The groundbreaking was at the site where a new memorial statue called “The Gift” made by sculptor A. Thomas Schomberg , famous for creating the bronze Rocky Balboa statue, is set to be installed. (Photo: WestBound Communications)
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs held a groundbreaking ceremony on Sept. 25 at the Riverside National Cemetery for the American Indian Veterans Memorial, commemorating Native American, Alaska Native, and Pacific Islander servicemembers and veterans.
The California memorial will be the first to honor Native American veterans at a VA cemetery and is being co-funded by the Riverside National Cemetery Support Committee and Southern California Native American tribes.
Construction of the memorial is set to start soon and organizers are hopeful that it will be complete by 2022.
Native American U.S. Military Service in Context
At the ceremony, Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie said, “more Native Americans per capita serve our country than any other demographic. This memorial will honor their sacrifice and service in the United States military.”
Native Americans have played a significant role in every major U.S. war since 1776, often serving in higher percentages than any other demographic.
In World War II, Navajo code talkers serving in the U.S. Marine Corps baffled Imperial Japan’s codebreakers in the Pacific Theater who had otherwise broken every other U.S. code. Navajo served in all six Marine divisions and were instrumental in each major Marine operation between 1942 and 1945.
Marine Corps Major Howard Connor said in 1945, “were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.” At the beginning of the assault on Iwo Jima, Navajo code talkers sent and received hundreds of messages, allowing U.S. forces to successfully coordinate their attack against the entrenched Japanese.
In the Post-9/11 era, almost one in every five Native Americans has served in the U.S. Military compared to 14 percent of the rest of the population.
California Honoring Veterans
The VA American Indians Veterans Memorial at Riverside National Cemetery is not the first memorial honoring veterans in California to begin construction this year. In August, a groundbreaking ceremony was held in Fullerton honoring every U.S. servicemember that served in the Korean War by name.
Author: Christian Southards
Coming from a family with a proud military background and wanting to contribute his writing skills to a worthy cause, Christian began writing for the California American Legion in August of 2020. His father is a 25-year Army Veteran and his grandfather served in the Navy during Vietnam.
