For most Americans, Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer, with beach outings and backyard cookouts the order of the day.

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For most Americans, Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer, with beach outings and backyard cookouts the order of the day.

That said, more than 100 people gathered Monday morning at East Hawaii Veterans Cemetery No. 2, to celebrate the most somber and patriotic of American holidays. The commemoration was organized by volunteers led by Jeno Enocencio-Peck, an Army Vietnam War veteran who provides honor guard services at funerals of military veterans.

By presidential proclamation, the U.S. flag is flown at half-staff from sunrise to noon on Memorial Day to honor military men and women who died in America’s wars. Then, from noon to sunset, the flag is raised to full-mast to exemplify a living nation and those who serve it.

In Hawaii, the state flag is also included in those orders, by proclamation of Gov. Josh Green.

Monday’s ceremony included military marches and patriotic anthems, Christian prayers and Buddhist chants, rifle salutes and the reading of the names of veterans who have died since last Memorial Day. Sitting silently nearby were the decorated headstones of deceased veterans and their spouses.

“My grandmother is buried here. My father-in-law is buried here. My friends who I’ve loved my whole life are in this ground — right here, just steps from where I’m standing,” said JoNelle Fukushima, a County Council candidate from Hilo and one of two speakers who shared their mana‘o with those in attendance.

Fukushima, who said she spoke not as a candidate but as family, is the granddaughter of a WAC — an acronym for Women’s Army Corps and the name given to women who served in the Army between 1942 and 1978. She described her grandmother as “a soldier, one of the originals.”

“She put on the uniform when the world told women they had no place in it and she served, anyway — with grace, toughness and with everything she had,” Fukushima said. “She was a patriot before it was celebrated. … And she is here, not just in this ground but in my heart, and with me now, on this island she loved — part of the greatest generation, as they were called, for good reason. My father-in-law served. My uncle served.

“Service is not a chapter in my family’s story; it is the whole book. So when I speak these words today, know that I’m not just reading from a script, I’m standing on sacred ground with all of you, where our people rest.”

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With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence a little more than a month away, Fukushima noted the nation’s revolutionary origins.

“Two-hundred-fifty years ago, a group of imperfect visionary people declared that freedom was worth fighting for,” she said. “And in every generation since, on every continent, every ocean, every theater of war, this broken and beautiful world has produced men and women from these islands (who) answered that call. They left the smell of plumeria and sea salt. They left children who would grow up without them, spouses who had learned to sleep alone, parents who would never stop listening for their footsteps at the door.

“Some came home changed in ways that no one could see. Some did not come home at all.”

Fukushima said she wanted to “speak plainly … because people in this ground deserve plain truth, not comfortable words.”

“Right now on this island, veterans are sleeping without a place to call home,” she said. “Men and women who bled for this country are navigating a maze of disconnected services, reduced benefits and bureaucratic walls. And some of them, exhausted and broken, simply stopped asking for help.

“I look at these grave markers and I think about what it took to be the kind of person who ends up here. The discipline, the sacrifice, the willingness to put everything on the line. And then, I think about what we are offering the ones still living and I feel something close to shame. Here on the Big Island, we are underserved compared to Oahu. We have organizations doing heroic work but they cannot find each other. Our veterans cannot navigate the sea of disconnected services. And we keep accepting this as just the way things are.”

Fukushima said she is working with others in the community “to build a coordinated wraparound service network on this island — housing, healthcare, mental health, employment, legal aid, all connected, all accessible, no veteran falling through the cracks.”

“We have a long way to go but we have our mission,” she said.

The other speaker, Gerald Cristobal, also spoke to veterans as family. His oldest son, Isaiah, is a Navy veteran who served both as a Seal and an explosive ordinance disposal technician, as well as on the escort teams of President Barack Obama’s last visit to Hawaii and President Donald Trump’s first-term Korea trip.

“Let us all be in remembrance that this is a great country that we live in,” Cristobal said. “And to those who have passed and to those who are here, our brothers and sisters who are physically sick, who are on the street, or in a hospital bed, let us remember every day of our lives for all of you and all of them around us.

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“Because of them we have freedom.”

Email John Burnett at [email protected].