by Joe Janes

Emergency Meeting of the Memorial Day Celebration Planning Committee 2020

Ottawa County Senior Citizens Center

May 29, 2019      8:30am

In Attendance: Center Director Margaret Niehauser, Glenn Davis, Dr. Neil Loughlin, Millie Milburn, Milt Milburn, and Lori Letterhos

Minutes recorded by Glenn Davis, who doesn’t mind doing it so much anymore

Our center director, Marge, called an emergency meeting of the Memorial Day Celebration Planning Committee, which we all thought was strange because Memorial Day was just two days ago. We didn’t celebrate much because of the rain and the tornado warnings, but we got a quick parade in before noon. Easy to have a quick parade when there are no floats, just the high school marching band and about a dozen able-bodied vets. The unabled-bodied vets all piled into the back of Milt’s pick-up truck. Safer than it sounds because they were packed in tight and Milt used his bungee cords to secure the wheelchairs and walkers. Besides, Milt barely goes above idle, even when he’s not in a parade. 

Once the rain broke, we went indoors and boiled the hotdogs instead of grilling them. Didn’t matter none to me. Grilled or boiled, I still have to mash it good with a fork to get it down my gullet. 

Marge’s panties were in a twist because President Trump on Memorial Day wished a ship full of Japanese soldiers a Happy Memorial Day. God Bless, Donald Trump, but there are two very wrong things about that. One is that Memorial Day isn’t a time to wish anyone a happy anything. Loved ones died in battle. Some good battles, like WW2, and some questionable battles, like, well, anything since WW2. The other part is that this is an American holiday and the people he’s giving salutations to were the G-D enemy. They weren’t just enemies in battle. They were enemies to their POWs. In Bataan, they made my Uncle Virgil stand on his knees in the hot sun for eight hours on gravel. They smacked him in the back with a rifle if he slouched. Say what you will about the Nazis, they at least followed the Geneva Convention. The Japs treated our US POWs like they were all Jews. If the Japanese were Germans. I ain’t got nothing against the Jews. Some of our town’s best lawyers and doctors are Jews. Both of them. The ONLY justification I can see for President Trump telling Japanese soldiers “Happy Memorial Day” is if he is flipping them the bird just before dropping another nuke on Tokyo. 

So, you see where I’m going with this. I thought Marge was going to go off on a tear about President Trump. Nope. This is what she said. It is a word-for-word quote. As best as I remember it. 

“Our God-appointed President of the United States wished Japanese soldiers a Happy Memorial Day. This may surprise many of you, but we must remember, this is the man who single-handedly brought peace to North Korea. We must take his cue and support him. By wishing our enemies from The Good War a Happy Memorial Day, President Trump, I believe, is saying, we all suffered casualties because of your atrocities. It’s time we came together and mourned the fallen men, and the few women, who fought and gave their lives for their own countries. And we should be happy about it. Isn’t that inspirational?”

We then went on to talk about how we can incorporate the Axis powers -Germany and Japan were all anyone remembered – into next year’s celebrations. I’ll have my son-in-law Goggle the internet to see who the other countries were. 

One suggestion was to offer sauerkraut on our hot dogs, which sounds like an easy fix because we already do that. Now we’d just tell them it’s for Hitler’s boys. I don’t know what the hell we’ll do for Japanese. Egg rolls look like hot dogs. Keep their mustard away from me though. That concoction is sneaky and will napalm your taste buds. 

So, there you have it. Marge wanted to strike while the iron was hot, and now we have to wait a year to add Adolph and Tokyo Rose to our commemoration of the fallen. Hope Trump doesn’t say anything between now and then to change anything.