Feb 3, 2010

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Even before Congress declared war on Japan, young American men were lining up to enlist. At the time, I was working in the Manila office for a shipping firm called the White Star Line.

White Star was the line that had owned the Titanic. White Star also owned the Carpathian--the ship that had rescued the Titanic's survivors ..... and the Carpathian was also the ship that had taken me to the battlefields of France in 1917. You know, looking back I think I should have seen all those White Star connections as an omen of things to come. But I didn't.

The Axis war in Europe and Asia had been going on for the last several years. But General MacArthur had assured us that Manila was the safest city in the Orient. MacArthur was a great general, but this time he guessed wrong.

On December 8th, just one day after Pearl Harbor, a Japanese invasion took control of Manila. The Japanese took thousands of us foreigners to Los Banos, a prison camp 40 miles southeast of Manila. Along with 2,000 other foreign civilians, I was designated a prisoner of war.

For the next 3 and a half years, my fellow POW's and I had only two things on our minds. We wondered when MacArthur was going to return and how we were going to find something to fill our stomachs. The starvation at Los Banos was so bad; it is surprising that any of us survived. When The 11th Airborne finally freed us on February 23, 1945, we all looked pretty much like skeletons with skin on.

America goes to war to free, to liberate, to protect, and to bring justice to bear. I hope this Memorial Day, you take the time to thank the veterans you meet for their service to this country--the sacrifices that they have made to preserve your freedom.

May God bless you and God bless America!

FRANK BUCKLES,

Corporal, World War I,

U.S. Army (Retired).

After World War I was over with, that generation went into the Roaring Twenties, then the Great Depression, and then they were the fathers of the Greatest Generation that went off to the great World War II.

I mention Frank Buckles for several reasons. He's the last surviving doughboy. This is a picture of him that was taken not too long ago in front of the D.C. World War Memorial that's on the Mall. Now Frank Buckles is spending the rest of his life trying to do something for those doughboys in World War I. You see, on the great National Mall we have a memorial for the veterans of Vietnam, for the veterans of Korea, and for the veterans of the Greatest Generation, the World War II Memorial. But there is no memorial for the doughboys of World War I who served in these United States. In fact, this monument, this memorial for D.C. World War I veterans, is in the weeds. It's not taken care of by the Park Service.

And so what we are planning and what Frank Buckles desires is to have an expansion of this memorial and expand it to include all of those who served in the great World War I. He says, I feel as the last survivor a responsibility to bring recognition to all of the millions who fought in that war and are gone. I intend to give all my efforts and time I have left to see that a national memorial of World War I joins the other memorials on the National Mall. I am dismayed that this country has erected memorials for World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, yet there is no memorial for the war to end all wars.

So what we should do, Members of Congress and Mr. Speaker, we should erect a memorial for that war that occurred in the last century. We should erect it for the doughboys of that generation; for Frank Buckles, who is 109 years old, the last surviving doughboy. We owe it to them. There are no lobbyists for the World War I Memorial. Everybody's died. The only lobbyists are Members of Congress and schoolchildren throughout this country, like Creekwood Middle School in Kingwood, Texas, that's raising money to pay for the memorial on the National Mall.

And so what we as Members of Congress do and need to do is to honor these great Americans that served in that great war--that war that we don't even talk much about in our history books anymore. We owe it to them. We owe it to Frank Buckles. We owe it to those doughboys.

And that's just the way it is.