‘DECORATION DAY’
Observance in 1943 was solemn, filled with uncertainty
With war raging in the Pacific and on the battlefields of Europe, Oklahoma City’s 1943 Memorial Day observance was a staid affair with ceremonies held at military installations and cemeteries across town.
That’s how “Decoration Day”, as it was also known, played out 75 years ago. There were no sales at car dealerships, or beer and hot dog specials at grocery stores. Most businesses were closed.
Memorial Day 1943 fell on a Sunday, with workers getting Monday off. Congress hadn’t yet passed the Uniform Holiday Act. That came in 1968, and moved official observances of both Memorial Day and Labor Day permanently to Mondays, ensuring Americans a couple of three-day weekends for years to come.
Will Rogers Field served as the site for the city’s official observance at 11 a.m. The day was cloudy, and hot. An honor guard fired a volley into the sky. Col. Bernard Thompson, Tinker Field’s commanding officer, addressed those in attendance with a solemn message.
“An enemy has attacked our peace-loving and trusting nation,” Thompson said. “So now, again, we are bitter. Our spirits have been churned to revenge to right the wrongs by whatever means we have at our disposal to keep our government and our freedoms.”
The cost of the freedom could be found in that morning’s edition of The Daily Oklahoman, which featured a story about six Oklahomans who had been killed in recent weeks. Included was Lt. James Gill, a Northwest Classen graduate who enlisted in the Army just weeks before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The fighter pilot had been shot down in the Pacific and was missing and presumed dead.
The day before, the War Department released a list of four Oklahomans held in Japanese prisoner of war camps: Pvt. John Cox, Pvt. Donald McYntre, Pvt. Arthur Sanders and Pvt. Wilburn Sweeney.
The dead, and those who wouldn’t be coming back soon, were on the minds of those who gathered across the city at cemeteries to decorate old graves of soldiers lost in World War I, and those 100 or so Oklahomans who had already been killed in World War II.
“Time-dulled grief of a war gone by was lanced with the poignancy of the world’s new conflict Sunday as Oklahoma and the nation offered Memorial Day tribute to its now dead warriors,” a story in the following day’s paper began.
Ceremonies near and far
A half-dozen ceremonies were held in Oklahoma City. Military installations took the day off from their training. But workers at the nearby Douglas Aircraft factory didn’t as the plant continued to churn out B-24 bombers and C-47 transport aircraft, as did every war-related factory in the country over that year’s holiday weekend.
“In small crowds and large ones, groups filed into cemeteries to lay wreaths and honor over graves of past war heroes,” the story read. “But the words spoken at these ceremonies were also a eulogy to the men slain in the present war.”
More than 100 people attended a ceremony at
the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for a ceremony presented by the Grand Army of the Republic at Fairlawn Cemetery.
Poppies, a symbol of loss in World War I, were still in fashion as a memorial to the fallen. An editorial in the Memorial Day edition of The Daily Oklahoman assessed the current situation in Europe with bitterness.
“But more than a sacred memory is suggested by the poppies we wear in this fated year,” the editorial read. “There is also is a solemn reminder. We are reminded that, all of those who sleep in the soil they saved from the Hun’s mad onrush, are sleeping under the steel shot feet of the Nazi. The mottled swastika floats insultingly above the graves of those who rest in
any of the countries they died to deliver.”
This was the halfway point of a long slog. By the time Hitler was dead, and the Empire of Japan was defeated, more than 3,059 Oklahomans gave their lives during the war. Today, decades later, their sacrifice is still honored on Memorial Day.