[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 179 (Monday, December 12, 2016)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1704-E1706]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      75TH ANNIVERSARY OF PEARL HARBOR: KEEPING THE HISTORY ALIVE

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. MARCY KAPTUR

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, December 12, 2016

  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday, 7 December, I was privileged 
to participate in the Congressional commemoration breakfast of the 75th 
anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor with the Friends of the 
National World War II Memorial. The following are my remarks to honor 
that solemn occasion:

       Good morning. Chairman Bunting, thank you so very much and 
     to all you Americans for being here today and helping us 
     commemorate, honor and remember. It really is a distinct 
     privilege to share with you today the remembrance of December 
     7th 1941, and I must say as we listen to the news reports and 
     the discussion commemorations and so forth, I've actually 
     been--I love this country so much and this vision for all 
     people to live in freedom and to see the American people, and 
     what they're doing to honor this memory and our heritage. You 
     are all here because of what happened 75 years ago, December 
     7th 1941. I've seen on television this week ceremonies this 
     afternoon and we're actually teaching the new generation by 
     your presence here today. This, the day that honors the 2,403 
     US citizens and service members who were killed at Pearl 
     Harbor, Hawaii in a surprise attack by Imperial Japan that 
     triggered U.S. entry into WWII one day later.
       I want to thank Chairman Bunting for your leadership--you 
     don't have to do this, you could be on some golf course 
     somewhere--and all the Friends of the WWII Memorial for 
     organizing not only this breakfast but all the events this 
     week. Many of our schools no longer teach this history, and 
     so your work is even more important. We honor with your 
     presence those Americans who so justly deserve history's keen 
     memory. Thank you to Superintendent of the National Mall, Gay 
     Vietzke, for helping us make these arrangements today. I 
     understand that Congressman Morgan Griffith, from the great 
     state of Virginia is also here--thank you so very much. And 
     importantly, I want to welcome our World War II veterans, and 
     particularly Pearl Harbor survivors and their families with 
     us this morning. If any of you wish to just raise your hand--
     thank you! What a truly historic occasion it is to be with 
     you--our nation owes our liberty to your courage, to your 
     patriotism and to your sacrifice.
       In an earlier era, President Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter 
     to Mrs. Lydia Bixby, that's become pretty famous, a widow 
     living in Boston and thought to have lost five sons during 
     the Civil War, and President Lincoln wrote to her: ``The 
     solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a 
     sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.'' These words apply to 
     those of you who remember and whose families have sacrificed 
     because of Pearl Harbor and WWII.
       Today, again, a grateful nation remembers the solemn events 
     of December 7th, 1941, another time of national testing. We 
     recognize American heroes who rose out of the ashes to lead 
     our country to triumphant victory. On that fateful day, 
     Imperial Japan's surprise attack on the Pacific Fleet also 
     destroyed almost 20 ships and over 300 planes in just two 
     hours. The attack on Pearl Harbor served not only as the 
     catalyst driving America to war, but also as a great rallying 
     cry to our people--overriding any hesitation and instilling 
     grim determination to see the mission through, no matter the 
     cost--and the cost was the greatest the world had ever seen. 
     The story of that morning is filled with examples of the 
     finest America has to offer--Sailors risking their own lives 
     to save their shipmates, nurses tending the wounded as bombs 
     continued to drop and machine guns sprayed the buildings. It 
     is the story of young men, never before challenged on the 
     field of battle, taking up arms to defend their ship, their 
     comrades and their country. It is the story of America--a 
     country that, when knocked down, never gets knocked out, and 
     always gets back up and wins the fight.
       Exactly one day after the attack, by a vote of 82 to 0 in 
     the Senate, and 388-1 in the House, the United States 
     declared war on Imperial Japan. Three days after that, 
     Congress declared war on the Axis Powers, Germany and Italy, 
     as the United States--President Roosevelt's ``great arsenal 
     of democracy''--engaged in war on two fronts. That vote, to 
     send America's sons and daughters across an ocean, to fight 
     an enemy, knowing they may not come home is the hardest vote 
     of any Member of Congress's life. While we cannot know 
     exactly what those men and women of 1941 were thinking, we 
     can understand their feelings, their hesitations, and their 
     desire to seek justice for the innocent Americans who lost 
     their lives that day.
       In many of my travels, I've had an opportunity to work with 
     members of the Japanese Diet, and I got to be friends with 
     some of them, and I finally had the mustard one day to ask 
     one of them: ``Could you please explain to me why you bombed 
     Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941?'' It was a hard question 
     for me to ask, but the answer came back: ``to stop 
     colonialism in the Pacific.'' And I said ``Thank you so much 
     that we can be honest with one another. That we can talk 
     about what happened in that period of time.'' We ignore those 
     exchanges. Those of you involved in education, in historical 
     associations like Friends of the WWII Memorial, we simply 
     can't dialogue enough in this day and age.
       Many of those who survived that fateful morning continued 
     to serve in the military.

[[Page E1705]]

     Millions more joined them, in uniform and on the home front 
     here, taking on the herculean task of evicting Japanese 
     forces from the Pacific Theater, an awesome undertaking by 
     any measure. But island by island, the US military and our 
     allies achieved victory in some of the bloodiest and hardest 
     fought and sometimes underreported battles, of modern 
     military history.
       Veterans of this harsh theater, survivors of Bataan, Iwo 
     Jima and Okinawa, became a living history of the cost of war, 
     and the greatness of unified American willpower. As General 
     MacArthur said later in the ultimate surrender of Imperial 
     Japanese ceremony radio address, the war taught us both ``the 
     bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from 
     both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go 
     forward to preserve in peace what we won in war.'' And 
     indeed, America has been about that task, even before my 
     lifetime; well maybe just as my lifetime started and 
     probably yours too!
       The memorial at the USS Arizona, the Punch Bowl in Hawaii, 
     where I have been honored to place wreaths in the Pacific on 
     behalf of our country, and the National Memorial Cemetery of 
     the Pacific are permanent memorials to those gave their lives 
     for us and for the values of our country at Pearl Harbor.
       It is in this spirit that the Punch Bowl in Hawaii as well 
     as the World War II Memorial here in our Nation's capital 
     were created--to not only pay tribute to those who served 
     heroically in uniform or steadfastly on the home front, but 
     to preserve the lessons learned and act as places of living 
     history. They teach future generations about the sacrifices 
     of those gone before, and serve as places of remembrance to 
     the Service Members and their families who gave so much.
       And even though we dedicated and opened the WWII Memorial 
     here in the year 2004, I am still about the task of trying to 
     work with the Government of the United States to augment the 
     historical collections that are so very, very important to 
     honoring those who gave us their substance. It is not an easy 
     task. We're working with the Library of Congress--I just want 
     to make you aware of this. We have a veterans' history 
     project where many Americans like you volunteered their time 
     to collect the stories of individual veterans. We have a 
     special place for these at the Library of Congress and our 
     task is not finished.
       One of those veterans was a man named Roger Durbin. He was 
     an Army tank mechanic who fought in Europe in the Battle of 
     the Bulge under General Patton's Third Army. He was a jovial 
     and rather outspoken Ohioan who after the war served as a 
     rural letter carrier and township trustee in the 
     Congressional District that I represent. It was Mr. Durbin, 
     who, almost a quarter century ago, in 1987, in a place called 
     Jerusalem Township, Ohio, at a fish fry of township trustees, 
     shouted across a room like this to me, ``Hey Congresswoman 
     Kaptur! Why is there no World War II memorial in Washington, 
     D.C.?''
       Well, I looked across the room and I saw this kind of 
     sturdy man, not young, with rimless glasses, standing like 
     this--I'll never forget it. I had a plate of fish--I was 
     caught off guard and I thought `I can't believe this is 
     happening' because everyone in the room of course fell 
     silent, as they watched this confrontation. I stood there and 
     said ``Sir, I think there is one.''
       And he said ``Oh yeah--where is it?''
       So I said ``Iwo Jima'' and he said ``Wrong! That's to one 
     battle and one service.''
       ``Well it must be Arlington.'' ``Wrong!''
       And the more I thought about it--and I was a student of 
     history--I came back to my office and wrote a letter to the 
     Smithsonian, and to the Department of Defense and several 
     weeks later the letters of reply came back, I was standing by 
     my desk and I opened the letter and he was right!
       One American, he had travelled the world and he had looked 
     at what other countries had done to honor those who fought in 
     World War II--and, he was right. And that began a seventeen-
     year quest to complete the WWII Memorial here in our nation's 
     capital. Think what one citizen can do. And this is the way 
     Congress should work--often doesn't. But where a citizen of 
     our country, who is imbued with an idea of profound 
     significance, changes the face of how we present America to 
     ourselves and the world.
       Of course, he is no longer living, but he said to me before 
     his death--I went out to his house and he said: ``Marcy,'' 
     (and he had above his fireplace--he died two years before the 
     memorial was built there--he had above his fireplace a 
     lithograph that had been done of the WWII Memorial prior to 
     its construction) ``I want to show you something, just in 
     case.'' He took me to a room in his home, where the cherry 
     furniture had been handed down from his grandparents, and he 
     opened two, he pulled out from under this bed, two big 
     chests, and he had been a letter carrier so he was very 
     organized, and he had saved every news article, every letter, 
     every military organization and veteran organization that had 
     helped us. He kept these files--each page was in plastic.
       He knew how important this was. This was an average 
     citizen--well he was more than an average citizen. He said, 
     ``just make sure when the time comes, these get in the right 
     place.'' I have so many stories I could go on forever, but 
     when we broke the ground for the site in the 1990s, there was 
     a flag flying over the site where the WWII Memorial here in 
     Washington now rests. And the President then--we had to get 
     three Presidents to help us, but that's another story--the 
     flag came down and then the President turned and presented 
     the flag to Mr. Durbin. And Mr. Durbin's back was to all the 
     people at the ceremony, but he said to his wife and to me ``I 
     want to be buried with this''--and he was.
       I mean this was; this is a great story. It took almost five 
     years to get a final bill passed here, and then another 
     decade or more to get the memorial built, as one Congressman 
     aptly observed, it took longer to build the memorial than 
     fight the war. But I can say that the final product was well 
     worth the wait, other than the fact that we still haven't 
     buttoned down sufficient historical collections and video 
     presentations so when future generations come, they see not 
     only this magnificent memorial, but the story behind why 
     those Americans fought.
       We have our work cut out for us. When I was over at 
     Normandy, I looked at the memorial we have there and all the 
     video collections and so forth, and we're working with Park 
     Service now, along with others to try to be able give that 
     grand presentation to Americans who come to this memorial. 
     Americans and others from around the world. While almost 
     every aspect of the memorial has symbolism with both the 
     Pacific and Atlantic porticos, to me, one of the most 
     striking features is its location and there is an 
     announcement stone, a corner stone that talks about this.
       Think about this: as we commemorate Pearl Harbor today, the 
     beginning of that horrendous conflict, that consequential 
     conflict, you have to the East, the Washington Monument, that 
     represents yes, the first President, George Washington, but 
     the father of the Republic, which was the greatest 
     achievement of the Eighteenth Century, and then on Western 
     edge of the Mall, you have the Lincoln Memorial, honoring one 
     of our greatest Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, representing the 
     preservation of the Union, and then right in the center, 
     between both, the most significant memorial of the Twentieth 
     Century, the World War II Memorial, which that generation did 
     not build for itself, but their prodigy did; representing the 
     victory of liberty over tyranny. It does not represent a 
     person, but a generation. At certain times of the day, you 
     can see a shadow of the Washington Monument, fall across the 
     WWII Memorial and land on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting 
     Pool--it is really something--and we had hoped to get a light 
     feature when we built the WWII Memorial that would reflect 
     exactly on that spot, where the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and 
     Twentieth Centuries come together, that still remains a 
     dream, because those who approve memorial construction didn't 
     agree with that idea, but I thought it was a great idea. Of 
     course that victory of liberty over tyranny, was a gift to 
     all of us.
       Second only to its location, is the fact that this memorial 
     is the only one dedicated to not only the service members, 
     but the families, the shipbuilders, the factory workers, and 
     farmers who kept our nation going during that extended 
     conflict. It is for every yard that had a Victory Garden, and 
     every pantry managed with a ration card. It is truly 
     America's memorial, and you can see that on all of the bronze 
     artifacts that are part of that site, and our entire country 
     sacrificed for the common good and a universal cause. Our 
     mother worked in a War Industries factory, and her job was to 
     make sure that every spark plug that was used in an airplane 
     wouldn't balk and that the quality was 100%, and she was very 
     aware as she worked on her tamping machine in Toledo, Ohio 
     that the life of a pilot and those that the plane would be 
     carrying were in her hands. That was America's mindset.
       In total, over 15 million men and women took up the 
     Nation's call to arms. Then millions more took up the burden 
     of maintaining the home front. Millions of women went into 
     the workplace for the first time; a workplace outside their 
     home. It changed the culture of our country. There was not a 
     family who went unaffected by that War.
       I'll divert just briefly, in our own family, our father 
     lost his best friend, in the Marine Corps at Guadalcanal, a 
     man named Dusty. Our mother's two brothers served in uniform, 
     in WWII, one on the Atlantic Front and one on the Pacific, 
     both wounded. Our uncle Stanley served in the Army from 1942 
     through 1945, in the Battle of the Bulge to free Belgium and 
     then liberate Paris and he never talked about it, but six 
     months before his death he came to me in the kitchen of our 
     home and he said ``I just want you to know, this is in my 
     billfold, in case something happens.'' Almost the exact words 
     that Roger Durbin used, `just in case'. He gave me a scapular 
     that he had tucked in his uniform, the sacred heart, which is 
     the religious symbol of the denomination to which we belong, 
     and then he presented me with a Nazi swastika that he had cut 
     out of a seaplane that had been downed in the English 
     Channel. I still haven't figured out what to do with that--
     it's a rather unusual artifact--as well as one of the weapons 
     that he had used.
       Our uncle Anthony served in the precursor to the CIA, the 
     Office of Strategic Services, seeing action in China, India 
     and Burma before being knifed by a Japanese soldier one night 
     as he caught a few hours sleep in Burma in a foxhole. He 
     suffered his whole life from war-related injuries. He was so 
     intelligent. To this day, I have no ideas where he was 
     trained; I think maybe in Virginia, but I'm not sure.
       Their stories, and just imagine how many stories across 
     America influenced those that followed them to try to help 
     build liberty

[[Page E1706]]

     forward. I am one of those. Together, all the lessons that 
     came from our soldiers and our families create a living 
     history for us to learn from the past and to build a more 
     secure future. As General Douglas MacArthur said, ``It is my 
     earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from 
     this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the 
     blood and carnage of the past--a world dedicated to the 
     dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish 
     for freedom, tolerance and justice.'' Your being here today 
     means you understand that you don't forget the importance of 
     remembrance.
       Memorials allow us to look past the present and focus on 
     those worthy to honor. They link the past to the present and 
     enable people to frame history and respect the sacrifice of 
     those who died, fought, participated, or were affected by 
     conflict. Memorials are an important source of information 
     for our young people trying to understand the decisions made 
     by past generations and why the world is the way that it is. 
     They are a source of national pride, unadulterated by the 
     politics of the day.
       As a nation memorials link us to our allies based on mutual 
     experiences during times of War--the suffering, the triumphs, 
     and the universal price of the ideal of liberty. They can 
     heal the wounds of war, and bring people together. We saw 
     this, this past May when President Obama visited Hiroshima, 
     and we know that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be 
     coming to Pearl Harbor later this month. These are really 
     significant symbolic actions that still help heal our world.
       It's difficult to imagine that only 4 percent of Americans 
     who served in World War II are still alive today. For those 
     that are here this morning, we give you applause. When we 
     built the WWII Memorial, I didn't know that honor flight 
     would be created; it was in the minds of ordinary Americans 
     who are extraordinary, who managed to ferry tens of thousands 
     of our WWII veterans here for their last call in our nation's 
     capital. I'm sure each of you knows how much that has meant 
     to the families of our country and to those veterans--many 
     from my region, but from every State in the Union. The men 
     and women who helped to do that did it so selflessly. Now 
     we're bringing many of our Vietnam veterans here, and Korean 
     War veterans. We have some Vietnam and Korean War veterans 
     with us here today. Thank you, and thank you for 
     understanding the intergenerational bonds of our country.
       But only about 2.3 percent of Americans have firsthand 
     memories of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Of course we know 
     that only about 1% of our families have any connection to the 
     military at all; 99% do not, because we no longer have forced 
     conscription. So you're being here today, and trying to use 
     this opportunity to teach and to elevate--do not 
     underestimate its importance. What you're doing here by your 
     presence is very important today. These statistics make it 
     imperative that we maintain our history. Future generations 
     must know, for liberty's sake, why the Transatlantic alliance 
     as well as our Pacific bases are so essential, they must know 
     why the United Nations and NATO are vital, living instruments 
     of liberty; they must know the amazing potential and 
     devastating effects that attend to nuclear power, and they 
     must know the astounding possibilities of a country united in 
     a common cause.
       I would like to thank the Friends of the National World War 
     II Memorial for your existence--you continue to keep alive 
     the legacy of World War II and our Greatest Generation. They 
     never wanted to be called the greatest generation. I consider 
     them the most unselfish generation, and we can learn a lot 
     from them--to keep alive in the hearts and minds of our 
     current and future generations what their lives stood for. 
     Their carefully developed education programs at Friends 
     provide opportunities to teach our young citizens about the 
     values and spirit of unity and shared purpose, which defined 
     the character of our country during those bitter war years.
       I'll tell you something, here in Congress, and I've got to 
     make a little political comment here, I've served through 
     many speakers now, and through many leaders here in these 
     institutions, but I can tell you that when the WWII 
     Generation exited, and retired or left service, the character 
     of the place changed. When I was first here during the 1980s, 
     Democrat Tip O'Neill was Speaker and Republican Bob Michel 
     was minority leader and at Christmas time, you know what--
     they liked one another. They fought like cats and dogs on 
     political issues, but they were friends. And in December, 
     when the holidays came, they'd call the President of the 
     United States and sing to the President over the telephone, 
     ``We Wish You a Merry Christmas''--and they had terrible 
     singing voices. You know what--it elevated America, and 
     America felt unified. That is one of our challenges today and 
     I think the memories of the WWII Generation can help heal the 
     fissures across this country that even exist in the 
     institution in which you are seated this morning. So I want 
     to thank you for coming this morning, and for doing your part 
     to honor the history of Pearl Harbor and heritage of this 
     great country. Most importantly, thank you to our veterans 
     not only for being here today, but for all you've done for 
     our country. We stand, America stands, on your strong 
     shoulders. May God Bless you and may God bless America in the 
     years ahead.
       Thank you

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