Description
Following the 2004 establishment of the World War II memorial in Washington DC, itself a product of the collective re-commemoration of the so-called ‘Greatest Generation’ of WWII veterans in the US, nonprofits began the practice of ‘Honor flights’. These flights transport US veterans of the Second World War to Washington DC to visit the memorial and other memorials, meet with Congressional members, and return to their local airports to great fanfare and celebration.
The practice has evolved to incorporate Korean War and now Vietnam War veterans. As honor flights include much more than the veterans themselves, and as it has become an affectively-charged festival for local communities to ‘honor’ their veterans during a period of unresolved wartime, I articulate the Honor Flight as both a treatment for but also a symptom of US ontological insecurity in the 21st Century. It is a practice that is celebratory, but also involves a broader politics of exclusion and erasure. As it moves from the veterans as subjects to the veterans as objects, as it moves from the presentation of the veterans to the honor flight’s re- presentation by local media, bystanders, and viewers, honor flights implicate and involve more than just the veterans themselves.
