DAILY NEWS Saturday, May 20, 2000

Editorial:

Still no honor
War heroes overlooked too long
by B.D. Hammer

Monday marks Maritime Day -- commemorating the day in 1819 that the Savannah,
the first steamship to cross the Atlantic, left its namesake Georgia homeport
for Liverpool, England, and other parts of Europe.
   Yet 64 years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt established this
holiday, 240,000 of America's maritime sons (and a few daughters) still don't
receive their just honor and recognition from our government and citizenry.
They are the forgotten heroes of World War II -- the U.S. merchant mariners.
   All volunteers, these seafarers came from every vocation, level of
education, ethnicity and faith. Some were teens, and some were senior
citizens. Many were deemed unfit for military service. Yet the Merchant
Marine traveled across the oceans of the world, often without proper
protection, to every battlefront, every invasion of a beachhead that this
nation called it to.
   Such valor did not come without cost. The Merchant Marine suffered a
higher per capita rate of casualties in WWII than any other U.S. service
group.
    But unlike other service members, merchant mariners weren't paid a cent
when they went ashore on leave, were recovering in hospitals from wounds, saw
their ships sunk or were taken as POW's. Also, they were responsible for
their own food, clothing, housing and transportation, and most of their
routine medical and dental expenses.
   Merchant mariners were excluded from service clubs run by the USO and the
Red Cross. If they were killed in action, their families received only half
the death benefits that the families of G.I.'s received. Some merchant
mariners who survived WWII were actually drafted into the Army for the Korean
War and died in the infantry there.
    To date, the American Battle Monument Commission refuses to place the
names of merchant mariners who were killed in action, who died from their war
wounds or who are missing and presumed dead on the monuments it maintains
here and overseas. The one Merchant Marine Memorial, built by private
contributions, at Battery Park is threatened by encroachments of a developer
and the indifference of city, state and federal agencies.
   President Clinton is seeking to leave a legacy of his administration to
the nation, does not have to look far. He could issue an executive order
mitigating much of the wrong that merchant mariners have endured.
     How much would it cost this nation to issue a few honorable discharge
certificates (many posthumously) to merchant mariners? How much to give out a
few medals that their blood paid for long ago? How much to carve 12,000 names
in the U.S. government granite? Precious little when compared to the
sacrifices that merchant mariners made for this country.

--Hammer is executive director of the Battle of the Atlantic Historical
Society

The Savannah was later returned to all sail, and subsequently sank off Long
Island, New York. The search continues.