More on Memorials

The new Ken Burns documentary on WWII, The War aired last week and I was able to catch the first episode and it set me thinking about the USS Arizona Memorial again. In my last post about the Arizona Memorial, I was wondering about the ambiguity in how the memorial materials portrayed the Japanese in a greedy imperialistic way while downplaying the US presence in Hawaii. Despite the ambiguity in the memorial, Burns’ documentary reminded me of the very real atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese in Asia and the Pacific and the Nazis in Europe. It is difficult to imagine what the world would be like now had the US not entered the war or if the Allies had lost, but given the incredible atrocities that we know occurred during the war, it would likely have been a very dark reality. Perhaps memorials such as the USS Arizona (and Burns’ documentary) serve as means for remembering why the US became involved in the war.

While the atrocities of the Japanese are memorialized at Pearl Harbor, the atrocities of the Nazis are memorialized in Washington DC (among other places) at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, which I was able to visit last year, and wrote about here.

Outside the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Most of the Holocaust Memorial feels like a museum exhibit but like the Arizona Memorial it too has a ritual component. The tour at the Holocaust Memorial Museum is linear, you enter the museum by taking an elevator up and then you wind your way back down through the many exhibits. At the end of the museum tour you have the opportunity to enter The Hall of Remembrance which is essentially a mediation chapel. The Hall of Remembrance is a hexagonal room, forming the interior of a Star of David Across the room from the entrance is a burning eternal flame under which is written “Remember What You Have Seen.” The walls are black metal, each with a name of a concentration camp written over dozens of small candles which visitors can light. There are also four scripture verses listed in the interior of the room. Although only fragments of the verses are written on the walls of the chapel, these are the full verses (NRSV).

Deuteronomy 4:9
But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children...

Deuteronomy 30:19
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live...

Genesis 4:10
And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!”

Also, near the main entrance is the largest hall in the museum, The Hall of Witness which has words from Isaiah written on the wall. (Again I have provided the entire verse.)

Isaiah 43:10
You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.

The ritual practices at both memorials are non-sectarian: the laying of flowers, observance of silence, or the lighting of candles. However, the Holocaust Memorial is much more specific in its religious connections drawing heavily on sacred texts and iconography, whereas the Arizona memorial is much more nationalistic. Yet, despite the difference, the ritual practices at both memorials serve a function of creating certain “memories” about the events of WWII by encouraging visitors to “remember what you have seen.”

Inside the USS Arizona Memorial.

For most of the viewers of these memorials, remembering is impossible as they were not themselves witnesses of the events. However, through participation in ritual practices at the memorials and in viewing the exhibits, films, and photographs at the memorials, visitors “witness” the events through a memorialized frame. Yet this kind of memory is not necessarily individual memory but rather a social construct.

What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened, with the pictures that lock the story in our minds. Ideologies create substantiating archives of images, representative images, which encapsulate common ideas of significance and trigger predictable thoughts, feelings (Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, pp. 85-86).

By building memorials, societies are able to construct ways of remembering and depicting significant events and stipulating what was important about those events. The Arizona and Holocaust memorials serve as ways of generating particular understandings of why the US was involved in the war and encourage visitors to see the events through a particular lens to develop shared narratives and understandings of those events, creating and reinforcing a sense of shared identity among visitors.

In addition to seeing the first episode of The War, I was able to catch the last episode, which closes with a statement that 1,000 WWII veterans die a day now in the US. It will not be long until the memorialized memories of WWII held in family stories and National museums will be the only ways we have to remember what happened during the war.