Clinton Salutes Courage, Spirit of WWII Vets

HONOLULU — With a stirring salute to the generation that defeated Japan in the Pacific half a century ago, President Clinton opened the last great commemoration of the Allied victory in World War II on Friday, pledging to maintain U.S. military strength to “defeat the forces of darkness in our time.”

“The World War II generation truly saved the world,” Clinton said in a speech at a military review at Wheeler Army Air Field, one of the first targets struck by Japanese bombers in the 1941 Pearl Harbor raid.

“We must remain the strongest nation on earth so that we can defeat the forces of darkness in our time and in the future, just as the veterans here defeated the forces of tyranny 50 years ago,” he said, winning a standing ovation from thousands of military personnel and veterans.

In a brief nod to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Clinton praised the bravery of American pilots who launched air strikes against Bosnian Serb targets this week and repeated his warning that the United States and its allies are resolved “to prevent the further slaughter of innocent civilians” there.

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But the core of his message--like the rest of the weekend-long commemoration of Japan’s official surrender 50 years ago today, on Sept. 2, 1945--saluted the courage and spirit of the American nation half a century ago, a spirit Clinton rather wistfully said he wishes could be recaptured now.

“In this remarkable place, so much like paradise, we recall a time when war made the idyllic Pacific hell on earth,” Clinton said, “and we celebrate the generation of Americans who won that war and ensured the triumph of freedom over tyranny.

“Never before had the fight for freedom stretched across such a vast expanse of land and sea,” he said. “And never before had the energies of the American people been so fully required or so fully joined.

“At war, our people found a sense of mission in the world and shared purpose at home that became the bedrock for half a century of peace and prosperity.”

Clinton said that 50 years ago, seaman Walter Germann wrote to his son in Abilene, Tex., expressing worry that the war would be glorified and saying that it was, in reality, the most horrible thing ever done by man.

“Veterans of the Pacific,” Clinton said, “because you were willing to undergo the most horrible thing ever done by man, freedom is the order of the day in most of the world 50 years later.”

With Japanese Defense Minister Eto Seishiro listening intently among the guests, Clinton referred repeatedly to the “tyranny” of Japan’s wartime leaders and recounted a litany of hard-won American victories: the Jimmy Doolittle raid that dropped bombs into the heart of Tokyo only four months after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy’s triumph over the Japanese fleet at Midway and the grueling island war that wrested Guadalcanal, Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima and Okinawa from Japanese hands.

Then, Clinton added, Americans helped rebuild Japan. “And because you chose reconciliation over revenge,” he said, addressing the veterans, “those who were once our enemies now are thriving democracies and strong friends.”

He said that Americans “appreciated” Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama’s statement Aug. 15 expressing regret for Japan’s aggression in World War II.

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Clinton did not mention the U.S. atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, attacks that have been controversial ever since because they killed tens of thousands of civilians even as they hastened the end of the war.

But he made no other apparent bow to Tokyo’s sensitivities. He did not use the term “V-J Day,” which some Japanese officials have criticized as casting undue stigma on Japan, but other American officials have been using the term freely.

Clinton’s theme of tribute to the generation that won World War II is one he has sounded throughout the commemorative events of the last 15 months, beginning in June, 1994, with the 50th anniversary of the D-day invasion of Normandy.

The sentiment solves two rhetorical problems that Clinton might otherwise have in talking about the war: He is the first President to have been born after 1945 and when his generation’s war occurred--in Vietnam--he avoided serving in the armed forces.

After dozens of similar ceremonies, the President and the military brass appear finally to have grown comfortable with each other. No longer do both sides hold their breaths lest a veteran or soldier shout an insult at the non-veteran commander in chief, as happened once when Clinton visited the Theodore Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier, off Norfolk, Va., in 1993.

“To me, he’s the President of the United States, and you show him respect because of that,” said Bruce Adams, 75, a retired garage owner from Barnston, N.H., who served as an Army antiaircraft gunner in the Pacific war and came here for the weekend’s observances. “The Vietnam business is history. It’s 25 years ago. Why bad-mouth him now?”

Amid the noisy splendor of some 7,000 active-duty military personnel parading by a reviewing stand, three vintage B-25 bombers of the kind that bombed Tokyo in 1942 flying in review and naval vessels from half a dozen nations parading off Waikiki, there were moments of pathos.

Clinton asked veterans of the war, gathered in what is likely their final grand reunion, to stand--”and those who cannot stand, to raise your arms.”

Among those who rose, a bit unsteadily, were comedian Bob Hope, 92, who toured both the European and Pacific theaters indefatigably during World War II and who came here to entertain the troops once again.

Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, arrived at the ceremony in a helicopter and rode to the reviewing stand in an open Humvee vehicle. The President used the vehicle to review troops from all branches of the service.

In addition to a variety show hosted by Hope at Waikiki on Friday, the weekend’s events include an official commemoration today at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at the Punchbowl volcano crater, a ceremony at the USS Arizona National Memorial honoring the dead from the Pearl Harbor attack, a veterans’ parade and an interfaith religious service, including both Buddhist prayers and a gospel reading by Sen. Howell Heflin (D-Ala.) on Sunday.

For Clinton, who arrived in Hawaii Thursday after a 17-day vacation at Jackson, Wyo., the schedule also includes several rounds of golf.

In an attempt to link the President’s favorite pursuit with the more solemn purpose of the weekend, albeit tenuously, aides arranged for him to play a round on Friday with five World War II veterans. The aides attempted to round up one veteran from each of the five armed service branches, but a White House memo obtained by the Reuters news agency said that had been an unexpectedly difficult task--because most golfers, according to military lore, ended up in the Navy.