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Two Sundays a month in the 1950s and early 1960s, my family would drive up to Punchbowl Cemetery. We spent time placing flowers on, and cleaning the area around, the grave of Chester T. Fukunaga. My bachan’s son. My mom’s brother. The uncle I never knew. Killed in action in Italy in 1943. Even then, I was overwhelmed by the thousands of grave markers and the names on them.
We always stayed until the sound of bells and chimes signaled it was time for visitors to leave. That sound and the image of countless rows of graves still haunts me with feelings of humility, sadness and respect.
They and all veterans are the reason why we, as a country, still have a chance to be better. They are most decidedly not, as one presidential candidate said in 2020, “suckers and losers,” according to his former chief of staff, John Kelly.
Glenn Kondo
Kualapuu, Molokai
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