August 12, 2005

NEW YORK – Standing at France's Caen Peace Memorial earlier this year, Episcopal priest George L. W. Werner was moved by memories of life during wartime.

"Having been shaped by the Depression and World War II, our visit to Normandy brought back visible and poignant memories for me," said Werner, 67, who is currently president of the Episcopal Church's House of Deputies and the retired dean of Pittsburgh's Trinity Cathedral. "… as someone who is glad to see the additional flags and the ribbons of support for our military at this time, I wonder, ‘Should there be more?'"

Werner's reflections are among a growing collection of essays and comments posted on line as a new, permanent archive of the Episcopal News Service. (Link to full collection at: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_wwii_ENG_HTM.htm.)

Additional entries to the archive may be submitted for consideration at any time by e-mail to news@episcopalchurch.org or postal mail to ENS at 815 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10017.

The archival postings come 60 years after Japan's August 14-15, 1945, agreement to surrender prior to its formal surrender on September 2, 1945 – the same year that V-E Day, May 8, brought an end to combat in Europe.

Churchwide, a number of Episcopal congregations – including Grace Church in Morganton, North Carolina – will conduct services marking the 60th anniversary.

Among other remembrances featured in the ENS online archive, Laura Delano Eastman, a parishioner of St. James' Church in Manhattan, described the experience of being at the White House the day Pearl Harbor was bombed and observing the response of President Roosevelt, her first cousin once removed. The full story here: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_64128_ENG_HTM.htm.

Postings of wartime correspondence include a "V-Mail" from military chaplain Gordon Hutchins to Massachusetts Bishop Henry Knox Sherrill (later the Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop from 1947 to 1958) requesting a long white altar cloth to replace the one he lost on the ship and copies of Forward Day by Day. Chaplain Hutchins, 87, now resides in Portland, Maine and has been an Episcopal priest since 1943.

Deacon Kerry Walters of the Diocese of Central Pennsylvania, who is co-editor of the national quarterly Episcopal Peace Witness, asked readers to "remember that this isn't just the 60th anniversary of the end of the war. It's also the 60th anniversary of a conflict that killed nearly 60 million people, the vast majority of them noncombatants, as well as a conflict in which the ‘rules of war' were repeatedly ignored by all sides. This isn't a celebratory occasion."

Writing in an e-mail from Gettysburg, Walters also requested reporting about "those courageous men and women who declared themselves conscientious objectors during WWII, and consequently either went to prison or performed unrewarded and unrecognized alternative public service. At this point, I suppose it's impossible to demythologize the ‘good' war. But at least those who believed that their commitment to Christ forbade them to participate in it can be given a voice."

Meanwhile, in another posting, WWII veteran and retired U.S. naval officer Robert L. Johnson, 85, commented on causes of war. A parishioner of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Southern California's Laguna Beach, Johnson also served from 1970 to 1972 as assistant secretary of the Army for Research and Development. In response to ENS's invitation to contribute to online archive, Johnson wrote the following "Comment on Wars":

"I firmly believe that most wars occur because of the failure of multilateral diplomacy that should have been taken years before the start of the actual war. The failureof the world governments to prevent the emergence of Germany, Japan and Russia as threats to all after World War I is a case in point. Nevertheless, after Pearl Harbor we had no choice but to go to war.

"With respect to the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I still feel that Truman was right. The scale of destruction was not significantly more that the fire bombing of a number of European cities. One will never know how many people, both Japanese and Allied, would have died in an invasion, but the slaughters at Iwo Jima and Okinawa as we got closer to the homeland indicate it would have been terrible. I have visited both atomic bomb sites in Japan, and it is horrifying and heart breaking to see the photographs and statistics involved.

"The lessons to be learned are: (1) The destruction there (in Japan) involved bombs of only 20,000 tons of TNT equivalent as opposed to those in hand at present which have hundreds of times more explosive force. Those are the ones that threaten us now. (2) Even those smaller bombs should not be used in war because I can't imagine being in the same trade-off situation we faced in Japan. (3) Nuclear non-proliferation must be pursued diligently and availability of atomic explosives to terrorists must be prevented at all costs.

"I consider the roots of the Korean War to be the same as those that led to WWII and that again we had no choice but to respond to the invasion from the North. The support and presence of the many other nations resisting that invasion shows clearly the multilateral nature of that war. The ‘Cold War' against the Soviets, involving NATO and the vast majority of the United Nations, is a classic example of the virtues of multilateral action. The immediate response of most nations to the Iraq invasions of Kuwait even though the bulk of the effort was supplied by the U.S. ‘qualifies' that action as a ‘necessary' war. I still think it represents a failure of world governments to think ahead in their diplomacy and to take action on root causes instead of reacting to a crisis.

"The 2001 war in Afghanistan resulting from the 9/11 terrorist attacks is an example of a justified unilateral decision and action. The immediate removal of the Taliban government was a classic lesson to all that nations will not be allowed to engage in terrorism. Unfortunately, there was little follow-up planning and thought about stabilizing the country for the future, probably due to the unseemly haste to get to Iraq.

"The present war in Iraq is a classic case of arrogant and unilateral action in a situation that has resulted in a disaster for the U.S. and the world. The U.S. has lost the trust and esteem of the world, the rage in Islam is generating terrorists by the hundreds, there is no multinational plan to stabilize Iraq, the U.S. cannot do it alone and is experiencing terrible costs in lives and treasure. Furthermore, the insight and wisdom of a number of other nations is required.

"Appropriate elements of the government should be planning ahead considering the rapidly changing nature of international problems. I hope they read Thomas L. Friedman's book ‘The World Is Flat,' which presents a remarkably broad insight into the economic and cultural aspects of the problems the world faces.

"Finally, the futility of other essentially unilateral interventions (Vietnam, Haiti, Grenada and several Central American episodes) is clear and needs no treatment here."

Episcopal News Service