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Unidentified speaker urges celebration of nation’s 200th birthday, honors WWII nurses held as POWs
Summary
An unidentified speaker called on Americans to mark the nation’s 200th birthday and honored 81 American women held as prisoners of war in the Philippines during World War II, linking the holiday to the preservation of democracy and political courage.
An unidentified speaker urged Americans to mark the nation’s 200th birthday on Monday and honored World War II nurses who were captured and held as prisoners of war in the Philippines.
The speaker linked the July 4 holiday to the wider duty of preserving democratic institutions, citing George Washington and the need for political courage in peacetime. “The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps as deeply as finally staked on the experiment and trusted in the hands of the American people,” the speaker said, quoting Washington’s warning about the responsibilities of a free people.
The speaker recounted the experience of nurses captured at Corregidor during World War II and held in prison camps, saying the women “simply volunteered to serve their country, and they chose to serve it with courage and hope.” The address named Lieutenant Colonel Madeleine Olam and said she was captured at Corregidor. The speaker said that in the prison camp the nurses “quickly organized into ships and began to care for other prisoners,” and that despite shortages of medicine, equipment and food “miraculously every 1 of the 81 American women POWs had survived.”
The speaker framed those accounts as examples of the individual moral courage that sustains democracy, and later cited John F. Kennedy’s 1954 book Profiles in Courage while discussing the need for political courage to take “the hard and unpopular decisions necessary for our survival and struggle with a powerful enemy.”
Direct remarks from the address included: “My fellow Americans, on Monday, America will celebrate her 200 birthday. I love the July 4. I enjoy picnics and fireworks and long summer days, and I get excited with the thought that millions of our people haul across our great country will, on this fourth of July weekend, join together in thinking about freedom and the men and women who sacrificed to make it our inheritance.” The speaker also related a passage about the nurses: “Our atmosphere was 1 of dusty Paul ever present in which we moved, worked, tried to eat, tried to breathe in an endless nightmare.”
Discussion vs. decision: The event was a public address; no formal actions, motions or directives were taken.
The address closed by reiterating the theme that both wartime bravery and political courage sustain the republic, summarizing with a passage attributed to John F. Kennedy: “And only the very courageous will be able to keep alive the spirit of individualism and descent, which gave birth to this nation, nourished it as an infant, and carried it through its fierce tests upon the attainment of its maturity.”
