Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier form of memorial to a nation's war dead, adopted by many countries after World War I. The Tomb of the Unknowns, a memorial to the American dead of World Wars I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, is in Arlington National Cemetery , just outside Washington, D.C. On Nov. 11, 1921, an unidentified soldier who had been killed in France was buried there in a temporary crypt over which a marble slab was placed; the completed tomb, a sarcophagus of Colorado marble placed on the original base, was dedicated as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Nov. 11, 1932. On Memorial Day, 1958, the bodies of two other unknown soldiers—one of whom had died in World War II, the other during the Korean War—were buried in the tomb, which was renamed the Tomb of the Unknowns. Remains of an unknown soldier from the Vietnam War were interred here in 1984, but later investigations revealed the soldier's identity, and they were removed. Deciding that scientific advances, including DNA tests (see DNA fingerprinting ), had made Vietnam War or future unknowns unlikely, the Pentagon announced (1999) that no new remains would be placed in the memorial.

The best known of other such memorials are those in Westminster Abbey in London and under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Similar tombs are in Baghdad, Russia, and elsewhere.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier also Tomb of the Unknowns a memorial to soldiers killed in battle, located at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. It was originally established on March 4, 1921, when Congress approved the burial of an unidentified American soldier from World War I to represent the sacrifice of the average soldier. The remains of unknown soldiers from World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War have since been interred there. It has never officially been named.

Tomb of the Unknowns. Located in Arlington National Cemetery and originally known as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, this memorial contains the graves of three unidentified servicemen who each individually symbolize the sacrifice of all American servicemen who died in the nation's twentieth‐century wars. Established under a congressional mandate and patterned after similar memorials in Europe created after World War I, the first Unknown was entombed on 11 November 1921 after a state funeral stressing the theme of selfless sacrifice of the individual to the nation. This and subsequent ceremonies portrayed the Unknown Soldier as representative of a national vision transcending class, ethnic, racial, regional, and religious differences.

The tomb was originally conceived as a memorial to World War I, once called the “war to end all wars,” but events after 1939 required a reinterpretation. In 1950, the Defense Department planned to add a grave for an unidentified serviceman from the World War II, but the outbreak of the Korean War interrupted these arrangements. In 1958 the Defense Department entombed Unknown Soldiers for both World War II and Korea. On Memorial Day 1984, an Unknown Serviceman from the Vietnam War was included.

With advances in genetic testing, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen in 1998 ordered the exhumation of the Unknown from the Vietnam War to determine whether the body could be identified. Sophisticated DNA testing confirmed that the remains were those of First Lieutenant Michael J. Blassie of the U.S. Air Force, who was then interred privately.

Bibliography

B.C. Mossman and and M.W. Stark , The Last Salute: Civil and Military Funerals, 1921–1969, 1971.
G. Kurt Piehler , Remembering War the American Way, 1995.

G. Kurt Piehler