Memorial Day (Miami, Plantation, Homestead: how much, homes, neighborhood)

[AnnRyan]

So, I went to a memorial day ceremony at Woodlawn Cementary today. A lovely ceremony, but with an ugly story.

Are you familiar with the story of the hurricane of 1935? 257 veterans died in the Florida keys, they were there building the overseas highway.

Here's a youtube on the fact that the fatalities were buried in a mass grave in Miami.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ADNIYGbDmU

I've reached out to the historian to hear if there's anything being done.

[pslhomie]

What would you have had them do? You have to consider the time and what resources were available. That may have been the only practical thing they could have done. Would you rather have bloating bodies laying everywhere? How about starting a fund to dig this grave up, identify everyone and move them? A mass grave does not have to mean an atrocity. After all the U.S.S. Arizona is a mass grave.

[perry335654]

Yea, I remember that tragic event or I should say reading about it. If one can realize being caught out in a storm like Hurricane Andrews, no protection from the high winds and rushing high waters along with possible tornadoes, these men did not have a chance.
The major thing citizens have today is warnings about hurricanes and where they can evacuate, they had none back then, that was some horrible experience to endure.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4SV_x_yblk

[perry335654]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4SV_x_yblk

[AnnRyan]

I do think that the veterans involved (and most were veterans of WWI) do deserve to have their names on a marker. I doubt there is anything left to identify or rebury at this point.

[perry335654]

Originally Posted by AnnRyan

I do think that the veterans involved (and most were veterans of WWI) do deserve to have their names on a marker. I doubt there is anything left to identify or rebury at this point.

I think I saw a grave marker with the last name Ryan at about the 1:10 mark. Yea 81 years is a lot of time passed to identify human remains plus the cost factor of doing it.


The guy stated it was an overseas highway, it was not, it was an overseas railway back then .

[straight shooter]

I don't know how much of the story is accurate. I don't think they were not all buried in Miami. It is my understanding that many were piled up in wooden boxes a set ablaze somewhere on Plantation Key. Some were boxed and later buried in Miami but I don't think all 257 were buried in Miami but I could be wrong. Train travel to and from Miami after the hurricane was non-existant. The railroad was severely damaged. It took weeks for the first train to arrive with help. The ones buried in Miami technically were not buried in a mass grave they were buried in individual coffins but without markers since they were not individually identified. The ones in Islamorada were buried in a mass grave after having been partially cremated.

[StarfishKey]

The bodies were cremated in the Keys because disease was a major factor. The Keys were very isolated, there was no A/C, and the hurricane wiped out the rail connection. The information regarding the coming hurricane arrived a day too late - they DID have reports, but they were not fast, and the train that was the main source of communication was the thing that was wiped out when the storm hit. I believe the storm had hit Cuba first, and as Cuba was a major source of trade with the Keys at the time, the message was trying to get over from there to the Keys, but the storm was between them in the ocean and could not easily be passed because it was a Cat 5. Regardless, they knew a storm was likely coming, if not the magnitude, and so an evacuation train was sent from Homestead down the railroad to save all the hundreds of people living in the Middle and Upper Keys who were stuck. But because of the Labor Day holiday, and the delay of accurate weather info, the train was sent a day too late. The storm made direct landfall on Islamorada, ironically just as the train was heading in, derailing the train killing a lot of people, and destroying the railroad that took such an enormous amount of time and money to build. Nearly everyone living in the area at the time was killed, as were the people on the train.

The bodies were mostly unrecognizable and identifiable by the time anyone could be gathered to do the burying (remember, the storm completely wiped out Islamorada, and did serious damage to all surrounding areas). They knew that many were soldiers, and many were not, so they held a military funeral for ALL the bodies, and then cremated them to prevent an outbreak of disease. They supposedly put some of the cremated remains in the memorial marker that is on Islamorada to this day.

Many others sacrificed in that war, not just vets. All the families, young and old, infirmed and disabled, all the women who had to run things while the "able-bodied" men were away... all of them deserved equal respect for what they went through during that war, and how they perished after. The majority of people in the Keys at the time of that hurricane had lived through WWI and contributed to that effort one way or another, whether abroad or at home. So I don't really understand the outrage on behalf of the vets, as their female and "non-able-bodied" male counterparts gave just as much with what they were legally allowed to do. It is a shame that any of them perished. What I think is the worse tragedy is how many railroad workers perished in the hurricane, in part due to seriously substandard barracks that were not build for even a bad thunderstorm, when the islands had been hit with multiple major hurricanes all through the building of the railroad. The railroad itself was built to withstand massive force, and most of it actually survived the Labor Day Cat 5, but the workers were not even given buildings that would withstand a Cat 1 to live in. They worked in astoundingly difficult conditions, and for all their sacrifice, they were left very vulnerable.

There was bad feeling about that, afterward. But by then it was too late, the railroad was decimated and due to financial problems with the company (Flagler himself had already died), it was abandoned altogether and never repaired (a decision which even today causes issues as the bridge continues to crumble into the ocean below, causing a serious and expensive hazard).

For some more info: http://overseasrailroad.railfan.net/1935hurr.htm





Tragedies happen all over the world. There are mass graves all over this planet. The ocean itself is a mass grave. The World Trade Center site is a mass grave. The tsunamis in Japan and SE Asia have resulted in many mass graves. Turkey's terrible earthquakes have resulted in mass graves. There are mass graves of Native Americans all over this nation - one being on Key West, where the Calusa were forced against the sea and brutally slaughtered, some actually taking their chances to jump into the sea and attempting to make it all the way to Cuba. (Key West gets its name from this - Cayo Hueso, Island of Bones, because of the large number of bones there of the people who died in that last bloody battle simply for greed of land, who had no one able to bury them who cared enough to do so, despite them deserving recognition and burial as many as any other person.) The Plague in England also resulted in mass graves. Sometimes you just have to accept that disasters happen, and bury the dead as quickly as possible before the disease that their rapidly decaying bodies can spread kills a whole lot more people. When you are in a disaster, the main focus is on you not ending up in that mass grave yourself. The dead are already gone, and the living must fight for their chance to remain among the living. Memorials are not a priority in a crisis. But I think the Keys went out of their way to honor people even while in a crisis, to give a military burial even while many of the bodies included were not in the military, just to be sure all were covered.

You know what WAS shameful disrespect, though? The fact that many of the railroad workers were also vets, and were segregated into African-American-only battalions during the war. They risked life and sanity to fight for their country, and then came back to a nation that forced them back into segregated Jim Crow conditions. In Miami, they could not use ANY beaches. They had a curfew, and had to carry ID to get permission to go home after 6PM, like apartheid in South Africa. They were only allowed to live in a small interior neighborhood of Miami, that had the worst views and the worst access, not to mention very few winds to cool down with. They fought for "freedom" abroad, but were treated as less than human when they came home. That injustice was a lot of what led to the Civil Rights Movt., which didn't actually change laws in SFL until the mid 60s and later. If anything was disrespect of veterans, segregation and Jim Crow laws were. Those men had to go out to work in the Keys in the middle of nowhere, in barracks that didn't even provide basic island shelter, because as Black male vets they had no real opportunities for steady pay on the mainland. Many also felt that the Keys, as a frontier area, would afford them more rights and a bit more respect than staying in Miami or elsewhere. This was somewhat true, but they were still treated as second-class citizens in the Keys - which was a bit better than the chattle class that they held in Miami.

[AnnRyan]

Originally Posted by perry335654

I think I saw a grave marker with the last name Ryan at about the 1:10 mark. Yea 81 years is a lot of time passed to identify human remains plus the cost factor of doing it.


The guy stated it was an overseas highway, it was not, it was an overseas railway back then .

Since this was a scandal, there's actually reasonably accurate information.
History Of The Florida Keys Memorial
109 in the "FERA" at Woodlawn which I bet is the mass grave
15 more were put in private plots (inevitably those who had more money, AND could still be identified)
and yeah, 298 cremated in Islamorada.

I noticed the Ryan name on the marked grave as well, but I doubt it was anything more than a 3rd or 4th cousin at most. My grandfather served in an earlier war, and came home fine.

[AnnRyan]

Originally Posted by straight shooter

I don't know how much of the story is accurate. I don't think they were not all buried in Miami. It is my understanding that many were piled up in wooden boxes a set ablaze somewhere on Plantation Key. Some were boxed and later buried in Miami but I don't think all 257 were buried in Miami but I could be wrong. Train travel to and from Miami after the hurricane was non-existant. The railroad was severely damaged. It took weeks for the first train to arrive with help. The ones buried in Miami technically were not buried in a mass grave they were buried in individual coffins but without markers since they were not individually identified. The ones in Islamorada were buried in a mass grave after having been partially cremated.

They weren't ALL buried in Miami. 109 in the "Fera" (I'm assuming that's the mass grave) and 15 in individual plots in Woodlawn. Many cremated in Islamorada, and others buried elsewhere.
History Of The Florida Keys Memorial