Military | Page 42 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

June 6, 2015 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Rainbow Plan

The primary war planning agencies of the period 1890-1939 were the war colleges of the US Army and US Navy. The US had a series of military plans in place to deal with an array of potential adversaries.

War plans outlined potential US strategies for a variety of hypothetical war scenarios. They were prepared and referenced by colors, each color corresponding to a specific situation or nation.

For instance, of the initial 12-plans, there was War Plan Black, a plan for war with Germany; War Plan Orange for Japan; and even a War Plan Red for Great Britain (with a sub variant Crimson Plan for Canada.)

After World War I, the Joint Army and Navy Board (the predecessor of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) reviewed all the prewar plans to ensure they were consistent with the current state of affairs in the world.

The possibility of war with Japan had led the Army and Navy in 1924 to draft a new joint Orange plan to govern the conduct of such a war.

War Plan Orange made no provision for a landing on the Japanese home islands. Japan was to be defeated by ‘isolation and harassment,’ by the disruption of its vital sea communications, and by ‘offensive sea and air operations against her naval forces and economic life.’

With events starting in 1938, with German and Italian aggression in Europe and simultaneous Japanese expansion in the Far East, US war planners realized that the US faced the possibility of war on multiple fronts against a coalition of enemies.

To that end, the Joint Planning Board developed a new series of war plans, the ‘Rainbow’ plans – the term being a play on the respective ‘color’ plans that had been previously drawn up.

The single most important strategy, made before US entry into World War II, in the context of a world threatened by Axis aggression in Europe and Asia, was that Germany must be defeated first.

“In the years preceding US entry into World War II, the Army’s war planners tasked students at the Army War College to prepare responses to a set of amazingly realistic wartime scenarios.”

“The students’ sound but imaginative solutions not only influenced the armed services’ post-1939 Rainbow plans for war with Germany and Japan, they also anticipated and provided answers to most of the war’s major strategic questions.” (Gole)

Ultimately, planning (and later implementation) resulted in War Plan Rainbow 5 – this plan included Hawaiʻi.

“Rainbow 5 assumed the United States, Great Britain and France to be acting in concert; hemisphere defense was to be assured … with early projection of US forces to the eastern Atlantic, and to either or both the African and European Continents”.

“Offensive operations were to be conducted, in concert with British and allied forces, to effect the defeat of Germany and Italy. A strategic defensive was to be maintained in the Pacific until success against the European Axis Powers permitted transfer of major forces to the Pacific for an offensive against Japan.”

As to Hawaiʻi, War Department message of November 27, 1941 read as follows: “Negotiations have come to a standstill at this time. No diplomatic breaking of relations and we will let them make the first overt act. You will take such precautions as you deem necessary to carry out the Rainbow plan. Do not excite the civilian population.” (Proceedings of Army Pearl Harbor Board)

Oʻahu held a position of the first importance in the military structure of the US before and during WWII. During the prewar years, Oʻahu and the Panama Canal Zone were the two great outposts of continental defense. (army-mil)

A key goal in the Pacific was to hold Oʻahu Island as a main outlying naval base and to protect shipping in the waters around the Hawaiian Islands.

In the year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, American strategists developed a strategy that focused on “Germany first.” In the end, that was what occurred with the American war effort.

Rainbow 5 imagined the rapid projection of American forces across the Atlantic to Africa or Europe “in order to effect the decisive defeat of Germany, Italy, or both.”

Clearly implied in this statement was the concept that finally emerged as the basic strategy of World War II: that in a war with the European Axis and Japan, Germany was the major enemy and that the main effort therefore should be made in Europe to secure the decisive defeat of Germany at the earliest possible date.

But for much of 1942 and well into 1943, the US deployed substantially greater forces to the Pacific than to Europe. This was in response both to political pressure from the American people and the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Pacific over the first six months of the war.

On June 6, 1944, more than 160,000-Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline, to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France.

General Dwight D Eisenhower called the operation a crusade in which “we will accept nothing less than full victory.” More than 5,000-ships and 13,000-aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end, the Allies gained a foot-hold in Continental Europe.

The final battles of the European Theater of WWII, as well as the German surrender to the Western Allies and the Soviet Union took place in late-April and early-May 1945.

On August 6 and 9, 1945, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. On September 2, 1945, the Japanese signed the Instrument of Surrender on the deck of USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. (Lots of information here from army-mil and GlobalSecurity.)

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Rainbow Plan 5 cover

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Double row of ships in Pearl Harbor, aerial view, 7 December 1941. Photograph taken by Japanese flyer-12-07-41

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D-Day

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Atomic_bombing_of_Japan-Hiroshima (left) and Nagasaki (right)

Japan unconditional surrender

Original caption: Tokyo, Japan: Ceremonies of the Japanese surrender on board the battleship Missouri, 1945. Japanese Foreign Minister Shigemitsu signs as MacArthur braodcasts ceremonies. September 2, 1945 Tokyo, Japan

Japan surrender

German unconditional surrender

General Alfred Jodl (1890 – 1946) Hitler’s military advisor, controller of German High Command and chief of the Operations Staff (centre), signs the document of surrender (German Capitulation) of the German armed forces at Reims in General Eisenhower’s headquarters. He is joined by Major Wilhelm Oxenius (left) and Hans Georg von Friedeburg, Admiral of the Fleet (right). Original Publication: People Disc – HF0475 (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

May 11, 2015 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Boles Field

On August 1, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the country’s 13th national park into existence – Hawaiʻi National Park. At first, the park consisted of only the summits of Kilauea and Mauna Loa on Hawaiʻi and Haleakalā on Maui.

Eventually, Kilauea Caldera was added to the park, followed by the forests of Mauna Loa, the Kaʻu Desert, the rain forest of Olaʻa and the Kalapana archaeological area of the Puna/Kaʻu Historic District. (On, July 1, 1961, Hawaiʻi National Park’s units were separated and re-designated as Haleakala National Park and Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park.)

On-the-ground administration of the park began with the arrival of Superintendent Thomas R Boles in April 1922. Boles’ designation was made effective two months before he entered on duty.

Born in Yell County, Arkansas, he was the son of Judge Thomas and Catherine (Keith) Boles (his father voted in favor of the establishment of the world’s first national park, Yellowstone, back in 1872.)

Boles was educated in the grammar and high schools of Fort Smith, Arkansas, and took a civil engineering course at the School of Mines, University of Missouri.

For a few years, Boles was involved in various construction and engineering endeavors, as construction engineer for the Illinois Steel Bridge Co, in Arkansas and Oklahoma; assistant field engineer, Interstate Commerce Commission; chief engineer, Fort Smith Light & Traction Co., and chief engineer, Fort Smith & Western Railroad Co. (Nellist)

Boles arrived in Hawaiʻi in March, 1922; he became the first superintendent of the Hawaiʻi National Park, appointed to the position by the Secretary of the Interior. He has jurisdiction over a total area of 118,000 acres of the volcanic area of the Territory.

At the same time the Park was created (1916,) the military opened a rest and recreation Camp within the Park boundaries – the Kilauea Military Camp (KMC.)

KMC was the military’s rest and recreation facility on the Island of Hawaiʻi; it was situated on about 50-acres within the Park boundaries.

A military landing field was constructed on volcanic sand at the area called Sand Spit Horst, located just south of Halemaʻumaʻu crater. It was referred to as Kilauea Airfield.

However, shortly after completion, on the morning of May 11, 1924, a ranger from Hawaiʻi National Park noticed several hot boulders on the rim of Halemaʻumaʻu. Evidently, a small explosion had occurred in the pit overnight.

The park superintendent, Thomas Boles, put up roadblocks a half a mile from the crater and ventured out to investigate with two other observers.

Boles was within 10 feet of rim when he heard a “thud” followed by a “prolonged whooosh.” Thousands of red-hot boulders shot up amidst a fury of black ash. The ash column rose 3,000-feet above the crater.

Fortunately, all three made it back to their vehicle, sustaining only a few cuts and bruises. They found that a boulder weighing nearly 100-pounds had sailed over the vehicle during the explosion, landing more than 2,000 feet from the crater.

They pushed the roadblocks back 2-miles from the crater.

Similar events followed; the largest occurred on May 18. The dark, mushrooming column “loomed up like a menacing genie from the Arabian Nights.” Static electricity generated between ash particles produced streaks of blue lightning and condensed steam mixed with the ash to create a rainstorm of gray mud. (Boles; NPS)

Truman Taylor, a young accountant from Pahala sugar plantation had slipped past the road blocks set up by the Superintendent and was within 2,000-feet of the rim (near today’s Halemaʻumaʻu parking lot) when the explosion occurred.

He was hit by a boulder and severely burnt by the falling ash. Rescuers hurried in to the caldera when the explosion ended some 20 minutes later, but the unfortunate man died on the way to the hospital.

Scientists estimate that approximately 400 million cubic meters (520-million cubic yards) of magma shuttled down the east rift zone conduit in 1924. That’s enough magma to fill 265,000 Olympic swimming pools. (USGS)

A news article in March 1925 reported that a New Army field was under construction on the bluff between Uwekahuna and KMC (Hilo Tribune-Herald 1925.) The new field was named Boles Field after the park superintendent, Thomas R Boles.

Although originally anticipated to be in a much more desirable location than the original Spit Horst field, it was almost immediately found to be dangerously short, and was evaluated in a report on landing fields on the island of Hawai‘i (Hawaiian Department 1925:)

“I ‘shot’ the field and found the wind currents so treacherous and uncertain that it was next to impossible to land short without a good chance of being dashed to the ground prematurely. Personally, I would rather trust my parachute than use this field.”

The location of this second field has been variously identified as “outside Kilauea Crater about one half mile North-East of Uwekahuna toward KMC, close to the belt road” and “west of the great Kilauea Crater” (Hilo Tribune-Herald 1925.) (NPS)

The field remained in use for fifteen years primarily for recreational purposes. As part of its war planning, the military surveyed several sites on Hawaiʻi as possible airfields and emergency landing strips. The optimum site was Keauhou, though cost ultimately prevented its development.

Other fields, notably Morse Field at Ka Lae (South Point,) became the primary airfields for the military in Hawai‘i. The military and NPS approved the existing airfield at Kīlauea for emergency use, but the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) cautioned that it was unsafe for military aircraft.

In 1941, following the Pearl Harbor attack, Civilian Conservation Corps workers assisted the military in plowing and obstructing the single field to render it unusable by the enemy.

Nearly two years later, in December 1943, the Army leveled the field again to use as a training site for spotter planes employed in exercises at the Kaʻū Desert Training and Impact Area.

The Park Service indicated in August 1945 that airfield were incompatible with NPS policy; in 1946, the CAA concluded there was no need for an airfield in the park, a policy later reinforced by legislation. (Chapman) (Boles retired from the National Park Service in 1951.)

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Thomas R Boles

Some Military Uses-Kilauea-Map-Nakamura

Kilauea Military Camp, 1936-Chapman

Kilauea Military Camp-(NPS)-1923

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8-10 ton boulder-formed an impact crater in the aviation strip. View looks away from Halemaumau-sent May 18, 1924

May 6, 2015 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Hilo Coastal Defense

Dating back to the beginning of the 20th century, Oʻahu held a position of primary importance in the military structure of the US before and during WWII. During the prewar years Oʻahu and the Panama Canal Zone were the two great outposts of continental defense. (army-mil)

A key goal in the Pacific was to hold Oʻahu Island as a main outlying naval base and to protect shipping in the waters around the Hawaiian Islands.

In January 1905, President Teddy Roosevelt instructed Secretary of War William H Taft to convene the National Coast Defense Board (Taft Board) “to consider and report upon the coast defenses of the United States and the insular possessions (including Hawai‘i.)”

In 1906 the Taft Board recommended a system of Coast Artillery batteries to protect Pearl Harbor and Honolulu. Between 1909-1921, the Hawaiian Coast Artillery Command had its headquarters at Fort Ruger and defenses included artillery regiments stationed at Fort Armstrong, Fort Barrette, Fort DeRussy, Diamond Head, Fort Kamehameha, Kuwa‘aohe Military Reservation (Fort Hase – later known as Marine Corps Base Hawaiʻi) and Fort Weaver.

The Army mission in Hawai‘i was defined as “the defense of Pearl Harbor Naval Base against damage from naval or aerial bombardment or by enemy sympathizers and attack by enemy expeditionary force or forces, supported or unsupported by an enemy fleet or fleets.”

The District was renamed Headquarters Coast Defenses of Oʻahu sometime between 1911 and 1913. Following World War I and until the end of World War II, additional coastal batteries were constructed throughout the Island.

Then, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

As soon as the air attack was over, the Hawaiian Department plunged into a reconstruction and new construction effort of unprecedented scale and pace.

By December 12, the Army position was “to take all possible steps short of jeopardizing the security of the Continental United States and the Panama Canal to reinforce the defenses of Oʻahu.”

Wartime reality hit the neighbor islands a few days later. A group of about nine Japanese submarines were kept in the vicinity of Hawaiʻi until mid-January – they were stationed there to find out just how much damage had been done to the American military.

Just before dusk on December 15, a submarine lobbed about ten shells into the harbor area of Kahului on Maui, and three that hit a pineapple cannery caused limited damage.

Over a 2½-hour period during the night of December 30 – 31, submarines engaged in similar and nearly simultaneous shellings of Nawiliwili on Kauaʻi, again on Kahului, Maui and Hilo on the Big Island.

The principal immediate change in Hawaiʻi’s defense structure came about on December 17, 1941, when the top Army and Navy commanders were replaced and all Army forces in the Hawaiian area were put under command of the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet.

Under a cooperative agreement, the army operated coast defense guns, all anti-aircraft batteries except those on naval ships, most of the pursuit aircraft on the Island, an inshore patrol which extended 20-miles out to sea and aircraft warning service. The navy operated the fleet and distance reconnaissance extending to 600-miles out to sea.

Two arguments won the approval of the War Department during December for a much larger reinforcement of Hawaiʻi. The Navy contended that the sure defense of the Hawaiian area depended primarily on Army air power and that the security and effectiveness of that air power required its dispersion among the major islands of the Hawaiian group.

Secondly, while the immediate reinforcement of December 1941 might ensure against a direct attempt by the enemy to invade Oʻahu, the Japanese had the naval strength to cover an invasion of one or more of the almost undefended neighbor islands. From bases on these islands the enemy could attack and possibly starve out Oahu.

These arguments led to plans for garrisoning the other islands of the Hawaiian group. And, Hilo was a natural choice.

After the sugar industry developed across the Islands, Hilo grew to be the second largest town in the islands, acting as a business hub for the numerous plantations along the Hilo-Hamakua coast, as well as a transport center for incoming supplies and equipment and outgoing crops.

In 1908, construction began on the Hilo Bay breakwater along the shallow reef, beginning at the shoreline east of Kūhiō Bay; by 1929 the breakwater was completed and extended roughly halfway across the bay. Piers were built and extended by 1927.

(Contrary to urban legend, the Hilo breakwater was built to dissipate general wave energy and reduce wave action in the protected bay, providing calm water within the bay and protection for mooring and operating in the bay; it was not built as a tsunami protection barrier for Hilo.)

In 1926, a 400 by 2,000-foot field had been cleared for Hilo Airport and on February 11, 1928, the new airport was dedicated. A second and third runways were added and the airport was renovated (the renovation dedication ceremony was held May 2, 1941.)

At the outbreak of World War II, Hilo Airport was taken over by the Army Engineers, and an Air Corps fighter squadron was stationed there. US Army Engineers constructed military installations and continued the expansion of runways, taxiways and parking aprons. The name of Hilo Airport was changed to General Lyman Field on April 19, 1943.

At Hilo, a mobile field battery of 155-mm guns was set up in December 1941. Four 4-inch naval guns were later emplaced in 1942.

To help man them, the 96th Coast Artillery Regiment (AA) (Semi-mobile – activated April 15, 1941 at Camp Davis, North Carolina, and trained there until December 27) arrived in Hilo on March 10, 1942. (They stayed at Hilo until December 1943; then they transferred to Oʻahu.)

The Hilo battery was abandoned in 1945. (Lots of information here is from army-mil.)

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Hilo Coastal Defense-Hilo-1943

Hilo-1941-1944-DMY

Hilo_1941-1944-DMY

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Hilo Airport, August 26, 1941

Hilo Airport, August 12, 1941

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1946_Tsunami_Damage_(NOAA-NGDC-Orville T. Magoon)

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10,000 tons of sugar in warehouse, Hilo-PP-29-3-012

Naval Air Station Hilo, April, 1945

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April 28, 2015 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Often Overlooked – Not Forgotten

When you think of military facilities out on the ʻEwa Plain, your attention is most often brought only to the Naval Air Station Barber’s Point. Yet, that was not the first military installation, there. An often-overlooked airfield and battlefield are there, too.

Let’s look back.

On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright piloted the first powered airplane 20-feet above a wind-swept beach in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina; the flight lasted 12 seconds and covered 120 feet. Over the following years the fledgling flight industry evolved and grew. Within a decade, tactical use was evident in the US military.

Prior to powered, winged flight, military used blimps, airships and dirigible balloons (lighter than air craft using gas to lift the craft.) The US military looked to bring them to the Islands.

On March 28, 1917, folks looked for a location for a lighter-than-air base in Hawaiʻi; “the most suitable site for the location of a rigid airship station in Hawaiʻi is, on the south side of Oʻahu, between Pearl Harbor and Barber’s Point.”

Back then, runways weren’t needed/used for the airship; they were tied to mooring masts (a line from the mast was tied to the bow of the airship to hold it there, while not in use.)

On May 4, 1925, the Navy contracted with Louis R Smith of Honolulu “to erect the mooring mast, clear the site, erect buildings, and install incidental machinery and piping.” A circular railroad for tethering the airship was later added. (Frye & Resnick)

The ʻEwa Mooring Mast was meant to be used by the helium-inflated airships USS Akron and USS Macon. They were designed for long-range scouting in support of naval operations. Each carried Curtiss Sparrowhawk biplanes which could be launched and recovered in flight, extending the range over the open ocean, looking for enemy vessels.

Sometime later, the Navy also constructed an oil-surfaced, 150-foot by 1,500-foot emergency landing field at ʻEwa.

Although intended to provide an air station for lighter-than-air craft, none ever visited the station. The crashes of the Akron (1933 off New Jersey) and the Macon (1935 off California) resulted in the Navy cancelling the program. But that didn’t end aviation activities in the ʻEwa Plain.

On February 15, 1935, the Honolulu Advertiser reported on the closure of the Mooring Mast and also noted “The field will be put in condition to make it suitable for emergency airplane landings.”

That year, the Army broke ground for a more than 2,000-acre airbase to be known as Hickam Field. Additional work continued at the ʻEwa Field.

The construction of what would become Marine Corps Base ʻEwa (ʻEwa Field) was part of the US military and economic expansion into the Pacific region starting in the 1930s and early-1940s to counter the Japanese Empire.

The US Navy’s plan for expansion of its bases was part of a larger mobilization of the American economy for war, which began in 1939, picked up sharply in mid-1940 after the Germans overran Western Europe.

Because of the growing needs of Naval and Marine Aviation in the Pacific as part of the expansion to a 10,000-aircraft Navy, the Navy decided to make ʻEwa its own base for the Marines, rather than a part of the larger Naval Air Station.

ʻEwa was made available for Marine Corps aircraft use in 1939. In September 1940, after the original lease expired, an additional 3,500-acres were acquired from the Campbell Estate for the enlargement of the emergency landing field.

Ewa Field’s war-time configuration was begun in January 1941 when Marines arrived to begin expanding the station from the short landing mat and airship mooring mast into an installation that could house a Marine aircraft group. By January 29 of that year, it was pronounced “available for use … for carrier landing practice”.

Additional construction on the station commenced that month; men were quartered in tents for several months until housing was finished in late-1941. In the interim, runways and permanent operations and support facilities were built. A control tower (‘crow’s nest’) for the emerging runways was built in the mooring mast. (AECOM & Mason)

By December 1941, the station had paved runways in the form of a large X, a concrete aircraft warm-up platform, and many support and operational buildings.

The Marine Corps’ ʻEwa Field and the surrounding vicinity was one of several areas on Oʻahu that Japanese forces targeted during their surprise attack on December 7, 1941; it appears that ʻEwa Field was attacked approximately two minutes before Pearl Harbor.

While the ultimate Japanese military objective was the temporary destruction of the American Pacific fleet, a secondary objective included the targeting of aircraft (on the ground and in the air,) including ʻEwa Field, to guarantee air superiority and ensure success of the mission. (Frye & Resnick)

The Marines had 48-aircraft stationed at Ewa Field; in the attack the action was perceived as coming in three “separate and distinct attacks” and was undertaken by a large number of aircraft.

Strafing with their machine guns and cannon, the Zeros concentrated their fire on the “dispersed tactical aircraft” firing short bursts, the reversed course for repeated passes at their targets. (The first wave had destroyed all of the aircraft at ʻEwa.)

“(W)e noticed 20 or 30-airplanes in a traffic pattern at ʻEwa, the Marine landing field. We found they were Japanese dive bombers strafing the field.” (Welch; Bond)

With the expansion of naval bases in the Pacific, including the continued expansion of ʻEwa, the US created a new air base at Barbers Point, designed to provide the necessary landing field facilities for the plane complements of two aircraft carriers.” (The new airfield at Barbers Point started in November 1941.)

So, there were two nearby air stations built at the ʻEwa Plain: ʻEwa Field, the first (and smaller) and the Naval Air Station Barber’s Point, the larger. (After 1942, ʻEwa Field was known as Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) ʻEwa.)

ʻEwa was officially closed on June 18, 1952 and its property assumed by Naval Air Station Barbers Point. (The thirty-two revetments on the property, originally designed to shield aircraft from bomb blasts, have served as stables since the 1950s and provide a home for approximately 50 horses.)

Barber’s Point was decommissioned by the Navy in 1998 and turned over to the State of Hawaiʻi for use as Kalaeloa Airport and is used by the US Coast Guard, Hawaii Community College Flight Program, Hawaiʻi National Guard and general aviation, as well as an alternate landing site for Honolulu International Airport.

Several installations on Oahu associated with the December 7 attack are listed on the National Register as National Historic Landmarks: Pearl Harbor, Hickam Field, Kaneohe, and Wheeler Field.

ʻEwa Plain Battlefield, which is composed of former ʻEwa Field, was the only major battle site from the Japanese attack not currently listed in the National Register of Historic Places (on February 9, 2015, the Keeper of the National Register noted the Ewa Mooring Mast Field is eligible for listing on the National Register.)

Efforts continue to get it appropriated listed with the other battlefields. (Lots of the information here is from John Bond, Frye & Resnick and AECOM & Mason.)

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Ewa Field on December 2, 1941 NARA

Barbers (L) – Ewa Field (R)

Marine Corps Air Station Ewa (right) and Naval Air Station Barbers Point, left

Marine Corps Air Station Ewa (left) and Naval Air Station Barbers Point, right, September 1944

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Ewa MCAS 9-4-41

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Marine Corps Air Station Ewa

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Ewa Mooring Mast

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USS Akron-ZRS-4

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USS-Akron-with-biplane

November 11, 2014 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Veterans Day

World War I – known at the time as “The Great War” – officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles, France.

However, fighting ceased seven months earlier when an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, between the Allied nations and Germany, went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

For that reason, November 11, 1918, is generally regarded as the end of “the war to end all wars.”

In November 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words:
“To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…”

The United States Congress officially recognized the end of World War I when it passed a concurrent resolution on June 4, 1926, with these words:
“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.”

An Act (52 Stat. 351; 5 U. S. Code, Sec. 87a) approved May 13, 1938, made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday—a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as “Armistice Day.”

Armistice Day was primarily a day set aside to honor veterans of World War I, but in 1954, after World War II had required the greatest mobilization of Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen in the Nation’s history; and later, American forces had fought aggression in Korea, the 83rd Congress, at the urging of the veterans service organizations, amended the Act of 1938 by striking out the word “Armistice” and inserting in its place the word “Veterans.”

With the approval of this legislation (Public Law 380) on June 1, 1954, November 11th became a day to honor American veterans of all wars.

Later that same year, on October 8th, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued the first “Veterans Day Proclamation” which stated:
“In order to insure proper and widespread observance of this anniversary, all veterans, all veterans’ organizations, and the entire citizenry will wish to join hands in the common purpose.”

“Toward this end, I am designating the Administrator of Veterans’ Affairs as Chairman of a Veterans Day National Committee, which shall include such other persons as the Chairman may select, and which will coordinate at the national level necessary planning for the observance. I am also requesting the heads of all departments and agencies of the Executive branch of the Government to assist the National Committee in every way possible.”

The first Veterans Day under the new law was observed with much confusion on October 25, 1971. It was quite apparent that the commemoration of this day was a matter of historic and patriotic significance to a great number of our citizens, and so on September 20th, 1975, President Gerald R. Ford signed Public Law 94-97 (89 Stat. 479), which returned the annual observance of Veterans Day to its original date of November 11, beginning in 1978.

This action supported the desires of the overwhelming majority of state legislatures, all major veterans service organizations and the American people.

Veterans Day continues to be observed on November 11, regardless of what day of the week on which it falls. The restoration of the observance of Veterans Day to November 11 not only preserves the historical significance of the date, but helps focus attention on the important purpose of Veterans Day:

Today, Veterans Day, is a celebration to honor America’s veterans for their patriotism, love of country, and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good.

To all who served, Thank You.