New York’s World War II Monuments: A Remembrance

By Michael Mauro DeBonis 

Copyright ©2024 All rights reserved by the author

World War II (1939-1945) was the most bloody, destructive, and costly military and political conflict in the known history of humanity. The war spanned every habitable continent (except deep-frozen Antarctica), northern and southern hemispheres, and it was brutishly fought on land, sea, and air. America’s National WW II Museum’s website says World War II cost the lives of nearly 85 million people in total, including both civilians and military personnel, from across the globe. For the United States of America, WW II began late, in early December of 1941, as opposed to Western Europe, where the man-made catastrophe had started two years earlier, in 1939.

World War II Memorial, Battery Park, NYC. Photo
by Michael Mauro DeBonis April 2001.

World War II pitted the Axis Powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy against the Allied Powers of the USA, France, the United Kingdom and its Commonwealth, the Soviet Union, and many others. In America, the WW II historical museums and memorials, which honor our country’s many men and women who contributed to the war effort, are nearly countless in number and exist in every U.S. state and territory. This article focuses on just two of New York State’s numerous ones.

At the southern end of Battery Park, in New York City, is the famed East Coast World War 2 Memorial. We know from nycgovparks.org that the East Coast (WW II) Memorial was designed by the architectural firm of Gehron and Seltzer in the early 1960s, commissioned by the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) shortly before this time, and it was completed by the spring of 1963. NYCGOVPARKS.ORG further comments that this exquisitely built and executed WW II memorial was dedicated to American President John F. Kennedy on May 23, 1963.

The massive Battery Park World War 2 Memorial comprises eight huge, smoothed granite walls, with each wall immortalizing the inscribed names, lives, and heroic sacrifices of 4,601 American military service personnel who died fighting against German naval forces during the very deadly and costly Battle of the North Atlantic, a savage seaborne campaign, which was waged between the Allies and Fascist Germany, throughout the entirety of World War II. It was only in 1943 that the Allies, badly outmatched by the German Navy at first, could gain the upper hand over their enemy.

Wall of American Militarymen who died in WWII
Battle of the North Atlantic, WWII Memorial, Battery
Park, NYC. Photo by Michael Mauro DeBonis.

The East Coast World War II Memorial’s eight monolithic walls accurately record the service branch of each American military member who died fighting in the Battle of the North Atlantic. The names of American military members are not only those of the U. S. Navy and Marine Corps, but they also include the names of many U. S. Army, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marines, who were also killed on American military supply and naval ships, heading back and forth from America’s east coast to Europe, during WW II. Many of the American ships were unfortunately torpedoed and sunk by Germany’s infamous “wolf packs,” which were the deadly and stealthy submarines of the German Navy. German naval submarines were also called U-boats for being constructed and deployed to carry out Nazi Germany’s covert and malicious underwater warfare.

Each of the eight walls of the East Coast WW II Memorial is nineteen feet tall, with four walls each being positioned at the extreme ends of both the northern and southern portions of the Memorial. The walls are situated firmly atop a well-paved plaza. At the eastern side of the Battery Park WW II Memorial, and placed securely on top of a well-cut pedestal of black polished granite, is a giant majestically sculpted bronze (American) bald eagle. The eagle is depicted in a downward swooping motion, carefully depositing an honor wreath on a rising sea wave.

The colossal bronze metallic statue of the eagle was eloquently created and shaped by noted Italian-American sculptor Albino Manca, who died in 1976 and is recorded as such on nycgovparks.org and metmuseum.org for NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Manca’s great bronze eagle sublimely and solemnly pays tribute to The Battle of North Atlantic’s American fallen. Manca’s eagle is America’s eagle, and the eagle flies directly in the middle of the center aisle, which divides the East Coast World War II Memorial’s eight historic walls.

The other WW II public monument discussed in this article is the Northport (Long Island, NY) Veterans Administration Hospital’s World War II Navy Memorial Plaque. A visual inspection of this WWII public monument (personally carried out by me in September of 2023) indicates that it was cast in bronze, although other composite metals and materials may have been used in its composition. The Northport VA Hospital’s WW II Navy Memorial Plaque is part of an internationally famous series of historical markers called Still on Patrol. The Still on Patrolmarkers are memorial plaques issued by the United States Navy, U. S. Veterans Administration Hospitals, and the U. S. Submarine Veterans of World War II to give the highest esteem and permanence to the lives of American naval officers and sailors who bravely sacrificed their lives, in both Pacific and Atlantic theaters of operation during the Second World War, to advance and preserve democracy. The War Memorial Center of Wisconsin states on its website warmemorialcenter.org that these very respected Still on Patrol historical markers were issued at least as far back as September of 1988. They are intended to enshrine in perpetual honor the lives of 3,131 U. S. Navy submarine sailors and their 374 officers, who guided them in battle against the navies of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. The artfully embossed captions in bronze describing the Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaques affirm these statements.

They further detail in bold capital English print all the specific names of the 52 sunken submarines of WW II’s U. S. Navy, such as the Albacore, Bonefish, Sealion, Seawolf, S-27, and S-28. At the top left and right-hand corners of the Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaque are also elegantly embossed in bronze the official seals and symbols of the U. S. Navy’s Submarine Warfare Insignia and Insignia of the U. S. Submarine Veterans of WW II, respectively. Just above the bottom center of the Still on Patrol Plaque is another gracefully embossed and deeply delineated large image of a U. S. Navy WW II submarine, swiftly splitting ocean waves, as it cruises the open waters of the high seas, looking for America’s maritime enemies.

Directly below the raised large image of the WW II submarine on the Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaque are embossed two separate and moving comments regarding the dead and gallant American submariners of WW II, who valiantly served on the U. S. Navy’s sunken underwater war machines, and never again returned alive home, to both family and friend. One comment is movingly proclaimed from the mouth of WW II U. S. Navy Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and the other stirring tribute is from WW II U. S. Navy Vice-Admiral C. A. Lockwood.



They both read as follows:

1) WE SHALL NEVER FORGET THAT IT WAS OUR SUBMARINES THAT HELD THE LINES AGAINST THE ENEMY WHILE OUR FLEETS REPLACED LOSSES AND REPAIRED WOUNDS.

FLEET ADMIRAL CHESTER W. NIMITZ, UNITED STATES NAVY, 1941-1945.



2) I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT THEY WENT DOWN FIGHTING AND THAT THEIR BROTHERS WHO SURVIVED THEM TOOK A GRIM TOLL ON OUR SAVAGE ENEMY TO AVENGE THEIR DEATHS.

VICE ADMIRAL C. A. LOCKWOOD, JR., COMMANDER, UNITED STATES NAVY SUBMARINE FORCE, 1943-1946.



Teresa Reid, a senior-level historian and curator for the Northport Historical Society, says that the “…Still on Patrol WW 2 Memorial Plaque at the VA Hospital at Northport, Long Island, was installed in 2013 to give the World War II U.S. Navy veterans of Nassau and Suffolk Counties the great admiration and honor due to them because of their bloody and historic sacrifices made for the American nation, at a most critical time of need.”

The Historical Marker Database (HMD. Org) lists the WW II U. S. Navy Still on Patrol Memorial Plaques as being posted at historical sites in as many as 28 different U. S. states. The submariners of World War Two who served and died on the Still on Patrol submarines are listed as “still on patrol” because they never returned home from the Second World War to their families and friends alive and (still to this day) are considered lost at sea. As members of America’s Greatest Generation, they, their lives, and their immortal tributes to defend American democracy will live on forever. 

Although the Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaque is not the aesthetic masterpiece, as is Manca’s superlative eagle, it was not intended to be as such. The Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaque is a work of adequately conceived and delivered artistic craftsmanship. It is a work of solid and resilient creative competence. In being so, the Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaque (situated in Northport, NY) effectively transmits and conveys the American cultural ideals of democracy American WW II veterans doggedly fought to preserve, as does Gehron, Seltzer and Manca’s earlier World War II East Coast Memorial, on display, in NYC. World War II's thematic and historical threads universally connect American war memorials. The Still on Patrol WW II Memorial Plaque (whose designer is currently unknown) should be interpreted philosophically and historically as an extension of the East Coast WW II Memorial. A viewer’s trip to personally see both is not wasted time or effort.



BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1) DeBonis, Michael Mauro, Personal Visit to Manhattan’s East Coast World War II Memorial at Battery Park, NYC, April 2001.

2) DeBonis, Michael Mauro, Personal Visit to the Veterans Administration Hospital at Northport, Long Island, New York, September 19, 2023.

3) Reid, Teresa, Interview with Michael Mauro DeBonis at Northport, New York, October 3, 2023.

4) www.hmdb.org, Official Website of the Historical Marker Database.Org, situated throughout all 50 American states, Online Inquiry by Michael Mauro DeBonis, April 17, 2024.

5) www.metmuseum.org, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, Online Inquiry by Michael Mauro DeBonis, April 12, 2024.

6) www.nationalww2museum.org, The National World War Two Museum, New Orleans, Louisiana, Online Inquiry by Michael Mauro DeBonis, March 21, 2024.

7) www.nycgovparks.org, Official Website of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, New York City, New York, Online Inquiry by Michael Mauro DeBonis, February 23, 2024.

8) www.warmemorialcenter.org, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Online Inquiry by Michael Mauro DeBonis, March 19, 2024.





About the Author: Michael Mauro DeBonis is a poet and a historian from Long Island, NY. A graduate of Suffolk County Community College (A. A. in Liberal Studies) and SUNY at Stony Brook (B. A. in English Literature), Michael’s work first appeared in The Brookhaven Times Newspapers. Michael’s latest poetry and prose may be found in The Lyric Magazine, The New York Almanack and The New York History Review. Mr. DeBonis is dedicated to studying and to learning the history of the great State of New York.