One by one the names were called and in answer, sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces and cousins stood up to accept the specially framed certificates of posthumous citizenship made for the occasion by the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The ceremony, held in a meeting room in the Senate Dirksen Office Building on Capitol Hill, was attended by more than 200 relatives, friends and participants in the decades-long campaign to secure citizenship for the men. Close to 40 of the family members had flown in from Ireland, while others came from all parts of the united States.
All with the exception of one of the 28 of their loved ones died in the uniform of the United States Army in the 1950-53 Korean conflict. The 28th served with the Marines.
The ceremony was bittersweet for the families. Tears were mixed with smiles, fond memories mingled with sad ones.
But there was an unmistakable air of victory in the room too. Victory over indifference, neglect and forgetfulness.
That sense of a battle finally won was wrapped firmly about the person of John Leahy, the Kerry native and Korea veteran who spearheaded the campaign for posthumous citizenship over the last 27 years.
Leahy, now a resident of Florida, was spurred into action in 1976 when the U.S. was celebrating its bicentennial.
“I was in New York and saw all the flags and the banners and I thought about my fellow Irish who had died and were never recognized, so I decided to do something about it,” Leahy said.
And do he did.
The end of it all was a fall day in Washington that felt more like summer, a Mass of commemoration at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the Capitol Hill ceremony and, later in the day, the laying of a wreath at the Korean War Memorial, a breathtakingly powerful tribute to the fallen of the “Forgotten War” located a short march from the Lincoln Memorial.
As if to make up for so many years of neglect, the U.S. government and Washington’s political elite turned out in force to oversee the passage of the 28 from their years in a bureaucratic no-man’s land to full and unhindered membership of the American national family.
Alfonso Aguilar, chief of the Office of Citizenship at the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, acknowledged the neglect of half a century in his opening remarks for the formal ceremony, an event that began with an invocation by Edwin O’Brien, archbishop for the Military Services, the presentation of the national colors by a joint forces honor guard, and the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance by Rep. Peter King of New York.
The bestowing of posthumous citizenship on the 28 men was 50 years overdue, said Aguilar, who thanked the families of the dead soldiers for their patience and perseverance.
Les Brownlee, acting secretary of the U.S. Army, said that the 28 men had died defending their adopted country, and though they were not citizens at the time, they had already become Americans in their hearts.
“We the living must act on behalf of those who can no longer act for themselves,” Brownlee told the audience that included Ireland’s ambassador to the United States, Noel Fahey, Brian McGinn, a Virginia-based Vietnam veteran who maintained the citizenship campaign website, and retired Gen. P.X. Kelley, former commandant of the Marine Corps and the man who maintained a daily watch over the posthumous citizenship process during the final, crucial months.
Praise from pols
Rep. Martin Meehan from Massachusetts, who, with his fellow congressman Jim McGovern, crafted a House of Representative bill that directly led to the presentation of posthumous citizenship, told the assembled audience that for 50 years the U.S. government had ignored the patriotism of the 28 men.
They were, Meehan said, the “forgotten heroes of the forgotten war.”
Meehan paid special tribute to Leahy, a man, he said, who had been “the spirit of this fight” for more than 25 years.
“To the families of these Irish veterans, thank you,” Meehan said.
Sen. Edward Kennedy said that in honoring the 28, justice had finally been done. The Irish, he said, had for centuries been tied to the fight for American liberty and this had been no less the case with the 28 new citizens.
“Today is an important day for the United States of America as we honor these individuals who paid the ultimate price,” Kennedy said.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, who steered a Senate version of the McGovern-Meehan bill to the pen of President Bush, said that the U.S. had been blessed by these men.
“God bless them for what they have done for the United States,” Schumer said.
The actual posthumous citizenship certificates, each glass framed and with a passport-size photo of the named individual in the bottom-right-hand corner, were handed over to the relatives by Eduardo Aguirre, director of the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Aguirre acknowledged the solemn nature of the ceremony, but said that there could be no better way to honor than to bestow posthumous citizenship and welcome “these brave men” into the American family.
“These young men fought and died for the preservation of freedom and a way of life,” Aguirre said.
John Leahy, referring to the 28, said that citizenship was their due 50 years ago.
“And thank God it has happened today,” he said.
Leahy said that keeping up his long campaign on behalf of the men had been a simple decision because he so easily could have been one of their number.
General Kelley said that the ceremony was one of two events in his life that had the greatest meaning for him as an Irish American. The other had been when, as the son of an immigrant, he had led the Marine Corps band on a trip to Ireland in 1986 and had stood on a stage with the then president of Ireland, Patrick Hillery.
Families remember
Though all eyes in the room were on the high-profile speakers, it was the words of the relatives that were to strike the most poignant notes on the day.
“I was 10 the last time I saw him,” Dubliner Bridie Williams said of her brother, Cork native William Frances Murphy, who died as a prisoner of war in May of 1951. “I still remember him going through the gates to go to America and my father said, ‘Take a good look at your brother because that’s the last time you’re ever going to see him.’
“This all brings back a lot of memories. He’s with me all the time and I’m sure he was very pleased to see this today.”
Donal O’Connell of Limerick accepted the citizenship certificate on behalf of his brother Alphonsus O’Connell, a corporal in the U.S. Army.
“He finally got recognized,” O’Connell said. “It’s all he would have wanted.”
Oliver Lynch said that in 1952, he and his family heard of his brother’s death in Korea on the radio while in their home near Tuam, Co. Galway. The body of Philip Columba Lynch, an army machine gunner, was later brought back from Korea and is buried in Kilconly parish cemetery near the family home.
“It’s very nice, but it comes an awfully long time afterward,” Lynch said.
After the ceremony, and a reception hosted by the carpenters union — a separate reception the previous evening was hosted by Guinness — the relatives traveled by bus from Capitol Hill to the Korean War Memorial.
Under a deep blue afternoon sky, and to the sight and sound of aircraft on the final approach to Ronald Reagan Airport, a lone piper led the relatives past the haunting bronze figures of GIs depicted on a patrol during the Korean War to the flagpole atop which the Stars and Stripes fluttered in a light, balmy breeze.
Here the relatives laid a wreath in the colors of Ireland.
And here too, at the base of the marble wall that forms part of the memorial, they placed specially printed cards with the names of the 28 men, their military units and the date of the long awaited day that Irish soldiers in the army of America had finally become American citizen soldiers.