On June 6, 1944, the Allied nations stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, to push out the Germans.
On Thursday, U.S. President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron participated in commemoration ceremonies that included some of the last remaining veterans who took part in that effort to end World War II.
A total of 4,414 Allied troops were killed on D-Day itself, including 2,501 Americans, according to The Associated Press.
In the ensuing Battle of Normandy, 73,000 Allied forces were killed and 153,000 wounded. The exact German casualties aren’t known, but historians estimate between 4,000 and 9,000 men were killed, wounded or missing during the D-Day invasion alone. About 22,000 German soldiers are among the many buried around Normandy.
The Conversation talked to Russell Hart, a war historian and Hawaiʻi Pacific University professor, to give us context on the 80th anniversary. His great-uncle was a paratrooper in the war.
"I think this is a bittersweet celebration because I think this probably may well be the last anniversary where veterans of the campaign will attend," he said. "They're all in their late 90s, or even, we have some over 100 and it's probably unlikely that any of them, maybe just a very few of them, are going to be alive in five years for the 85th anniversary."
"We'll see a passing of a generation, and, with that, how society will view the legacy of the Normandy campaign, and the campaign itself, may well shift in the next couple of decades as that wartime generation passes," Hart added.
He wrote a book about the war, "Clash of Arms: How the Allies Won in Normandy."
Buried at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial are five soldiers from Hawaiʻi: 1st Sgt. William Andersen, Tech. Sgt. Clarence Campbell, Staff Sgt. John Kupa, Pvt. Henry Saaga, and 1st Lt. Herbert Truslow.
The Conversation also aired an interview with William “Bill” Paty, a Hawaiʻi airman who parachuted into the battlefield at Normandy. Paty was featured on PBS Hawaiʻi's Long Story Short with Leslie Wilcox in 2016 and recalled his experiences as a prisoner of war.
This interview aired on The Conversation on June 6, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
