Half-Mast (U.S.)

Last modified: 2004-12-22 by rick wyatt
Keywords: half-mast | united states |
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• Now There Are Three More

See also:

• Flying the flag at half mast (from "Standard Bearer")
• Flags at half mast
• United States of America

Discovering the statutory basis of half-staffing the U.S. flag for Peace Officers Memorial Day, I browsed through the U.S. Code and was surprised to discover that Congress has enacted in the past several years not just this one but three calls for half-staffing: Peace Officers Memorial Day (2nd Monday in May), Korean War Armistice Day (June 27), and Pearl Harbor Day (December 7). The Korean War event lapses after 2003, the 50th anniversary of the armistice.

I'm going to touch a nerve here as I did last December by observing that for many decades the U.S. half-staffed the flag on a regular basis only once a year, on Memorial Day, in memory of all who died in the nation's wars, originally for the hundreds of thousands who died in the Civil War. And that for only a half-day each year.

In the past five years we have now added three all-day half-staffings. Disproportionate?

Joe McMillan, 19 May 2000