Immigrant Song - Memorial Day 2011

There are no formally recognized holidays memorializing immigrants - an Immigrant Day. There is the inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty - The New Colossus, that is put to music, but no day for immigrants. I had an English translation of an article from a German language newspaper that an ancestor of mine (1) wrote - it was published in Milwaukee back in the early 1900's and described his  

26th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment flag

coming to America in the 1840's and settling on a piece of land in Wisconsin - Laura Ingalls Wilder-esque Little House in the Big Woods. In the article there was brief mention of him going off to war and returning, written as a matter of fact - he obviously was a Civil War veteran. He must have been one of the volunteers from Wisconsin - perhaps a part of the 26th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment that mustered in Milwaukee on September 17, 1862 and fought at Gettysburg. The 26th Regiment is honored by a monument on the grounds of the battlefield. It is not surprising that there were German language periodicals in the early 20th Century, given that both my mom in Wisconsin and dad in California still spoke German at home until they went to elementary school in the late 1920's and early 30's. The English that my relatives spoke back then, was probably heavily accented by their German roots - just as immigrants today are recognizable by their first languages or the accepts they keep a well.

Arlington National Cemetery is one of the places in the Washington, D.C. area that we have grown to appreciate the most since moving here. The names on the white headstones are a reflection of the peoples who live in our country, most of whom or whose families came at one time or another from places across seas and over borders - even those from the Native Nations (2), who 10-thousand years ago crossed into North America over a land bridge from Asia, before there was geography, maps, and borders. Two areas of Arlington that carry a particular part of our history, are Sections 23 

USCT on headstones in Section 27

and 27 that honor the first African American immigrants who fought for our country during the Civil War - who came to our country against their will over a century earlier. On these tombstones are inscribed the letters USCT - United States Colored Troops, three of whom were Medal of Honor recipients.  Frederick Douglass saw a dilemma if African Americans were to wear the uniform of the United States without emancipation. He said to Abraham Lincoln and others, "Once you put upon the black man the blue uniform, once you put upon him the 'U.S.' saying 'United States,' once you put brass buttons on him and a cap and give him a rifle and give him a pistol and make him a soldier of the nation and send him off in battle to defend the nation and also to help preserve the Union, once you have done that, then no power on Earth can deny the full rights of citizenship in due course."(3) 

We made our first visit to the cemetery the day after Christmas in 2003 when Michael was finishing his Tomb Guard training - it was his last day as a New Man. We walked from the parking area through the Visitor Center to Eisenhower Drive, and then up the road towards

PFC Naseeb Masood - WWI Veteran

McClellan's Gate (4). As we walked past the rows of head stones on McClellan Drive, on the right was one whose inscription caught my attention: Naseeb Masood - a name that is not exactly Johnson, Smith, or Jones. Given the era of his campaign, WWI, and his home state, Pennsylvania, it struck me how long a time Middle Eastern people have been a part of the country and served in our military. Not unlike a German emigrant from Wisconsin who served three wars earlier - perhaps in Pennsylvania, rather than in Europe, where his foes there would have been in times future his countrymen, his relatives.

Gallery at Women in Service Memorial

The diversity of names stand out among those who have served - Chanawongse, Gonzalez, Tran, Bonifacio, Monsoor, and Witkowski - names that in the countries of their origin may have been as common as Johnson, Smith, and Jones - whose faces reflect the nations of the world that now call the United States home. So just as it was 150 years earlier when Fredrick Douglas made his observation about the dilemma of the rights for citizenship for those former slave emigrants who then served with the U.S. emblem on their uniform, and when my ancestor went off to war in a land that was his for only a short amount of time, and so it is with those who are new to American shores, regardless of their mode of their arrival or the accent of their speech - who are all now called citizens. (5)
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(1) I lost my copy of the translation, but my uncle in Hilbert said that because of the time period, the author would have been an ancestor of my maternal grandmother - my maternal grandfather's family (the ones with the homestead dairy) did not immigrate until the 1880's. A note: it is my understanding that my grandmother corresponded (in German) with relatives in Germany up until WWII began - my uncle visited some of those relatives after the war.

(2) Ira Hayes, one of the the Marines depicted in the Marine Corps Memorial raising the flag at Iwo Jima, was of the Pima Tribe and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

(3) From the Website for the B Company 54th Mass Vol Inf Regiment Washington, D.C.

(4) There was construction going on near where Roosevelt Drive intersected with Eisenhower Drive, so the longer walk to the Amphitheater and the Tomb of the Unknowns was by way of McClellan Drive. For a map of Arlington National Cemetery, click here.

(5) Immigration and Nationality Act 329A - Posthumous citizenship through death while on active-duty service in the Armed Forces during World War I, World War II, the Korean Hostilities, the Vietnam Hostilities, or in other periods of military hostilities.