VA’s national cemetery system is far more expansive in terms of interments and properties than the three other federal agencies with similar responsibilities – Department of Army (DA), American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), and National Park Service (NPS). National shrines in the VA system are kept at the highest standards and visited by the public and distinguished visitors regularly. Yet, surprisingly, over the 160 years that many VA cemeteries have existed, U.S. presidents have rarely delivered speeches on these hallowed grounds.
There a few documented instances in the late nineteenth century and a storm canceled Barack Obama’s planned 2010 Memorial Day speech at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Illinois. And while VA cemeteries display a plaque bearing the text of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, that famous piece of presidential oratory was delivered in what is now an NPS national cemetery. Otherwise, U.S. presidents have favored DA’s Arlington National Cemetery as a backdrop for Memorial and Veterans Day speeches and other special observances.
The scarcity of presidential appearances at VA cemeteries makes President William J. Clinton’s speech at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, more popularly known as the Punchbowl, on September 2, 1995, particularly noteworthy. Clinton visited the Punchbowl on V-J or Victory over Japan Day as part of a three-day commemoration celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II. Born in 1946, Clinton himself made history in 1992 when he became the first member of the post-WWII generation to be elected president. In its own way, the event at the Punchbowl marked the changing of an era.
Clinton’s 17-minute remarks were the last of an hour-long ceremony held on the steps of the ABMC’s Honolulu Memorial within the cemetery, described by VA Secretary Jesse Brown as a “vast and beautiful place of rest, like a cradle dropped from heaven [that] gently holds those who paid the ultimate sacrifice.” A crowd of some 6,500 attended, many of them World War II Veterans. They began gathering among the 33,000 graves decorated with American flags as early as 5 a.m. in a drizzling rain. In his address, Clinton focused on the sacrifices of the WWII generation and progress they made possible for American society:
It is only fitting that here in the middle of the ocean, whose name means peace, the place where WWII began and ended for America, that we mark the wars’ end and honor the men and women who saved our world. We owe it to the World War II generation to remember, but we owe them more. For just as freedom has its price, it also has its purpose. To enable all people to live up to their God given potential and to continue the march of human progress.
Toward the end of the speech, President Clinton requested that all WWII Veterans in the audience stand or wave a hand to be recognized. The camera panned across the crowd as hundreds rose to their feet, many wearing the medals they had earned for their service, and the drumbeat of applause sounded in the air. One of the Veterans so honored, Navy Captain Jim Daniels III, who figured prominently in Clinton’s speech, died nine years later and was laid to rest in that very cemetery, in Section CT4-Q, Row 100, Site 153.
View the full ceremony on C-SPAN. President Clinton’s remarks begin at 25:06 and conclude at 41:30.
Note: The WWII generation is rapidly disappearing. The number of Veterans who served in the war has fallen from around one million in 2015 to 240,000 in 2022.
By Richard Hulver, Ph.D.
Historian, National Cemetery Administration
Share this story
Related Stories
History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 90: Pearl Harbor Unknowns Marker
Seamen 1st Class Raymond Emory survived the attack on Pearl Harbor. Decades later, his research and advocacy led the government to add ship names to the markers of the Pearl Harbor unknowns interred in the National Cemetery of the Pacific.
History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 89: VA Film “You Can Lick TB” (1949)
In 1949, VA produced a 19-minute film titled “You Can Lick TB.” The film follows a fictional conversation between a bedridden Veteran with tuberculosis and his VA doctor, dramatizing through brief vignettes the different stages of TB treatment and recovery.
History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 88: Civil War Nurses
During the Civil War, thousands of women served as nurses for the Union Army. Most had no prior medical training, but they volunteered out of a desire to support family members and other loved ones fighting in the war. Female nurses cared for soldiers in city infirmaries, on hospital ships, and even on the battlefield, enduring hardships and sometimes putting their own lives in danger to minister to the injured.
Despite the invaluable service they rendered, Union nurses received no federal benefits after the war. Women-led organizations such as the Woman’s Relief Corps spearheaded efforts to compensate former nurses for their service. In 1892, Congress finally acceded to their demands.
