Hallowed Ground

Where do you go in Los Angeles on Memorial Day? Los Angeles is known as Lotusland—the city without a memory. And it’s true that memory rests lightly on L.A. But turn east from Sepulveda Boulevard just north of Wilshire, onto Constitution Avenue, and you immediately recede from the goings and comings of the eternal present and enter a sanctuary of remembrance. 

The main gate is opened each morning at 8:00. Visit on an ordinary weekday morning and there isn’t a soul stirring except you and one or two of the groundsmen. The traffic of the 405 freeway will continue to hum behind you, but a sacred local silence takes you in, to the company of over 85,000 veterans and their families, some from as far back as the Civil War, who rest in peace here at the Los Angeles National Cemetery.

Some time back, I had the pleasure of meeting the then-director of the cemetery, Cynthia dela Fuente Nuñez, who seemed to have been born for the job. She grew up in the Philippines and inherited a fondness for American veterans from her father, Carmelito dela Fuente, who told her from her earliest years of the American liberation of the Philippines in World War II. She remembered him telling her when she was a little girl that “the kindest people on earth are the American soldiers.” He carried this feeling with him all his days. After Cynthia fulfilled her childhood dream and became an American citizen in the bicentennial year, 1976, she sponsored her father to become an American citizen himself. She had been looking after American veterans ever since.

“Small world,” I told her. My father enlisted, like many other Angelenos, a few days after Pearl Harbor. From July 1943 to September 1945 he was with the 145th Infantry Regiment of the 37th Infantry Division in the Southwest Pacific Theatre of Operations—helping, among other things, to liberate the Philippines. As a boy I was interested to look at the shadows of shrapnel he carried back with him along his shinbones. When I got older, we would sit for long spells over ten-cent coffee, and if I asked him he would tell me stories of the war. Maybe he made a few things up. Certainly he held things back. No reason he shouldn’t. Every generation is born into its own sort of lotusland.

The 114-acre rectangle of the cemetery stretches northwest to southeast along Sepulveda Boulevard on the west, and Veteran Avenue on the east. Wilshire borders the southern edge, and the northern edge is flanked by a few backyards of neighborhood homes, over whose ivy-covered fences curious children can and do climb.

Constitution Avenue runs like a binding metaphor through the center of the grounds from west to east. Extending outward from it on right and left are battle roads, named from generations of America’s wars. On the southeast side: Toul, Chateau-Thierry, Marne, St. Mihiel, Meuse Avenues. On the northwest side: Argonne, San Juan Hill, Antietam. Crossing or curving into these are more battle roads: Gettysburg, Shiloh, Belleau Wood, Amiens.

On the flat and geometrical southeast side, columns of trees flank some of the battle avenues like an honor guard, with true lines and even spacing. Chateau-Thierry Avenue runs between pillars of Ficus trees whose dark, smooth leaves almost converge above it, making a tunnel with a strip of blue sky at the top. Camphor trees, with their lighter and more delicate green, line the Marne in stately order. On the gently sloping northwest side, eucalypti, stone pines, pepper trees, jacaranda, and a stray palm or two are scattered at ease.

On acres of well-groomed lawns spread between the battle avenues are the tens of thousands of white marble headstones mustered with military precision in ranks or files, depending on the angle from which you view them. The cemetery was dedicated on May 22, 1889, and the slow shifting of the earth over the years has caused some headstones to break ranks a little. 

San Juan Hill Avenue rises to a knoll in the northern part of the cemetery. At the top stands a grey stone obelisk, wide at the base and about 30 feet tall. On the side that is lit by the brilliant L.A. sun every morning is an inscription in bronze, all in capitals: IN MEMORY OF THE MEN WHO OFFERED THEIR LIVES IN DEFENSE OF THEIR COUNTRY.

On the Saturday before one Memorial Day I recall, over 2,500 Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts came to the cemetery to place some 85,000 flags on the grave sites, each flag placed with ceremony, a scout speaking aloud the name of the soldier, with a salute.

On the east side of the cemetery is a small pedestrian gate that is opened only on Memorial Day. The sign on the gate asks visitors to bear in mind that they are entering “hallowed grounds.”

Even in L.A.

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