History
The land in which the cemetery is located was under the jurisdiction of the United States Navy since 1898, when Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States as a consequence of the treaties signed which officially ended the Spanish–American War. The area was used as a machine gun firing range during World War II.
The Government of the United States decided that the site, which is located in Bayamon and is approximately 13 miles from San Juan, would be suitable for the construction of a new cemetery. The land was transferred to the stewardship of the United States Department of the Army and the private firm of Font & Montilla was contracted to build the cemetery.
The cemetery was dedicated on Veterans Day in 1949, in a ceremony attended by Luis Muñoz Marín, the Governor of Puerto Rico, and Major General Herman Feldman, the Quartermaster of the U.S. Army. The cemetery has become a shrine to the Puerto Rican veterans who have served in the United States military and those who perished while on active duty. In 1962, the remains of those interred on all other five military cemeteries on the island were transferred there.
The cemetery has the only Memorial Program Service Marker Processing Center site located in a national cemetery and outside of the United States. The Puerto Rico National Cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 26, 1983.
Read more about this topic: Puerto Rico National Cemetery
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To summarize the contentions of this paper then. Firstly, the phrase ‘the meaning of a word’ is a spurious phrase. Secondly and consequently, a re-examination is needed of phrases like the two which I discuss, ‘being a part of the meaning of’ and ‘having the same meaning.’ On these matters, dogmatists require prodding: although history indeed suggests that it may sometimes be better to let sleeping dogmatists lie.”
—J.L. (John Langshaw)
“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)