In Memoriam: Losing sight of the day, remembering the victims

It's a little more difficult in America these days to get caught up in "glory, glory, Hallelujah" wartime fanfare; there's so little of it left. Many Americans, one might say most, are somewhat weary of war and all that accompanies it.
Call it war fatigue.
This could explain our newfound relative lack of fervor surrounding national holidays like Memorial Day.
But upon further review, I think there is more to it.
To America's younger generations, "foreign" not only describes war's theater but its character as well.
The vast majority of Americans under 40, and I fall into this category, don't really understand wartime sacrifice like my Grandparents' generation.
Over the years I have taken note, on numerous occasions, of a simple little phrase used by older folks to describe World War II: "I lived through World War II," I've heard them say.
What does that mean to someone like me? In 40 years will I talk about "living through" two wars against Iraq?
Of course not.
Our wars against Iraq are foreign wars, to be sure, but so was World War II--a world-historic war that was fought primarily in Western Europe and the Far East.
The difference, of course, is reflected in the level of individual sacrifice commanded of those of us who stay "in the rear with the gear" as the old military saying goes.
The generation dubbed as "greatest" by Tom Brokaw (the WWII generation) deserves just such a moniker because of the sacrfice of its people, fighting men and women alongside citizen soldiers.
My generation is every bit as enlightened as it is insulated; we gather around grills instead of graves on this day.
Memorial Day just isn't what it used to be. Only a few short decades ago this day was one to remember the sacrifices of American military men and women who fought in wars both foreign and domestic.
It was strictly a day for remembrance and celebration.
All that has changed, of course; these days many Americans couldn't tell you the difference either in time or in significance of Labor Day as opposed to Memorial Day.
I'm not much different, of course, as a product of my environment. I've never celebrated Memorial Day in any substantial way.
And I have also never been called upon to sacrifice for my country, nor have I volunteered.
The casualty, then, is the devotion bred from sacrifice.


Remember the victims
We are certainly not alone in our willingness to celebrate victories with blind eyes toward the costs of winning them. And while it might not fit some people's narrow-minded definition of what it means to be patriotic, I think it's imporant to remember the innocent lives lost in what Robert McNamara has taken to calling "the fog of war."
Think for a moment that during World War II 100,000 people were burned to death in one night during the firebombing of Japan's major cities. This is in addition to the more than 210,000 people who were vaporized in the first and only two nuclear strikes (Hiroshima and Nagaski, Japan) in world history. Common Japanese citizens made the ultimate sacrifice and had no choice in the matter.
Remember them.
Curtis Lemay, the Air Force General who commanded troops in the Pacific Theater during World War II, admitted after the war that if the United States had lost he (among others) would have been tried as war criminals.
Remember that.
I recently watched a moving documentary that told the stories of numerous survivors of the atomic bombings in Japan entitled, "White Light, Black Rain."
I listened to firsthand accounts of living through a nuclear strike alongside admissions of young people living in Hiroshima that they didn't even know what happened on August 6, 1945, in their city.

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." --George Santayana

War by the numbers

Take some time to read through these listings of 20th century wartime death tolls sorted by conflict: