War Heroes Overlooked Too Long
by B. D. Hammer, New York Daily News, May 20, 2000
Monday marks Maritime Day - commemorating the day in 1819 that The Savannah, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic, left its namesake Georgia homeport for Liverpool, England, and other parts of Europe.
Yet 64 years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt established this holiday, 240,000 of America's maritime sons (and a few daughters) still don't receive their just honor and recognition from our government and citizenry. They are the forgotten heroes of World War II -- the U.S. merchant mariners.
All volunteers, these seafarers came from every vocation, level of education, ethnicity and faith. Some were teens, and some were senior citizens. Many were deemed unfit for military service. Yet the Merchant Marine traveled across the oceans of the world, often without proper protection, to every battlefront, every invasion of a beachhead that this nation called it to.
Such valor did not come without cost. The Merchant Marine suffered a higher per capita rate of casualties in WWII than any other U.S. service group.
But unlike other service members, merchant mariners weren't paid a cent when they went ashore on leave, were recovering in hospitals from wounds, saw their ships sunk or were taken as POWs. Also, they were responsible for their own food, clothing, housing and transportation, and most of their routine medical and dental expenses.
Merchant mariners were excluded from service clubs run by the USO and the Red Cross. If they were killed in action, their families received only half the death benefits that the families of G.I.s received. Some merchant mariners who survived WWII were actually drafted into the Army for the Korean War and died in the infantry there.
To date, the American Battle Monuments Commission refuses to place the names of merchant mariners who were killed in action, who died from their war wounds or who are missing and presumed dead on the monuments it maintains here and overseas. The one Merchant Marine Memorial, built by private contributions, at Battery Park is threatened by the encroachments of a developer and the indifference of city, state and federal agencies.
President Clinton, in seeking to leave a legacy of his administration to the nation, does not have to look far. He could issue an executive order mitigating much of the wrong that merchant mariners have endured.
How much would it cost this nation to issue a few honorable discharge certificates (many posthumously) to merchant mariners? How much to give out a few medals that their blood paid for long ago? How much to carve 12,000 names in U.S. government granite? Precious little when compared to the sacrifices that merchant mariners made for this country.
B. D. Hammer is executive director of the Battle of the Atlantic Historical Society. Reprinted with permission of B. D. Hammer.