Transcripts For CSPAN3 How Society Remembers Veterans 1945-2016 20180127

March. Finally, an examination of the evolving efforts to recognize Women Air Force Service Pilots. We have a terrific panel today. Introduction, i want to explain how this panel came to be. Participants in the Summer Institute on veterans in society, ambiguities and representations. The subtitle is incredibly important. It represents some of the confusion that might exist about who counts as a veteran, what it means to be a veteran, how that meaning has changed over time and how society has understood that change. How all of these things connect with nonveterans in society, and the Civil Military divide that seems to be growing ever greater. Were broughtissues together in a threeweek Summer Institute at virginia tech, washington actually. We explored with about 20 other colleagues from a variety of disciplines some of these issues. One of the big takeaways or one of the Big Questions that we were talking about is whether it would make sense to talk about Something Like veterans studies as a subdiscipline or as its own field. Is that something that actually should exist . Does it make sense to think of veterans history as a discreet subfield of history . Can you think about it is there enough shared in common and enough unique about that population that it needs to be treated that way . Also, do our understandings of excuse me. My goodness. Its chilly outside. Do our understandings of veterans lives and experiences benefit from being separated out this way . Does that help with our analysis . So the institute itself benefitted from a really multidisciplinary diverse set of people who are doing a variety of things that could be part of this sort of new idea of veterans studies and i think we have them wellrepresented here within the history discipline. Its divided between the idea of research and practice, right . And so you have people who are working on Veterans Issues in an academic sense using traditional kinds of historical inquiry like documentary research, oral history, and material culture and trying to use these things to try to understand the past history of veterans groups, experiences, and their postwar integration into american life. But you also have practitioners who are looking at things like how do student veterans integrate on campus . What kinds of issues do they have when they come back to school using a g. I. Bill and how do those experiences then how can those experiences both be historyized and also how do you use their experiences and relate to their experiences and help them use their experiences to integrate on campus . And so, veteran studies theoretically could be a very diverse multidisciplinary space where concerns about things like Foreign Policy, Public Policy, public history, oral history, military history, literature and art all meet together under one sort of umbrella heading and provide better avenues for understanding this population. So our three panelists today will combine this kind of experience and their experiences and tell us more about the kind of work that they do in sort of all of these areas. And force us to consider what it means for an individual in different times and places to be a veteran. To look at how it means what it means to be accepted among other vets in social constructs as a veteran. And how these kinds of veteran issues intersect with Public Policy and Foreign Policy , discussions like those that get centered here in washington. And how Historical Research can take these issues into bridging the sort of greater Civil Military divide. And so well welcome you to think about these sort of issues and this sort of idea of a veterans studies or a veterans studies subfield of history as we explore these topics and hopefully well have a good , fruitful conversation about that as we go forward. Before we go before we go straight into the discussions, i want to introduce our three panelists here. Excuse me. Ill start ill just give you a little bit of information about them based on the order in which theyre going to speak today. So starting on the far left, drew darien is a professor of history at Salem State University. He specializes in 20th century United States history and oral history. Hes the author of becoming new yorks finest. And a history of the temple sinai in brooklyn. For the past decade he served as , the director of the student cataloging the thats found salemveterans. Com. In 2012, he helped found and continues to teach in the salem state veterans learning, veterans Scholars Learning Community in which a cohort of firstyear veterans take linked classes and history writing, public speaking, and interdisciplinary studies. You see a nice mixture of practice and scholarship there. Then immediately on my left, elena friat is a phd candidate at the university of new mexico and shes working on her dissertation titled remembering new mexicos war, history in of 1942 22012. She has presented at many conferences. Prior to relocating to tampa, florida, she worked as a historian for the air force Research Laboratory in albuquerque, new mexico, and shes contributed to a lot of publications for the laboratory, in particular a 100year history of science and technology in the u. S. Air force. In the middle is sarah meyers. Assistant professor of history at st. Francis university where she teaches courses on public history, war and society. Worldalso director of the War Ii Museum which opened in 2016. The museum houses archival histories and oral interviews for student research. She is the author of a couple of terrific chapters. One battling contested airspaces, the american Womens Service pilots of world war. And gendered identities and militarization in the Second World War in the gender in the Second World War, the lessons of war. So we have a great deal of expertise to share with you this morning this afternoon. Excuse me. Drew . Thank you. And thank you all for being here today. I look forward to you joining in our conversation. Im going to begin with a little bit of personal narrative here. I first came to Salem State University in 2004 as the american wars in iraq and afghanistan seemed to be reaching something of a crescendo. But, of course, here we are 14 years later and many of the goals of what was then dubbed Operation Enduring freedom and Operation Iraqi freedom remain as murky as ever. What was most striking to me about my first few years at a Public University in a state known for its educational rigor and intellectual discourse was how few of my civilian students were thinking deeply about the blood and treasure being expended on behalf of oef and oif. Some students might certainly make connections between these contemporary wars and those conflicts they were studying in the classroom, but there was really little sense of urgency and there was certainly an absence of vigorous discourse about what was unfolding. In an age in which less than 1 2 of 1 of the population serves in the armed forces, too many of our fellow citizens have either grown comfortable with war or simply ignored it entirely. Nowhere should this be more unsettling than at an institution of Higher Education. The other conspicuous dimension of teaching in the age of war is that hundreds of thousands of veterans have made their way to our classrooms, in part thanks to the g. I. Bill. And yet much in the same way there has been far too much silence about these wars, our student veterans have occupied a quiet, if not invisible, place on our College Campuses. Our universities have been pretty good about honoring veterans through celebratory flagwaving events but have created fewer opportunities for learning about their experiences of war, homecoming. Or transition to civilian life. Few of our civilian students have ever spoken with a veteran, let alone engaged in any kind of deep listening to his or her military experience. Surely it cannot be healthy for a democracy to undergo perpetual war and to do so as soldier and civilian grow further apart from one another. In 1776, samuel adams warned of this particular danger, commenting about the Standing Army of the American Revolution that, quote, men have been long subject to military laws and to the military customs and habits, may lose the spirit and feeling of citizens. And even citizens who oh so admire the heroism of the commanders of their own army lock look up to them as their saviors. As an oral historian, i viewed the contemporary citizensoldier divide as an opportunity. In 2007, i started training my undergraduate and graduate students to conduct oral histories with student veterans, both as a means of cataloging the American Experience of war in the 21st century but also as a vehicle for generating more discourse between soldiers and civilians. One of the central tenants of our project was to depoliticize it, to try to the degree possible to create a blank canvas for our veterans to paint with their own individual experiences. Now, of course, we had our own set of topics and questions that we intended to ask, and that made complete objectivity impossible, but id like to think that we were guided by a principle of creating a forum for veterans to represent their own experiences, trajectories, and viewpoints. One of the major themes to emerge from these conversations has been the inordinate challenge our veterans face in juggling the multiple dimensions of their identity. As students, as soldiers, as citizens. What we heard time and time again were the ways in which the culture of the military was, in fact, antithetical to that of Higher Education. We know that the military has welldefined roles and tasks, a very clear chain of command, and puts a premium on following orders and not questioning authority. Where as we also know all too well the university is founded on an ethic of skepticism, doubt , and challenging inherited wisdom. For many of our veterans, college was therefore an alien world. The military may have entailed danger, extremes of physical deprivation and psychological trials of epic proportions, but its clarity of purpose, reward system, and bonds of solidarity dwarfed any satisfaction that many of these veterans could find on a college campus. At the same time, each of these students came to the military and later to the university with a personal history, one that was defined by family, region, race, religion, and gender that in turn shaped their individual perspectives as citizens. We also ought to note that some of these veterans, in fact, secured their citizenship through military service. But the larger point here is that coming to the university was not just about the double consciousness of being a veteran on the one hand and a student on the other hand, but as an individual citizen with a very particular life history and understanding of the world. Add to that complexity the uniqueness of a veterans branch, boot camp, years of service, mos, rank, deployment, and random mix of military peers, and what you have is a profoundly rich and diverse set of stories that really renders meaningless any singular representation of the oef or oif veteran. Rather, what we have is a much richer tapestry, a kaleidoscope of veteran experiences with various meaning and interpretations. For some veterans, oef and oif were just wars. They were wellexecuted and they constituted a noble american mission. For other veterans, the wars were ill conceived from the start, founded on false principles and represented a misguided placement of military resources. The vast majority of veterans identified rich and deep bonds of solidarity. And those, in fact, often crossed the lines of race, class , and gender. And yet where as some veterans viewed the military as colorblind and gender neutral, others reported deeply entrenched hierarchies of race and gender. Some veterans viewed the meritocracy. Pure for others, it was riddled with nepotism and favoritism. Some veterans reported that the military equipped them with vocationally transferrable skills, while others might note a general ethic of discipline, responsibility, and accountability, but pointed out that the military taught them very little in terms of transferrable skills in their areas of interest for work. Some veterans demonstrated a great depth of knowledge of international affairs, cultural sensitivity, and a thoughtful respect for afghan and iraqi citizens. Other veterans exhibited a more superficial understanding of the regions to which they were deployed, and in some cases failed to recognize the humanity of the victims of war. As a collective group, these veterans were a bundle of contradictions, but an equally important point is that individual veterans could express these contradictions within the same interview. Or in some cases, they were able to delineate how their own views had evolved over time. Oef and oif veterans certainly represent a multiplicity of voices. That said, i do think there are some commonalities among these veterans. In addition to the aforementioned challenge of replicating the militarys clarity of purpose and goal setting, the majority of our veterans expressed various levels of trauma associated with combat, the stress of simply being in a war zone, or the disconnect between military life and what they found on the home front. The stress and trauma of war is certainly nothing new. It is a universal theme in veterans literature going all the way back to homers the odyssey. What perhaps renders oef and oif trauma unique is the fact that the United States has an allvolunteer military with a great gulf between civilians and those who serve as well as a certain kind of fogginess in defining achieving what victory defining and achieving what victory might look like in either iraq or afghanistan. That militarycivilian chasm and the elusiveness of defining success in these wars has surely deepened the emotional scars of war. What i think one really hears in these oral histories is a plea among veterans not to be celebrated, honored, or even thanked for their service but, rather, simply to be heard and to be understood. And so what ive done for today, thanks to the generosity of my colleagues, is ive gathered together excerpts from five representative interviews that are about two minutes in length each that i think speak to some of the most representative themes that ive identified thus far, and hopefully will make some connections to the work that youre going to hear from sarah and elena. So i want to preemptively thank you in advance for giving your ear to these veterans for about 10 minutes. And i very much look forward to hearing from you your perspective about what we can all do to more accurately represent our veterans, both historically and in the contemporary world. Thank you. [indiscernible] can you hear that . Barely. Its not playing through the mic. Do you want me to hold the mic up here . Yeah. Ok. Both the mic . I turned 19 in iraq, and at age 19, i had an m4, i had a pistol on my hip, you know, i had a grenade, and when i walked up and down the streets of iraq, i was, like, the law, more or less, you know . If somebody looked at us funny we had full right to go over , there and start questioning them and ask them, hey, what are you doing . Are you counting us . Why are you counting the number of people . Now im back home, hi, im jack lynch. I go to sunlen state. I felt useful. I felt like i was actually accomplishing something with my life over there. Yeah. Weird and little sense as it might make, i felt like i was being a good marine, and that means, you know, im not going to lie, there have been nights im trying to go to sleep and ill lie awake in my bed just thinking about iraq for hours. Looking at the clock, oh, its only 12 00. Look back, its 3 30. Im like, just go to bed. And i cant. Youve lived in a hot zone with somebody for 15 months and, you know, every day you have to say a prayer hoping that today is not the day or, you know, knowing that the person standing next to you would lay their life down for you the same way, you know what i mean . Even though you guys just met. So for me its a family. Its not to this day, i would die for them. Because of everything ive got going on, ive developed slight ocd, so my psychiatrist says that its the loss of control. And because i was so used to being overseas and everything was, you know, and now being back home because i feel like my world is just kind of in chaos, that whenever i feel like my house, everything, if you move something, were going to fight. Especially if i go to look for it and its not where i put it, i literally get so angry and its insane how angry i get. Even at the grocery store. Everything gets lined up on the checkout belt. If somebody puts something, like, why would you do that fix it im very anal. She said its because of control issues. A bad rap sometimes. We absolutely do. My old armory used to be right outside of northampton, massachusetts. And if you know anything about that area, its a very, very, very liberal area, and i couldnt tell you how many dirty looks ive gotten. I couldnt tell you how many times ive been called names and ive been yelled, like, driving by and my windows down and i hear people yell shit at me out there. Its sad. I understand the Antiwar Movement and i, you know, i respect their side on it. Some things i do believe, though, are necessary, and trust me, there is a saying out there, its a soldier above all who prays for peace. I would love for it to be over. Just because solely for my own selfish reasons of i am sick of seeing people, young people get killed. Like weve talked about earlier, i dont agree with the war, i dont agree with our motives and why our country has gone there, and to them i say, especially my job, my job i find bombs, i pull them out of the road so people dont get killed. And my main motivation for deploying, and i want people to know this, my main motivation for deploying was to keep people alive. Regardless of who they are. Whether theyre civilians, whether theyre afghan army, whether theyre our own coalition and our own forces and the other countries that have come to afghanistan to help us, nato forces. Thats why i deployed. Not for anything else. I was motivated to go after 9 11 for revenge, i guess you could say, but getting over there and seeing all of these things happen, i was there to take care of people. Thats ultimately why i really wanted to be there. And when it came down to my first deployment, rfi issue, thats when they had just started issuing sports bras and underwear to females. And then they cut our clothing voucher down to like 800. And now theyre just because its like females, a lot of us that are actually complaining about the uniform, because im a small person. I actually get into a small uniform and i still have to use the drawstrings because it will fall off of me. And so those are some of the problems we had. They didnt accommodate you guys . You had to deal with it . Yeah. I remember when we got the new vests, the smallest they had was a small. Im short. Im like 52, 53 and on top of that you handed me a small vest that could possibly be a medium. Thats almost like a dress on me. So im like, no, i cant. No. I cant even no, no, im not wearing this. I said yall are going to get me killed over there. I dont want it. Give me the old vest. Ill take an extra small or a small in the old vest. It was like, we dont discard does. Im not going then because youre going to get me killed. They said we can order an extra small vest. Im like, yeah, that would be better. There were about eight of us that needed extra smalls. And we had to wait. And i think we got those two days before it was time for us to leave. Thats unreal. Oh, yeah. My anxiety and my depression, they tell me, oh, you use that as a crutch or as an excuse. No, its a part of who i am now because i have it. You dont understand it and youre not trying to. So youre just making false accusations. Do you feel that people dont understand Mental Illness or dont want to understand it . Youve got those who want to understand it but are scared to ask and talk about and ones who dont care and dont give two craps about it and be like, oh well, thats you. You need to get that fixed you need to work that out type deal. Its not something you can fix or work out. It takes years for that to happen. Especially if you have stuff built up from before and then add on, thats going to take years of resolving. Id have to say that through all of it, it has changed me as a person. I think just to be a little bit more empathetic. A little bit more understanding. A little bit more culturally sensitive than, you know, had i never experienced these things. People that i was, you know, i served with and am still associated with, i would say, you know, its a mixed bag. You know, you have ive actually had quite a few friends that have didnt end up in good spots. They were physically wounded and thats just a risk that is associated with the nature of the business, but, you know, mentally, ive had four or five guys that ive served with that have committed suicide, and thats a big problem. Because like i mentioned, there are things that change in you that you dont necessarily recognize right away. Unless you address those issues, it really gets away from you. Its unfortunate that it has to happen. It doesnt have to happen but it is unfortunate that it does happen. There is a lot of misperceptions out there about the military community and the veteran community as a whole. Not all of them bad. Some of them are good. But i think that in general, especially in the University Environment or the school environment, you know, when youre taking classes with the, you know, with veterans and different people, we spend a lot of time understanding, you know, trying to understand other peoples cultures and Everything Else like that, but, you know, very seldom do we look at the person sitting next to us and try to understand them better. So i think that this types of things like this really go a long way to help. [inaudible] i dont know. [laughter] all for coming. I will try not to read too much from my paper. I think we all tend to do that. I would rather hear what you have to say and participate in our conversation. Forgive me if i forget something. What im talking about today is a piece of my dissertation, titled remembering a piece of 1845 tom 1945 1912. And the sort of events that im references today are mostly centered between about the early 1980s up through the early 2000s, in interest of time, but also because they really speak to how new mexicos veterans, particularly those who were imprisoned by the japanese after the Philippines Campaign in 1942, really sought to remember their war and their experience of war in a way that differed significantly from the way, for example, hollywood or the United States as a nation chose to commemorate world war ii. And as a bit of a jumping off point, in 2015, President Trump made a disparaging remark about john mccains war service. And he said that mccain was not a war hero, that people thought mccain was a war hero because he had been a prisoner of war. And to him, if youre a war hero, that means that you dont get captured. So that raises an interesting question about, well, if you do get captured, how do we remember you . How are you commemorated in your hometown, in your state, in the National Community . Where do we see those representations of prisoners of war . The answer to that question very briefly is we dont. We dont tend to see representations of prisoners of war as subjects that seem worthy of commemoration. But when we take a look at new mexico, the opposite is the case. New mexico as a state had a significant number of soldiers who were in the philippines. Of the 10,000 u. S. Soldiers who were taken prisoner by the japanese in 1942, 1,800 of those came from new mexico and about half of those returned home at the end of the war. About 900 or so were killed during the campaign or they were killed or died as a result of malnutrition, disease, starvation, other physical ailments, injury, while they p. O. W. Prisoned in these u camps both in the philippines and the japanese mainland. Taking a look at this map that gives you a sense of the spread throughout new mexico of how many communities were affected by the imprisonment of those soldiers. Nearly every community in new mexico had soldiers who were in the philippines who were captured and with a casualty rate of 50 , most of them experienced loss. And small that may not seem significant when you think about how many soldiers overall were killed in world war ii, you know, upwards of 400,000, but in very small Rural Communities in new mexico, having two soldiers go to war and only one of them come back, that was a heartbreaking statistic for those particular communities. And new mexico has really centered loss and sacrifice as their at the center of their war time history. Survivors, though, have seemed hesitant to themselves recognize that loss. This image here shows the white flag of surrender being raised in santa fe. One of the returning soldiers , manuel armijo, carried the flag and raised it at the state capital at san jose and said were ashamed of this flag. There is no honor in this. We surrendered because we were weak. And he and his fellow soldiers were sort of the lone voices in that because people around them, their family members, their friends, community members, Community Officials said, no, we do need to honor you, we do need to remember your sacrifice. There is no shame in this. And so, the communities in new mexico have really worked to sort of turn this from a story of loss to a story of honor. And so, new mexico has written the story of heroism for these p. O. W. s. In their monuments, their memorials, their ceremonies, they shape this version of masculinity that embraces victimhood, victimhood, bodily weakness, and submission. Scholars have done work that suggest wartime citizenship for men at least was based on how masculine those individuals were perceived to be. They were soldiers or workers. They did things for their country that required strength, required power. And p. O. W. s cant claim that. They said, well, we spent our war in a prison. We spent our war doing nothing. So how do we represent that for everyone else . And secretary of war Henry Stinson perhaps would have id sided with this view that trump has that perhaps there is nothing all that honorable in being a prisoner of war because when new mexicans and others had whohad sons and brothers were p. O. W. s went to the secretary of war and we want them to be promoted just like everyone else is being promoted. Just because theyre stuck in a p. O. W. Camp doesnt mean they cant receive the benefits of increased rate. Secretary said there is no way to distinguish between those who by virtue of having fought to the last might be deserving of a reward in form of promotion and those who surrounded in circumstances under which they might have been reasonably expected to continue to resist. This gives us a sense that of what he believed surrender and capture reflected about the fortitude of p. O. W. s, and that they had none. It took a long time. That proposed bill eventually came to fruition under a different title. But civilians were really upset by the fact that stinson rejected this bill. They sent all sorts of letters to their representatives and said, for example, whether he could resist a relentless foe for long without ammunition, food, or medicine. And those men captured offered the best they had in defense of their country. But hollywood to a degree echoed stinsons insistence, you know, really truly courageous men should fight to the last. The 1943 film baton showed the, quote, unquote, brave deeds and noble sacrifices of men in the final days before surrender. And all of the men, of course, died in the defense of the peninsula. This is a quote from a film critic who wrote in the new york times, he credited the filmmakers for making a picture about war in true and ugly detail and giving a shocking conception of the defense of that bloody point of land without insulting the honor of dead soldiers. But what the film really ignores is the true and ugly detail that thousands of men were captured. And so, he tacitly suggests the real heros were the ones who fought and died to the last, not the ones taken prisoner. Franklin roosevelt credited the defenders with buying the United States time to build its arsenal, but the National World war ii memorial in d. C. All but the surrender is all but missing from the panels. This i dont know how well you can see this panel. I cant see it very well either, but it was the best representation i could find. The title of this is liberation and its supposed to remind visitors of the malnourished, poorly treated americans who found themselves in prisoner of war camps. But because its titled liberation works instead to recall the moment when mcarthur famously returned to baton and freed the captives. So it emphasizes the liberators not those captured. The p. O. W. s in this panel are part of the victory rather than the survivors of an unimaginable horror. It is a representation of one who fights in war rather than recognizes the sacrifices of the p. O. W. s instead. These representations along with some more sort of local representations of the war, give us a sense that we have a difficulty accepting a wounded male body in commemorative and public spaces. This is a screen shot from Roadside America where people can go and leave reviews of things they see as theyre driving around the country. If you visit this website and you look up or if you look up deming new mexicos baton , monument, it reads that the creepy baton death march monument is a perhaps too realistic rendering of half star ved world war ii american soldiers. An individual posted his own photograph of the monument with a comment, sort of a walking dead effect, only this really happened to american soldiers at the start of the war. So he at least acknowledges that its a memorial to a real event, but comparing it to a Television Series about a Zombie Apocalypse makes its reality a lot harder to grasp. The monument was built in 1991 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the start of world war ii. The planners of the monument were the men themselves. This is an image of the monument as it is today and as it was built in the early 1990s. And you can see that they chose to use the suffering male form. I dont think i can enlarge on any of the detail, but what you see on the left is an emaciated, starved half naked man being supported by a uniformed man who is probably not all whose physical appearance probably isnt all that different under his uniform. And the baton survivors chose to represent themselves in this way. They wanted to show people what it was really like in the camps. They wanted to represent their constant hunger, their malnourishment. And they didnt want to shy away from showing what their experience was really like. Another monument just down the road in las cruces shows the male form similarly, and that the model on the left is the clay model that the artist used before she put clothes on them because she wanted to make sure she had the bodies correct. She wanted to make sure they werent huge, muscled, super strong men because the clothes wouldnt lay properly. If you wanted to show that they were starving and hungry underneath, the bodies had to show that as well. You can see in the middle the one man is being supported by the other two, that he can barely walk. And so, these monuments have also been visited by some visitors who seem to also not know how to respond or react to them because of the way that they represent male bodies. One visitor wrote in response to this particular monument, its pretty cool. But followed up with an awkwardly inappropriate death march monument advice, avoid getting bayonetted, keep moving. So hes not so much reflecting on what the monument represents but its almost as if the visitor some visitors who are perhaps not familiar with the history, not used to seeing memorials and monuments like this, dont quite know how to respond to this type of reality of what war does to the male body. And so, new mexicans valorized surrender in annual ceremonies and they do these ceremonies every year on the date of the original surrender in april of 1942. And so for amijo, the man i spoke about originally who raised the white flag, the white flag of surrender reminded people that the surrender happened. It happened once. It could happen again. They retell the story of the surrender. Attendees are reminded of the experiences of the men from new mexico who were imprisoned. Theyre joined by members of the Filipino Community. The emphasis in new mexico is to focus on surrender, what men while they were sn the prisoner of war camp to emphasize the physical degradation caused by war instead of emphasizing victory. You dont really see victory represented in any of these memorials and monuments. They focus on this the experience of those individual men, the experience of those men together, how they had to support each other in order to make it through their p. O. W. Experience. And you see it every year when they continually again and again raise that white flag of surrender to position surrender and loss at the center of their story rather than victory at the conclusion of the war. So thats very brief and very fast sort of summary of this heart of my dissertation, but i hope it is enough to foster some interesting discussion after sarah presents her work. I think i can go to exit. This is yours . Ok. Im not really sure what to do. Maybe slide show and present. I think thats what i did. Ok. And im also looking at a similar time period as elena because im looking at world war iiera program where there were from 1942 to 1944, there was a group called the womens air force Service Pilot program. It was with the Army Air Force , as it was named at the time, and it was the womens unit represented within that branch of the service. And so what i look at this for this talk today is how these women were the only womens unit that did not receive militarization, meaning they did not receive military status or benefits in 1944, like during the war, and that what they did was they organized themselves and fought for veteran status in the 1960s and 1970s. And they were successful in 1977 in there was a bill that passed through congress. So they received veteran status officially as of 1977. And so what im looking at here is how a specific group like this wasp program, how these women organized themselves and claimed the title of veteran and then how they faced a very large scale act of resistance by various groups throughout the country who were contesting the definition of the term veteran and who had the right to that term. So im kind of just playing that out in this one story. So this is a part of a larger book manuscript on this program. So im just going to look at it it for the 60s and 70s primarily. This is a picture here im going to look at how these women organized around reunions and this is also going to be the way that they construct their own representations of how they see themselves as veterans and how they define it. So just to kind of throw some key themes at you that kind of also fit along with what elena and drew have talked about here, within this battle that im getting ready to explain, are military service and citizenship and how these are directly linked. Also looking at identity and representation as veterans and actively seeing yourself as a veteran and also asserting your rights to that title. And then the larger gendered memory of war. Because for this story, the women still were fighting for veterans recognition as of a 20152016 battle over the right over which veterans can be inearned in Arlington National cemetery. So looking at military service and ties to citizenship. Military Service Throughout American History has been directly linked to citizenship. There have been various groups throughout our history that have linked to this. Im not going to go into all of the background for you, but there have been a lot of historians who have talked about how africanamericans or women or gay and lesbian service men and women have tried to use military service to get what they consider to be full citizenship. Others have all looked at this. And so, the wasps are no exception. They also fit into this. They as well as other womens units during world war ii saw themselves in many ways as trying to achieve full equality in American Society. For the wasps specifically, they were talking about their rights to different job titles and career opportunities. But for various women groups have had all different reasons. So what these women are doing, theyre disrupting the gendered ideas about who is a soldier during world war ii, but they also disrupt ideas about who is a hero and who is a veteran. And so they construct this identity of themselves as military pilots during the war. And then in the postwar period , they see themselves as veterans even though they only had civilian status until 1977. Their strong sense of comradery that they developed during world war ii is what they kind of use and channel through these yearly reunions, which you can see pictured here. That they have in these reunions they talk about, you know, what they did during the war and reminiscing, as other veterans groups do, and then eventually what that turns into is a large scale effort to get military status and benefits. And so, in the 60s and 70s, as they are constructing this plan to try to get veterans status, what they discover is that as you can kind of see in our panel here, the term veteran is one that is highly contested. Its not necessarily easily defined and its not easily, like, categorized. So what the wasps find is that in this atmosphere of womens liberation and vietnam and the other things that are going on historically that they have to fight a lot harder than they thought that they were going to in this struggle. And so, what happens is in the congressional debates in the 1970s, there are veteran organizations who fight actively against these wasps receiving the title veteran. They construct these male veterans construct their own representation of veterans that is in direct opposition to that of the female pilots. And so in the process, the male veterans are situating themselves as stakeholders of the title veteran. The wasps organized and executed strategies to prove the military nature of their program. So they talk about how they followed military rules and regulations, that they went through the same basic training as men with the exception of combat. They were stationed on bases throughout the continental United States and had military assignments. They organized trying to prove this military status. And what ends up happening is they illuminate masculine privilege and contested understandings of what this all means. As an example of this, robert lynn, who was an American Legion Deputy Director at the national headquarters, he provided testimony in congress in which he literally read from the United States code, specifically section 101 of title 38. And the quote is, the term veteran means a person who served in the active military, naval, or air service, or who was discharged or released under conditions other than dishonorable. And he contended that if the wasps were to receive this title specifically, that it would lower the value of the term. And that if they were granted this status, the word veteran would, quote, never again have the value that presently attaches to it. So, the wasps are not only, you know, threatening and upsetting definitions about military service during world war ii, but theyre also threatening ideas about what it means to be a veteran and trying to prove their rights. So in 1977, the congressional bills pass through congress, were signed into law. And so they successfully had veteran status. But what happens is they still have to continue to fight for that status even after theyve received it. And so, the example that i wanted to talk about here is of this 20152016 struggle for internment at Arlington National cemetery. This is a photograph from stars stripes. It is a photograph of wasp elaine harmans daughter terry harman receiving the flag at her military funeral at Arlington National cemetery in 2016. And basically, like you can look into the details or i can talk them later. But the gist is there is a special memo that came out that announced that the policy towards certain veterans groups, which included the wasps, would no longer be allowed to be inurned at arlington for reasons of space and other issues. So elaine harmans family had to fight, again for her right to this title of veteran. And again, the wasps had to rally and prove that yes we do have a right to this term. And if we want military funerals, we should have access to them and things like that. And so, they were successful because the house and Senate Unanimously passed a bill. And obviously, you can see the photograph here. But this is just the part of a larger story of today how women are still battling against gendered assumptions, sexual harassment, their rights to military spaces, including combat, elite forces, and even burial at Arlington National cemetery, and how all of this is in a constant state of negotiation and construction. So thank you, guys. So id like to start by thanking our three panelists for three terrific talks. [applause] i think we would all like to hear what you have to say. And so, we want to open up the floor to any questions or comments about any of these issues. Yeah . [indiscernible] resistance based in the p. O. W. Camp versus collaboration or or resistance in the p. O. W. Camp. So is there a dedicated difference of memory between the two situations . I dont know because i have not explored that in my research. Because and thats a good question. And for this particular project, im really looking at how new mexicans are remembering their war within the state. And so far, none of literature and the sources ive found speak to any discussion amongst the soldiers themselves about resistance or collaboration, at least in this particular instance, in these particular p. O. W. Camps. That literature i think exists more that ive seen for p. O. W. Camps in europe. And i havent seen that in any of the writings of the soldiers that ive read or any of the recollections or the interviews that theyve done. But im going to make a note of that and see if i do a more concentrated search what i might be able to find. Because that would add an interesting dimension though to this project, i think. The 1800s from new mexico, do you have any idea of an ethnic makeup . Given my understanding. I am from albuquerque. My understanding was always that it was largely the hispanic mexicans from the villages, the hispanic mexicans from albuquerque. And i wonder if that whole ethos of hispano new mexico which has been conquered already doesnt fit in here something. Indeed it does. Because the majority of that 1800, there is officially as in looking through, say, records that exist in the National Archives of their actual military records, which are somewhat incomplete for these particular units, its a bit difficult to parse through those and see. Because their ethnicity is not always identified. Not a historian, but there was a researcher in new mexico who went around and gathered information from all of the families. And the majority of those 1800 were hispanics. There were several native americans as well. I think probably no more than 20, 20 to 25 or so. And so, i am taking a look at the effect that sort of that ingrained there is a significant cultural awareness and sensitivity to this idea that these are individuals who have been conquered. And there is a little bit of discussion in some literature as well as the statements of some of the survivors as well that they felt that they had been sent to the philippines because they spoke spanish, because they would blend in, because they would be familiar with the customs of the people who they were [indiscernible] right. And there is some discussion they were sent there on purpose because they werent necessarily considered the best or the brightest of americas soldiers and what they had to offer. And it wasnt necessarily anticipated that they were going to be fighting any grand battles, that they were almost fodder for whatever the japanese had to throw at them. That is informing a good part of this project. And it does complicate the way that theyve chosen to commemorate themselves, because there was this sense that they had been left behind on purpose, that they had been forgotten by the u. S. Government, that this was the way the u. S. Government treated people from this particular part of the country. And in quite a few of the letters back and forth from their families and their friends to representatives and to government officials, they said this is the way the southwest has always been treated. We people in the southwest feel that we have been forgotten and left behind. So you see that theme echoed throughout their communications with each other. New mexico was a state less than 30 years. Yeah. Yeah. [indiscernible] showed of that you the men in prison camps. But there also remembered in the iron march that takes place in new mexico. You mean the one they have every year in las cruces . The ironman it now march. They are very strong in the Filipino Community in the country. And sond out notices forth that the march will take place. People have to train for it. It takes place in the desert. You are talking about the one at the White Sands Missile range . I was there a couple of years ngo, they call it the bataa memorial death march. I have not heard it called the iron man march. That is why i am just wondering ok. It is a way i think of physician inheir American Society their position in American Society and the military. I cannot remember right now. But the soldier who deserted in afghanistan and became a of the taliban for five years, and then came back and was honored by the president of the United States. Of wes another example should honor our p. O. W. s. And he got a promotion and back pay. It was not a sentiment widely held. It was not and still is not. [indiscernible] he was dishonorably discharged. Yeah. I would assume the students come back [indiscernible] thedo you deal with ignorance, to be generous, and stupid, to be more honest, of those right out of high school who may not be familiar with the worldly sense of these veterans. That seeingeal with it play out in class . Ofthere is no shortage ignorant comments coming from multiple sources on College Campuses these days. We dont often think about veterans as being a marginalized group. Given that they represent such a small part of society and are so culturally removed in their experiences, that might be in many ways and appropriate label. I am not sure i personally have to deal with it as much as the veterans themselves do. Reporthad students who having any kind of military paraphernalia like a camouflage backpack, putting it down on the floor and having other students move away from them, or turning to them in class when discussing something related to military or do for medic history and expecting or diplomatic history and expecting they will give a certain response because of what their politics are. Those sorts of things happen often. One of the things meredith mentioned in my introduction is in a community for veteran students. Part of the value for that is we have a kind of immersion process for our students. They take four linked classes. They take a seminar in freshman studies focused on Veterans Affairs and writing in the fall. History ofey take the u. S. And world and a public speaking class in the spring. Those are teaching fairly wellrounded in Veterans Issues, work with counseling services, veteran support services on campus. The real value that exists in the learning community is the cohort itself and their capacity to be with one another, to have points of commonality, to be able to identify with their common struggles that are so different from the typical 18yearold or 19yearold student. I think it is really that support system that has served them best. Yeah. I have two questions. The first is, is that a requirement that all veterans go through that particular course load . That is a great question which i think will get to the heart of some of the problematic nature of defining who is a veteran. Student has to ,elfidentify as a veteran given the kind of financial and other support that comes with the g. I. Bill. You would be remiss not to. Although, that occasionally does happen. On top of that, there are students who do not want to consciously represent themselves as veterans. They see themselves as fully civilian. They are proud of their service. They want to move on from that part of their life. We also have some students who are active duty, rotc, and we have a debate about whether we should allow them in the community. And then we have students who who from military families feel if they want to participate in this experience. We had to make some distinctions in terms of policing those boundaries. Becauser challenge is the support system is in place for veterans who have largely gone to war, been deployed, have findin a combat zone, we there are lots of other military university, even lots of other veterans, who do not have those experiences. If you are gearing your curriculum around ptsd, you have a certain constituency of students who have experienced that, you have a bit of a disconnect. On the other hand, some of the issues i was speaking to before, this cohort makes it really supportive and flexibl flexible. There is mentoring that goes on with the veterans themselves. I appreciate that you did notd students who serve in a combat capacity because i found it a little bit jarring that every student represented in the video with a combat veteran who had been deployed. I am curious in your research and work, do you represent students who did not serve in that capacity . I would find that represents a much larger portion of veterans han youu realize t realize an almost the entirety of the air force. Absolutely. For purposes of clarification, two of the veterans represented were not in combat but were deployed and served in support roles in combat zones in iraq and afghanistan. I think when youre pointing to is that there are maybe some internal and explicit veteranness. You have at the top those who served, were deployed, saw combat, and maybe even were injured in battle not debilitated in ways that would rob them of their masculinity, but those are at the very top and then you have those people. N war service, support roles for the purpose of our learning community and the purpose of this project, anyone who has veteran status qualifies. Video almost feels like it sensational rises war sensationalizes war, and it was not sure if you were aware of that. Everyone in the video talk about being deployed. It felt disingenuous. That is interesting. I would like to think about that. We have done dozens of interviews. Part of what i wanted to do today is to speak to the final wheret i made at the end i was trying to identify some commonalities of experience. Being inhe trauma of combat, in a combat zone, or having been in the military which has its own hierarchies of power and trying to transition to civilian life can put inordinate stress on a human being. I would welcome you to go to the website itself and you can look for interviews with veterans who oforganized by theater war, branch of service, and topically. Hopefully, you will see a more representative depiction there. Followup question because you mentioned the wasps. There is a gendered memory of war i am looking out with the wasps, but there is also a specific memory or idea about the word veteran and soldier. This is outside my area of research but might be something you all are interested in. There are a lot of good academic articles published recently about the vietnam war series on pbs and whose voices are represented and whose are left out. And what kind of message that sends and why certain organizations want to to portray it in certain ways. It opens up an interesting conversation. Thank you. [indiscernible] i am heather scarlet from northeast ohio. I guess my question [indiscernible] when you study [indiscernible] how would you go about doing that . [indiscernible] yeah. The records about the wasps reunions specifically are at Texas Women University in denton, texas. Ive gone through oral history interviews conducted by archivists at texas womens university. I also conducted my own. In those interviews, i or the other interviewers asked questions about what they did at the reunions and how those went down. Evidence ofo programs for the reunions that talk about specifically what they did. Toiously, it is impossible get at every aspect of it. You are trying to decipher what is representative based on sources you have. I found that asking them through the interviews specifically and also through newspaper coverage of the 1970s militarization reunionscongress, the are actually mention a lot in the articles because they are talking about how they orchestrated this largescale effort that lasted over a decade basically. So, thank you. I want to ask my own question. The chairs prerogative. To the idea ofk the importance of listening to veterans as they talk about their service and how they choose to remember or commemorate their service. But they also all speak to the idea that there are significant disconnects between how veterans remember their service and how the rest of society chooses to remember war and experiences they have sent the veterans off to experience. And then they all speak to this idea that within this large umbrella of the idea of veterans, there are a lot of disconnects about how individuals choose to remember their service. Does any of your research give you ideas of how to negotiate those disconnects . How do you bridge those divides . Does that make sense . To anyone. [indiscernible] need to think about it . Yeah. It is difficult. I am sorry, i did not catch your name, but i have been thinking about your comment and this question of representativeness clipsipse i chose the i chose because this is something we struggle with all the time. Part of what i am doing is multilayered. There is what i am doing as an oral historian archivist. There is what i am doing as a professor and instructor and mentor. And then, there is what i am doing as a researcher. As an oral historian and archivist, i simply want to catalog these stories. As i said before, what i am trying to do is to give each narrator a blank canvas to fill in, in the way he or she sees fit. At the same time, i cannot divorce myself as a scholar, researcher, and historian. As i mentioned before, we come to that project with a set of structured questions and issues that we would like them to engage in. In oral history, this is the practice referred to as shared authority between interviewer and narrator. We have to give the veterans space to talk about their experiences as they understood them. As a responsible historian, we dont accept that uncritically. If all i were doing is taking their interviews and depositing them in archives, which i am doing at my university library, then there would be no commentary or efforts to engage in representativeness on my part. Articleoing to write an about that, if im going to structure a website, if im going to put together a representative 10minute video, i have to make some choices. Those choices are going to either expand or constrain who gets included in that category. I think it also speaks to our larger work as historians, just to build on what drew is saying, and trying to select and choose individuals whose voices we feel reflect a collective group. Wasp i was interviewing ask me, we all had different experiences in the service, how are you going to write a book on all of the experiences . Trying to do that through my own work, i would also use as an example that is interesting to me, this during the 1960s and 1970s, the women themselves are using the language of the Womens Liberation Movement citing equal pay for equal work and all of these things. And yet when they are interviewed about it beginning in the 1980s through the present, most of them i have read or interviewed myself will necessarilyre not feminist but they support womens equality, and they separate themselves from the Womens Liberation Movement specifically by doing that. As anvery intriguing historian from that perspective to also be engaging in something where they are clearly participating in the movement and taking advantage of the movement but distancing themselves from it decades later. In response to merediths question of the veterans who have different experiences of war, there is a particular incidents in new mexico where you see not only the veterans different experiences but also the way they wanted to be remembered and the way their families want it to be remembered. Their families lived through the war but in a different way because they lived through this uncertainty, this not knowing where their sons, brothers, husbands were or what happened to them. They almost say, i know you were the one there, but here is how i think we should remember it. Here is what is acceptable and not acceptable. The 1940s, there was a prisoner of war camp for japaneseamericans located just outside of santa fe, new mexico. In the 1990s, the japaneseamerican community wanted to commemorate that particular camp. They wanted to do so by installing a marker at the side of the camp. Santa fe is pretty mountainous. There was part of the city where you look down on the rest of the city. That is where this camp was. As you were looking at the marker, you would be looking out at the rest of santa fe. Before you can build anything inside of the city, you have to get all sorts of approvals from various councils. There was quite a protected debate in santa fe about whether or not this site should be commemorated and preserved. Most of it was razed over for development in the 1960s and 1970s. There was not much left. Japaneseamerican communities worked hard to obtain recognition for what happened in the United States. Survivorsf the bataan and those who died that very upset that the Santa Fe City Council would even consider allowing such a marker to be put in place. At first, it was supposed to be some big educational thing. It ultimately boiled down to a rock with a plaque on it. The newspapers that reported the incidents at the city council meetings, people were getting violent. They were threatening the mayor. The mayor stopped eating the mayor after this because he had had enough. That was in large part fueled by family members bittere so picture about what their fathers experienced in world war ii shows not just how the vets have a different expense of war but how the family members have a different experience of war, and they are the ones in large part doing that memory work. Ory are trying to create prevent the creation of these sites that emphasize particular components of the war. For these families, it was anathema to have anything commemorating the japaneseAmerican Experience even though it had nothing to do with what happened in the p. O. W. Camps in japan. For them, it was one and the same. There were veterans and annoyed family members of those veterans saying it is ok to have that, i know they are not the same people. I know they are different people. Others could not tolerate it at all. That site is sometimes vandalized. Even though the site was built, there are continuing conversations about how well that represents the veterans and their wishes for commemoration. Do we have any other questions . Yes. Abouth of you talked [indiscernible] as you know, [indiscernible] data march the [indiscernible] se claims of citizenship privilege. [indiscernible] it is political. Citizenship is a responsibility. Wondering how you can contribute to what it means to be a citizen and not just show one side. Great question. I will share with you a funny and fairly embarrassing anecdote. When i first started this 2007, i put posters up all over campus thinking this is a fanatically pleasing title and encapsulates phonetic title. Easing a colleague came into my office and said, you do know that some of these veterans are not yet citizens, dont you . I said i am aware of that, but it is still a clever title. The other thing i think youre getting at and i was trying to get out with the sam adams moment ofthat in this protracted war, we have almost used military service as a substitute for citizenship. Our veterans are uber citizens simply because they have served and there are no other duties, rights, and responsibilities beyond that. Part of what i am trying to suggest is that there is this third part to a veterans identity beyond his or her service and his or her having been a student. Being a citizen, having a particular view of the world which comes from growing up in a particular family, in a region of the country, being exposed to certain kinds of politics, being informed by a race, class, gender, and religion. And one of the things we work towards with our students in the vets learning community is to think about what citizenship looks like in the second mission. Part of what i identified earlier was the absence of gratification for the kinds of Tasks Required in Higher Education when one compares them with what these veterans had done in the military. We try to help them understand that civic engagement, political engagement, can bsd and meaningful and satisfying and andrding be as deep meaningful and satisfying and rewarding as what they did in the military. I love your question and im still thinking of the best way to articulate it, but i would say for the wasps in this example, during world war ii, im using the idea that there are still obligations of citizenship for men because of the draft during world war ii. There are all of these discussions about citizenship within the context of world war ii. I would say it changes and transitions. During the 1960s and 1970s when these wasps were fighting speakinghat they are about citizenship in terms of the militarized state in which we live. Even looking at the current military state or current militarization of the u. S. Currently, they are buying into thee narratives also about idealized or romanticized way people viewed veterans in the past and seeing them as the ideal citizen soldier who fought in combat and sacrificed so much for america. They are using that narrative of citizenship where it is still seen for much of the American Public as sort of this ideal role you can play as a citizen. Youre sacrificing your life your country. I love your question so much. To allowk we will have that question to act as our last word. Please join me in thanking our panelists. Thank you all for attending. We are taking a look back 50 years to 1968 when the north vietnamese made a surprise attack on the south on the vietnamese new year holiday. Give us your feedback and comments on facebook. And on twitter. The republican, National Committee spokesperson on her book, the new American Revolution the making of a populist movement. Conservatives say to me, why do you use this word . Im not a populist. To me, it sums up what this book is about. That is people. I wanted to honestly profile the people on the left and the right. Most of those are profiled were trump voters, but i did profile some who were not. A me, it was capturing sentiment that drove the electorate to deliver one of the most astonishing electroral feats we have seen in modern history. It was a profile on the american people. Watch afterwards, sunday night on cspan 2s book tv. Isnext, a panel of the story looks back 50 years of the vietnam wars tet offensive, which started january 30, 1968. As north Vietnamese Forces attacked 100 cities and outpost across a broad swath of south vietnam. Also, speaking was a former defense secretary chuck hagel, former u. S. Army sergeant who served in vietnam during the tet offensive. This event took place at the National Archives in washington, d. C. Tonights program is part of a series of discussions, films, lectures and other programs that tie into our special exhibit