 David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's conversation with Phillip Bigler about his book Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, A Century of Honor. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two programs you can view later this month on our YouTube channel. On Tuesday, November 16th, at 1 p.m., Gail Jessup White, a black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemming's family, will discuss her new book, Reclamation, which explores her journey to understand her heritage. Historian Annette Gordon-Reed will join the author in conversation. And on Friday, November 19th, at 1 p.m., Michael Berlingame will tell us about his new book, The Black Man's President, and discuss Abraham Lincoln's personal connections with black people over the course of his career. In one week, we'll mark the 100th anniversary of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. With President Warren Harding presiding, the remains of an unknown fallen soldier of World War I, chosen to represent all those who died without being identified, were laid to rest on November 11th, 1921. Since then, unknowns from World War II and the Korean War have been interred to honor those who lost their lives in those wars, but remain unidentified. The records in the National Archives that relate to the Tomb remind us of the honor and dignity of the people who fought and died for our country and bring their stories to new generations. You'll find records that detail the design and construction for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and Memorial Amphitheater, and that chronicle the journey of the selection of the unknown from a French cemetery to the United States. We have film footage and photographs of the cortege bringing the body to Arlington National Cemetery and the dedication ceremony there. And maps and architectural designs document the Tomb's history and evolution over the past 100 years. Last month, we dove into those records in two programs titled, Here Rests an Honored Glory. These programs were recorded and can be viewed on the National Archives YouTube channel. In his book, Philip Bigler presents this history in a synthesized narrative and brings the story of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to the present day. Philip Bigler is the author of several books on history and teaching history. The history teacher for over 30 years, he is known for his innovative methods, use of technology, and commitment to teaching. In 1998, he was selected as the National Teacher of the Year during a rose garden ceremony at the White House. From 1983 through 1985, he served as one of the official historians at Arlington National Cemetery. He's appeared on numerous television programs, including Late Night with David Letterman, Good Morning America, and Nightline. Now let's hear from Philip Bigler. Thank you for joining us today. Well, thank you for having me here today. The National Archives has been, of course, the primary resource for my current book on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. By way of introduction, I was the history and humanities teacher for 35 years. I taught mostly in Fairfax County and Montgomery County Public Schools. And I was fortunate enough to be honored by President Clinton as the 1998 National Teacher of the Year. I finished my career at James Madison University where I ran a center on the Constitution called the James Madison Center on Liberty and Learning. And I wrote a book there on Madison's stepson called Scandalous Sun, which is a story of, which I call a parable of the dark side of the American dream. The American dream, of course, is rags to riches, but the dark side of the American dream is rags to riches to rags in three generations. And sadly, for Mr. Madison and Dolly, their son, John Payne Todd, pretty much destroyed their legacy. But the topic today, what we're going to talk about, of course, is Arlington National Cemetery in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I was very fortunate to be the historian at Arlington from 1983 to 1985. I had taken a sabbatical from teaching and Arlington, of course, is a very special place. And it was an amazing time because it was the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II. So I was fortunate to meet all sorts of wonderful veterans from the Battle of the Bulge to Tuskegee Airmen to Navajo Code Talkers. It was every day there was something special as they came to pay tribute to the service of our servicemen during World War II. I also had the privilege of having 12 visits by heads of state my last year there, including two from President Reagan. Most significantly for me was that we had the burial of the Vietnam Unknown Soldier in May of 1984. And there's a picture of me as a very young historian. And that was probably the biggest day that we had had at Arlington since the burial of President Kennedy. So that's going to be our topic today, again, the topic about the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. To give you away a background, though, Arlington Cemetery really was created during the Civil War. The estate was owned by Robert E. Lee's wife, Mary Randolph Custis Lee. And in 1857, after her father died, Robert E. Lee returned to the estate and was there from 1857 to 1861. And it's Lee's presence that led to the creation of the National Cemetery. In May of 1861, after Lee had left the estate to offer a service to the Confederacy, the Union Army occupied the ridges along Arlington Heights. If you've ever been to Arlington, you know, you have this beautiful vista of Washington, D.C., which also made it very strategic grounds. If the Confederacy had ever fortified these hills, they would have literally controlled the nation's capital. So really in the first major effort of the Civil War, this area was taken along with the neighboring city of Alexandria. Lee would never return here. But in 1864, the quartermaster general of the army, Montgomery Miggs, decided to turn the Lee estate into a cemetery to bury the Union War debt. And sure enough, that very day on June 15, 1864, some 63 soldiers were buried on Arlington's grounds, including several in Mrs. Lee's Rose Garden. By the end of the Civil War, there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 16,000 Union soldiers buried on the estate, along with about 500 or so Confederates who had died in hospitals in Washington, D.C. So this is how Arlington came to be. Lee never returned here, and Arlington became, again, a burial ground primarily for Union soldiers. There were over 4,500 unknown soldiers buried on Arlington, including basically an osherwary, which contains the remains of 2,111 unknown soldiers. So what happened importantly for our story is that in 1868, the army of the republics, General John Logan, issued what he called orders number 11, and this created what was called Decoration Day. And it was a time set aside in May to decorate the graves of Union soldiers. The first speaker for the event was General James Garfield. The event took place at the Arlington House mansion, and people then would go into the sections and actually place flowers and floral tributes on the graves of Union soldiers. It became so popular, though, that by 1888 they had renamed Decoration Day to Memorial Day, and that becomes, today, still one of our most important holidays in our federal calendar. And they built an amphitheater to hold the crowds, because, again, more and more people were coming to the cemetery to honor Union soldiers, and it actually had become a national cemetery. Well, this amphitheater was going to serve as the primary location for Memorial Day services from 1873 to 1920. At the turn of the century, though, this man by the name of Judge Ivory Kimball was really concerned. He didn't think that the amphitheater was really appropriate, that it needed to be something more elaborate to honor the service of Union soldiers. So he began to lobby Congress for a new amphitheater, which would be better suited for the Memorial Day holidays. He actually derogatorily referred to the existing amphitheater as simply the hole in the ground, and he urged Congress to adopt enough money to build a new amphitheater, saying, again, that this was something that the Union soldiers deserved, and by the turn of the century, many of them were dying off, and so he felt that time was, in fact, of the essence. Well, as things usually go, Congress continually liked the idea but never appropriated the money. A bill was not signed until the last day of the Taft administration on March 4, 1913 to actually appropriate enough funds to build a new amphitheater. And that's the building that we see today when we go to Arlington. This amphitheater was built between 1915 and 1920 and was designed by the renowned architect, Thomas Hastings. It's a magnificent, magnificent building, and it was constructed again for Memorial Day services. There was no tomb of the unknown soldier in 1915 when the building began. There was actually no, the United States had not yet been involved in World War I. So the building itself is going to turn out to be a magnificent structure. And it looks exactly the way you see it here today. The building, again, was constructed primarily for Memorial Day services. As a result of that, since we're not involved in the war when the building was, when construction had begun, all the names of battles, the names of admirals, the names of generals that are listed on the amphitheater are current only to the Spanish-American war. There are no World War I, obviously no World War II or any other subsequent generals. Well, this is what the building looked like, and Hastings had originally planned to have a beautiful peace monument on the plaza of the cemetery, but they ran out of funds as so often the case. So the peace monument never was constructed, but it did leave an opening here, and that's something, again, that we're going to come back to is where the peace monument was going to be, is going to be ultimately the site of the tomb of the unknown soldier. Well, World War I, again, is, I think it's fascinating because, you know, having taught history for many a year, I taught the history of the politics of the Great War, talked about, you know, the significance of it. I really never quite comprehended the human toll of this war until I started doing this particular book. I'm kind of embarrassed to say that in 1983 through 1985, when I was in Arlington, we still had World War I veterans coming to Arlington Cemetery on Veterans Day or Armistice Day, and they were there at a place of wreath at the Argonne Cross, which is among the graves of over 5,000 World War I soldiers buried in Arlington. And then they would also decorate the graves of John J. Pershing, who was the commander of the American Expeditionary Force. But again, Americans just don't seem to have the same sense of the Great War as, say, the Europeans, the Commonwealth Nations, Russians, and the Belgians. And that's partly because of the fact that this war was a war that was different than all other wars. It was the first real technological war that we had. All the science and technology that had developed so wonderfully during the 19th century now was turned to creating instruments of war. You had incredible casualties that, again, were mind-numbing in terms of us to try to understand. The statistic that I love to quote is that in terms of World War I, you had 6,046 people die in war every day for what would be equivalent of 1,566 days, just an amazing number. At the Battle of the Somme, in one single day, the British lost 19,200 soldiers, and that was only in a single day. This war, again, was different than others. The idea of heroism and valor kind of disappeared because the bravest soldier in the world could be killed by an artillery shell fired from five miles away, dying, never hearing the shot that killed him. So the loss of valor, the loss of heroes was something that I think you really see in World War I, and it led to a very dark period after the war where you had what we called the lost generation, the lost generations of writers like Hemingway, Duff's Passos, people like that who basically were disillusioned after what they saw in terms of the slaughter. Well, as a result of all this, after the war was over, there was a desire to try to bring meaning to the slaughter. And so the British and the French were the first to come up with the concept of an unknown soldier. The idea was to honor a common soldier, someone who had died in the war. And again, when you're looking at the British and the French, you're talking about millions of casualties. On the men and gate in Ypres, Belgium, for instance, there's over 58,000 names of British and Commonwealth soldiers whose bodies have just simply disappeared. They don't know where they are. They're all missing in action. And so it was decided to entour one unknown, one in Britain at Westminster Abbey and one in France at the Arc de Triomphe to honor all the soldiers. And again, I think it's interesting because in World War I it's the common man who's going to be celebrated here. The common soldier. These are monuments not to generals and not to politicians. But again, the idea is recognizing the average soldier who basically won the war itself. Well, the British again, buried their unknown soldier at Westminster Abbey, again, a very important place for the British because this is the Chapel of Kings. This is where British luminaries and notables are all buried, kings, queens, writers, authors, artists. And also now a common soldier who is unknown was buried here in Westminster Abbey in a place of honor. Well, the United States did not get involved in the war until 1917. So it's actually relatively late. We actually are only going to experience about seven months of actual combat. During that time, the United States is going to lose 116,000 soldiers killed or dying from disease 116,000 and roughly seven months. It's an incredible number of people. Again, which Americans have a tendency not to really comprehend. Well, one of the things that was created during this period was something called the Graves Registration Service. And as we mentioned, the archives has a wonderful collection of materials. And I put up a website here, which which supports the book, but it also has videos from the National Archives of the Grave Registration Service at work. Some really amazing video that was taken by the Signal Corps during the war itself. The idea of clearing battlefields, again, was something I'd never really contemplated. You know, you never really think about the idea that after a battle or during a battle, you have to remove the dead. And so what I discovered during this thing was that the Graves Registration Service did an amazing job of trying to bury and honor American soldiers who were killed during the war. This photograph, again, from the National Archives shows African American troops who are doing sweeping operations on a battlefield basically to recover the dead. This was necessary, of course, for sanitation purposes, first and foremost, but it was also necessary for morale. People, again, soldiers were devastated, you know, seeing the number of dead. And of course, the catastrophic way these people were killed, that you had to basically try to get these bodies off the battlefield as quickly as possible. It was also the first time that we started using primitive dog tags. But even that was not completely successful because after the war was over, there was still somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,221 American soldiers who were classified as missing. Their bodies were never recovered or were not known. And those soldiers, again, lost their identity. For American soldiers, of course, one of the things to do, one of the things they were concerned about is loss of identity. You know, as horrible it is to die in battle, it's even worse the idea that your body would not be identified and would not be properly buried so that your family would have a grave or whatever. So after the war was over, the United States, again, began an effort to coordinate the reburial of soldiers who had died in battle. Many of them had been buried all over the, all over the Belgium and France and sometimes in private cemeteries, sometime in mass graves. And so after the war, they created what they call concentration cemeteries and there were nine cemeteries set aside where all the dead were going to be reinterred to centralized locations. One was in Belgium, one in Britain and seven were going to be located in France. At the same time, the United States offered family members the opportunity or the right to have their loved one return to the United States. So if you lost a son or a husband during the war, you could have the government return the body to you. And 70% of the American people took advantage of this. Some 45,500 soldiers plus were actually relocated from Europe and were returned again to the United States. And again, it's amazing to hear these numbers. And again, the films that you see here are the photographs you see here again are often the National Archives. Some showing the repatriated, the patriation of the dead, which was a massive operation that's going to take several years after the war was over. Well, you know, I talk about this in numbers. And again, when you start talking about, you know, 43, 45,000 people being reinterred, it's hard to imagine. So I want to look at one person to give you an example of one guy whose body was returned. And this was a young man by the name of Private John Chesky. He was from Connecticut and he was drafted into the Army. Again, all these records from the National Archives as well. Chesky was 21 years old when he was drafted into the Army. He was sent to Europe, shipped out from Hoboken, New Jersey on April 6, 1918 as part of the 308th Infantry, the 77th Division. And they sailed across to Liverpool. Chesky, this young man celebrated, celebrated, if you can say that his 22nd birthday while on board that ship. They were deployed to France. And then, incredibly, Chesky was killed on September 3, 1918 in a meaningless artillery barrage. Again, to show you somewhat of the assertive of war and the randomness of death. This was not a major part of the battle or nothing was going on, particularly just Germans firing artillery shells at random into the trenches and Chesky, unfortunately, was killed. He initially was buried in a private cemetery, a church cemetery, because again, there was still action going on. There was not a lot of time to relocate bodies and so he was buried very conveniently and very quick. After the war was over, his body was disinterred and it was taken to a concentration cemetery. Again, as part of this effort to relocate all the dead to centralized locations. For some reason, which we don't know why, it was moved in the concentration cemetery from one grave to another. And Chesky's body, incredibly, was going to be disinterred three times before it finally was given to rest. The archives has amazingly digitized every card of soldiers who were reinterred or returned to the United States. And this is Chesky's card for the removal project. And again, it was interesting because Chesky's body was then disinterred again. It was taken to Antwerp, Belgium, was returned to the United States. It arrived back at Hoboken, New Jersey on March 19, 1922. The exact same port that he had left so many years or a few years earlier. And then it was transported back to Arlington National Cemetery, where his family had him buried. And again, the irony for that was his 26th birthday was during this period of time. And he was interred finally at Arlington National Cemetery on April 27, 1922. And section 18, grave number 4158. And the total time between his death and final interment was 1,330 days. And so John Chesky's grave is one of over 5,000 World War I people that are buried at Arlington National Cemetery. And as I say, I wanted to give him back his identity because here's an actual photograph or a picture of John Chesky, a private in the United States American expeditionary force who lost his life in the service of his country. Well, the United States also decided that we wanted to bury an unknown soldier too. And the man who was primarily responsible for the idea of an unknown in the United States was Congressman Hamilton Fish. Hamilton Fish had served as the commander of the 369th Infantry Regiment, which is called the Harlem Hell Fighters. Interestingly enough, Congress has just issued a gold medal to honor the services of this African American division. These soldiers were sent to France in December of 1917. They were one of the first American divisions to actually be deployed. And interestingly enough, because the American Armed Services were segregated, these soldiers were deployed to the French where there was no segregation. And these soldiers served longer in combat than any American division during the war itself. Something in the neighborhood of 119 days in combat. Well, Fish, when he was elected to Congress from New York, began the effort to honor veterans, including African American veterans, and also decided that he would like to see an unknown soldier buried on the plaza of the Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery on that spot where the Peace Memorial was originally intended to be. And sure enough, a selection was made. Soldiers were unknown soldiers were taken from various cemeteries. One was selected as the unknown and the body was brought back on the USS Olympia to Washington DC, to the Navy Yard of Washington DC, where the body was then taken and was laid in state at the United States Capitol for finally being buried at Arlington on November 11, 1921. The President at the time was President Warren G. Harding, Woodrow Wilson, who was the Commander in Chief during the war itself, had suffered a stroke earlier and was too ill to attend the ceremonies, but he did send a letter honoring the unknown soldier. But Harding was the man who was going to be the person who presided over the burial of the unknown soldier. And he set the tradition of American presidents visiting the tomb of the unknown soldier. Every president since Warren G. Harding to now has visited the tomb of the unknown soldier in his honor to the American unknown soldier. Actually, Harding gives a very good speech. Harding, of course, is now considered fairly disreputable as American presidents. But he actually was a pretty good speaker and it gave some very interesting speeches during his tenure, although again, he's not very well remembered to say the least. The burial of the unknown soldier took place in the plaza and this is what the unknown tomb looked like initially. Thomas Hastings was asked to construct the tomb and they had very little time to do it. So he built a very simple sarcophagus and that's all that was there. It was a simple sarcophagus. There was no inscriptions. There was no adornments or anything else. And this was what the tomb of the unknown soldier was going to look like for roughly 10 years for almost over a little over a decade. This was all that was going to be there. Well, as you see, the tomb itself, it was very simple. And the problem was is that a lot of tourists would come to Arlington. They literally could drive up on the plaza itself and they could get their picture taken by the tomb. And some people were being disrespectful. Some people would sit on the tomb. Some people would pose with it. Not really acknowledging the fact that it was an active grave or was in fact a grave. So the military became concerned about this and they were concerned about some of the disrespect that was going on at the tomb. So the first effort they decided to do was to put this hideous fence around the tomb of the unknown soldier. This looks so bad that it didn't last very long. It only lasted a few months. But it was an effort to keep people from disrespecting the tomb. They actually put a brass plaque there that indicated that it was the tomb of the unknown soldier. But again, it really didn't seem to be the solution. So the idea was that you needed to have a more substantive monument. And so very quickly after 1922, 1923, there began an effort to try to finish the tomb, to put a more substantive, a more identifiable tomb to honor America's unknown. Now Thomas Hastings, again, who had designed the amphitheater, who had designed the sarcophagus, felt that he was the man to do this. And sure enough, he decided on his own expense to construct a plastic monument, or a plastic of Paris monument, to show his idea for what the completed tomb should look like. And this is a picture of his idea. It was put up on the tomb sarcophagus for a couple weeks to be looked at, to be seen by the Commission on Fine Arts. And it was massive. The original tomb was five feet. He added another 28 feet. He had a very verbose description. And quite frankly, everybody hated this. The military hated it. Hastings was very distraught that they didn't like his idea, because this was more in tune with what he thought a peace monument would look like. And so they basically said this was not going to do. Hastings tried to modify his design to no avail. And so basically the original tomb stood there until it was decided to actually have an architectural competition to have architects from around the country solicit new ideas for a tomb of the unknown soldier. And sure enough, in 1928, 73 architectural firms submitted designs. They were eventually culled down to five. And the design that was selected was designed by the architect Lomar Rich and the sculptor Thomas Hudson Jones. And you see the plaster model of what the tomb was going to look like. And sure enough, when that was approved, work began to make some major changes to the plaza, to the approaches. The groundbreaking ceremonies that took place here, which you see here, took place on December 19, 1930. And the man that you see right here is General Douglas MacArthur. So it's kind of interesting to see him being there for the beginning of the final phase of the tomb. It took about three years to finish the tomb. The tomb was finally finished and was going to be dedicated in April of 1932. And this is what we call the East facade. And the symbolism here are three figures. So the figure on the left is a figure of peace. And then in the center is the symbol of victory. And then the symbol on the right was initially called the American soldier, but now is known as valor. And this was all sculpted on the plaza over a period of a few months. And the tomb itself finally was dedicated April 1932 without any particular ceremony. And this was pretty much the end of what people thought was going to be America's most sacred military shrine. On the Western facade, they have the inscription here, rest in honor, glory, and American soldier known but to God. And this is a picture in the 1930s of the tomb as it existed. And again, a beautiful monument. And this is what you'll see if you go to Arlington today as well. It was also decided to place the tomb under a 24-hour, 365-day military guard in 1937. And so this, again, is interesting is that this tomb has been guarded continuously, regardless of weather, regardless of pandemics, since 1937 itself. Well, that was pretty much what people thought would be the end of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. No one ever anticipated any other situation where you wouldn't have any other unknowns. But of course, what we know, we then had World War II. World War II, again, was a very terrible war. After the war was over, there were 78,000 missing in action. There were over 405,000 people dead. And many World War II veterans wanted an unknown from that war to be added to the plaza. Congress began authorization of that almost immediately after VJ Day, regardless of the fact that the Graves Registration Service was doing everything they could to identify and find all the American soldiers who had been lost in that war. Particularly in the Pacific, you had hundreds of temporary graves on islands and jungles and remote areas. And the goal of the Graves Registration Service was to have an identifiable marked grave for American soldier. But the military does what Congress says, and so they were told that they had to intern an unknown soldier from World War II by May of 1951. And so they began all sorts of different ideas. Little more rich came up with the idea of a two tombs. And you see here, one of his ideas was that you would actually have another tomb built on the plaza to house the World War I Unknown Soldier. This would require major changes to the amphitheater, removing the steps. And again, the whole amphitheater had never been designed for a tomb of the Unknown Soldier. And so how you would modify this was a thing of open debate. Well, again, they had not reached a conclusion on how they were going to do this when the Korean War broke out. And of course, the same thing happened in Korea. You had, after the war was over, you had people demanding that in Korea that an Unknown Soldier from Korea be buried as well. And so it was finally decided in 1958 to bury Unknown Soldiers from World War II and from Korea on the plaza of the tomb. But they would be buried in flat memorial stones, not in a duplicate tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The tomb for the World War I would suffice in that way. So they had a selection ceremony. Now for World War II was much more complicated because there were two theaters of operations. You had a theater of operations in Europe and Northern Africa. And of course you had the Pacific. The decision was made to choose Unknown Soldiers from Europe, an Unknown Soldier from Europe and an Unknown Soldier from the Pacific. These were done in selection ceremonies, one in Europe and one in Hawaii. And they became known as the European candidate unknown and the Pacific candidate unknown. Ultimately, they brought the bodies of the two Unknown Soldiers from World War II and also one from Korea that was selected. And this is the unknowns from World War II. And they mixed them up on board a ship, the USS Canberra. So you don't know which theater of operation they came from. The hospital corpsman, Sheret, who was the only Navy Medal of Honor winner still in active duty, placed a wreath on this particular Unknown. And that became the World War II Unknown Soldier. The other casket or the other body was buried at sea. And so you now had the Korean Unknown and now the World War II Unknown Soldier who we don't know is either a Pacific or a European casual, we don't know. They were brought to Washington to get into the Navy Yard and we had what was called the double internment. And so in 1958, President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon presided over the burial of an Unknown Soldier from World War II, which is here and an Unknown Soldier from Korea on the plaza. And again, all they're going to be marked with is with white memorial stones. And so now we had three unknowns buried at Arlington. Well, of course, that brings us to Vietnam. And again, this was another war that people began to ask for an Unknown Soldier to be buried from there as well. There were 58,209 soldiers killed in the war. There was over 2,600 that were classified as missing in action. But the world had changed by this time. During Korea and then in Vietnam, particularly, we began the process of what we call concurrent return. When a person was killed in action, their body was immediately returned to the United States in Vietnam because of helicopter evacuations because of the way the war was fought. A casualty in the Vietnam War, a person could be killed on the battlefield and returned for burial within the United States within a span of less than two weeks. Again, it's rather remarkable. And as a result, there really were no Unknown Soldiers. Basically, everybody was identified because their bodies were returned. There was no temporary graves or no temporary cemeteries in country. So as a result, after the Vietnam War was over, there were no Unknown Soldiers. So there was a question of whether there would ever be an Unknown Soldier from Vietnam. Well, it turned out in 1982, it was decided that one remain that they had was basically going to be designated the Unknown Soldier from Vietnam. Now, I will tell you at Arlington, we all were convinced when we heard about this that it was going to be an aviator. The only person that could possibly be unidentified would be an aviator whose body would be identifiable because of a catastrophic crash or explosion. We also were convinced that they had to throw away the traditional book on the Unknown Soldier, that this had to be a very, very small and very partial remain. All of those were true, but we didn't know the classified information at that. But at any rate, it was decided to bury this one person, this one Unknown Soldier at Arlington in May of 1984. And again, as I say, I was very fortunate to be here for this, and it was an amazing day. The Vietnam Memorial had been dedicated just two years earlier in 1982 by a lens beautiful monument on the Mall in Washington. And the idea was now to elevate and to give the Vietnam veteran the acknowledgement and the appreciation of the American people for their service. President Reagan presided over this. He presented the Medal of Honor to the Unknown Soldier. And then the unknown was buried on the plaza in the center crypt. So now you have the crypts again of the Korean Unknown Soldier, the World War II Unknown Soldier. And now the Vietnam and then of course the World War I. Again, it was an amazing day and we were very honored to participate in those services. We didn't realize that that body would rest at Arlington only for 13 years, 11 months and 14 days, because things were going to change dramatically over the next years. This is a picture of Michael Blasey who Michael Blasey was a U.S. Air Force graduate. He was a pilot. He was flying what they called a Cessna A37B Dragonfly aircraft in support of Arvin troops during the Battle of An Loc in May of 1972. He was dropping may palm on the enemy troops. When his plane was hit by small arms fire, the plane inverted and crashed in a terrific explosion. And his wingman said that they did not see any parachute. So Michael Blasey was classified as killed in action BNR, which means body not recovered. The fighting was so intense around An Loc that they could not reach the crash shot. Helicopters could not get to the crash site and so he basically was classified as missing in action. Well, it turned out that about a few months later on October 31st after the battle had been over and Arvin force was going through the jungle areas over there and they came across the crash site. And there they discovered a few things. They discovered a portion of a Nomex flight suit, an ammo pouch, parachute fragments, a life raft, military IDs, dog tags, and so forth, plus six bones. And this became classified now as believed to be Michael Blasey. In other words, those six bones were classified as believed to be Michael Blasey. The material was sent to tons in an Air Force base where the American Mortuary Service was operating. But somehow, and we don't know why or what happened, the military ID, the dog tags all disappeared. So the only thing that showed up were the six bones. And that was not enough for conclusive proof. So as a result, they changed the designation from believed to be Michael, or they changed the designation to BTB, believed to be Michael Blasey. Those bones remained at Tansinat until the end of the war and then they were transferred to Thailand and then finally to Hawaii. And in Hawaii at the Central Identification Laboratory, the bones sat there with again the classification believed to be Michael Blasey. No one could be convinced exactly, could conclusively say that they're Blasey, even though there was a lot of evidence to support that. Well, they finally decided to bring in a forensic anthropologist who came in in December of 1978 to evaluate these six bones. And he claimed that he could identify all sorts of characteristics on the bones. And what he came up with was a disaster to say the very least. The first thing he said that the bones age were, the age of the bones meant that the person was between 26 and 33. Well, Blasey was 24 years old, so he was not of the right age. They also decided that the bones represented a person that was taller than Blasey. So that also seemed to be disqualifying. But the worst thing was they came to the conclusion that the bones was a person that had basically O positive blood type where Blasey's was type A. So that meant that it couldn't be Blasey. And so as a result, they changed the designation from believed to be to basically unknown soldier and it became known as X-26. And that was the unknown that was going to be buried at Arlington Cemetery. Again, none of us were privileged to this information at the time. And that was pretty much a shock when all this started to come out. Well, what happened, of course, in the 90s was the DNA technology had come out. And it turned out that the remains in that tomb could only be, there's only nine possible people that that could possibly be. Only nine people would even be remotely considered to have been the person given the location of the remains. And so family members from missing and action family members began to demand that the body be disinterred and that the body be investigated to see if they can do DNA technology and actually identify it. The man who was most responsible of this was a Green Beret by the name of Ted Sampley, who basically wrote a fairly anonymous article called in a self published newsletter that he argued that they could identify the unknown soldier. Finally, in the January of 1998, CBS News picked up on this story. And they basically popularized the story. And as a result of that the body was disinterred in May of 1998. It was taken for DNA analysis. And sure enough, the DNA analysis concluded that this was in fact Michael Blasey, the Air Force pilot who had been shot down over and locked. His family asked that the body be returned to them. His body was taken to the Jefferson Barracks in Missouri. And there it was going to be interred for the family. And again, amazing because Michael Blasey, again, was the unknown on the back of his stone. It says the fact that he was the unknown soldier during that period of time at Arlington. But again, now he has been identified. And so as a result of that, the CRIP, the center CRIP for the Vietnam unknown soldier is empty today. And there will never be another unknown soldier again because of the DNA technology. So what they've done is that they've, they put the following inscription on the unknown soldiers grave. They put the following inscription on the unknown soldiers grave to indicate that they are going to try to keep and honor missing in action servicemen. And again, another thing that's amazing about this whole story is that since the end of the Vietnam War, when we started with over 2,500 missing in action, they have identified since 1975 somewhere over 1,000 people. There's a constant effort to continue to identify soldiers who are, who have been lost, who are unknown, amazingly as well. Right now there, the USS Oklahoma that was sunk at Pearl Harbor with 388 unknown soldiers who were buried in, is unknowns at the Punchbowl National Cemetery in Arlington. All of those remains have been removed. And they are continuing doing DNA testing since they know the names of the 388 people. They have identified well over 100 of those people now. And so again, there's an ongoing effort again to make sure that the unknown soldiers are identified if they can find any. Well, I want to mention real quickly, the tomb itself of course is guarded 24 hours a day, 365 days a year by the 3rd United States Infantry. If you have a chance to go to Arlington, you'll see the impressive change of the guard ceremony. And again, this has been an honor that has been going on since 1937. And so 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, the tomb itself is placed, is under continual guard. And this has gone on, Arlington was closed for several months because of the pandemic. The tomb was still under guard during that whole time. And I always say it's fascinating to me when you go to Arlington and you see the impressive ceremonies during the day, well, think about tonight at one o'clock or two o'clock in the morning or think about when it's snowing and the weather is miserable. The guard is still there. And that also says, I think, a lot about our country because we tend to, we guard an unknown soldier, not president's graves or politicians graves. The tomb guard, their motto is, this is what is called the sentinels creed. And I just highlighted a couple of points that I think is important. They said my standard will remain perfection. These guys are disciplined. They are proud of what they're doing. And as I say, this soldier will in honor of glory rest under my internal vigilance. Amazingly, right now there are three reliefs of sentinels on duty at the tomb. We have first, second and third relief. They're grouped according to height, first relief is 6'2 to 6'4, second relief 6'2 to 6'2, third relief 5'11 to 6'3. And again, they all come from the third United States infantry as a voluntary group. They, when you go there, you'll see many of the sentinels wearing what is called the tomb guard identification badge. This is one of the most coveted badges in the United States military. It is the least awarded badge. The only one that's rewarded less than that is a astronauts badge, of course, and there's not that many people going up in the astronauts. But there's only been 688 of these badges since its inception in the 1950s. And this badge is awarded after nine months of honorable duty. And it is a badge that they wear very proudly to indicate that they have served at the tomb itself. We've also had, interestingly enough, now we've had several women who have been tomb guards. That started in 1994 was the first woman tomb guard. She was a military police officer, and we've had several of them since then. In fact, just about three weeks ago, for the first time in history, we had a guard change conducted completely by all females, two sentinels and a relief commander. There's also been three soldiers or three tomb guards who have been killed in action. William Spades was killed in Vietnam, as was Marvin Franklin. And most recently, Adam Dickmeyer was killed during his time in Afghanistan. They're really remarkable people. And I think it's something that we have to remember when we go there that these are just wonderful people and incredible soldiers who guard, again, an unknown soldier. So, at any rate, I hope you've enjoyed this. Right now, we're at a very special time. It's the 100th anniversary on November 11, 19, or November 11 next month, will be the 100th anniversary of the burial of the unknown soldiers, all sorts of things going on. The tomb will be very much in the press and very much in the public eye over the next couple weeks. And again, it's an amazing place to go. It's a wonderful place. And I thank you for joining us. Thank you very much.