincoln, I’ll start with them–

Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington by Richard Brookhiser. Fairly brief, mostly admiring but honest, and to the point, Brookhiser of the National Review, cuts through the mythology but keeps Washington firmly in place as “Father of Our Country.”
Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves and the Creation of America by Henry Wiencek. Rather than an exhaustive biography, this is a study of Washington’s complicated relationship to slavery and his views on emancipation.

Speaking of Emancipation, The Lincoln Library is enormous. But if I had to pick one single-volume biography of “The Great Emancipator,” I choose With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen B. Oates. I like it for its readability and utterly human portrait of one most mythologized of Presidents. A close second to Oates is Lincoln by David Herbert Donald. Lincoln: An Illustrated Biography by Philip B. Kunhardt. Jr., Philip Kunhardt III and Peter W. Kunhardt is a beautiful volume, a “coffee table” book that won’t just sit on the coffee table. It might be especially valuable for households with children, as is Lincoln: A Photobiography, an award-winning book for children by the appropriately named Russell Freedman.

Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt by David McCullough is one of my favorite biographies, although it focuses not on TR’s astonishing Presidency but on his youth. A magnificent book.
For Teddy Roosevelt’s Presidency, read Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris

For the “other Roosevelt, another of my all time favorite books is Doris Kearn Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. It focuses life in the White House during the war years and is the perfect combination of scholarship and great storytelling
Because FDR’s historic “First Hundred Days” got so much attention recently, I would also recommend this fairly slim but excellent overview of the Depression and Roosevelt’s controversial, much-debated response to it: The First Hundred Days by Anthony Badger

For FDR’s successor, the gold standard is Truman by David McCullough

Master of the Senate by Robert Caro. Until Caro finishes the fourth installment of his epic biography of Lyndon Johnson, this book, covering Johnson’s years as the Senator from Texas will have to do.

President Reagan: The Role Of A Lifetime by Lou Cannon. A California journalist, Cannon covered Reagan for years and this is an even-handed assessment.

A comprehensive reading list of these and Presidential biographies can also be found in Don’t Know Much About History

Of course, that means today there will be a lot of speechmaking about honoring our veterans. It will come a day after the Harvard Medical School released a survey showing that more than 2,000 veterans died in 2008 because they lacked health insurance.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/10/2266-veterans-died-in-200_n_353033.html

That news came on top of the fact that many of America’s veterans fill the ranks of the nation’s homeless. According to the VA, one third of America’s adult homeless are veterans.
http://www1.va.gov/homeless/page.cfm?pg=1

These grim facts are troubling enough when it comes to “honoring veterans.” What nobody will say today is what then-Senator Barack Obama said in the spring of 2007, invoking a public spanking: “We now have spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.”
Senator John McCain said something similar around the same time and both men quickly covered their tracks by claiming they should have said “sacrificed” not “wasted.” In word-wise America, “sacrifice” has triumphed as the socially polite term for referring to the thousands of American lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan, with no end in sight.

This parsing of language –the distinction between the honorable “sacrifice” and the taboo “waste”—takes on added poignancy on Veterans Day.

With the memory of Fort Hood’s memorial service achingly fresh, and as Arlington and other cemeteries at home and abroad are festooned in flags and fresh flowers, some might find it inappropriate to question the “W” word. The implication is that ceremonial grieving is no occasion for truth-telling. But what better moment to ask hard questions than when the wounds are freshest?

An American President once made a very public acknowledgment of loss. Recognizing that sacrifices can indeed be wasted, Abraham Lincoln implored war-torn America to,

“resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain.”

Maybe if the country, and especially its political leadership, honestly acknowledged that all sacrifice is not created equal –that far too many sacrifices are made in vain—America will go a long way towards ensuring that there are fewer fresh graves to decorate next Veterans Day.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle
Anthem for Doomed Youth –Wilfred Owens

Here is a link to a BBC page on the great poet of the World War I era, Wilfred Owens and his poems “Dulce et Decorum Est” and “Anthem for Doomed Youth”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/poets/wilfred_owen.shtml