My Uncle, Civil Rights Hero

My uncle, a retired United States Marine Corps colonel, was buried last month at Arlington Cemetery with full military honors: five white horses pulling a caisson, Marine Corps band, Marines marching with rifles, a twenty-one gun salute, a flag-folding ritual and presentation to the widow - it was so impressive that before we knew what was going on, we wondered whether we had bumped up against another one of the thirty funerals held there each day. But it was all for my uncle.

After the graveside service, we conversed over small plates of food at the Fort Myer Officers' Club, where my cousin, his son, an Assistant U.S. Attorney, talked about how he fought in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam; how he landed a jet on an aircraft carrier over 400 times (138 of those in the dark); how he flew upside down over the treetops, craning his head backwards to watch the earth rush past, purely for the delight of it.

Another cousin, an oncologist and his younger daughter, talked about how he was a medical hero in that he put his life on the line to save his infant son by undergoing a new and risky surgical procedure. The child died, but the procedure would later prove to have paved the way for the very first open heart surgery. In the intimate and personal act of putting himself in danger for the sake of his child, he directly advanced the state of cardiac medicine.

My uncle is a hero to me for yet another reason. After World War II, people of Japanese descent met with prejudice and discrimination. As late as 1958, 96 percent of whites disapproved of interracial marriage, or miscegenation. And while there were no federal anti-miscegenation laws, 30 out of 48 states had their own. Virginia, where my uncle was stationed, had some of the strictest such laws, barring not just blacks but any non-whites from marrying whites.

My uncle, a big white Marine, married my mother's sister, a Japanese American, though they had to leave Virginia to seal the deal. In another intensely simple and personal act - loving the woman who became his wife - he may not have changed any laws, but he took a stand for the right to marry the one he loved and thus willfully threw himself into the unstoppable tide of civil rights progress. Obviously he loved her, but it took courage and a conviction of what was right to marry her.

Virginia would be one of the last states to remove its anti-miscegenation laws from its books with the 1967 Supreme Court decision of Loving v. Virginia. (South Carolina didn't remove their defunct laws until 1998, and Alabama took until 2000.)

Fast forward to the present: a sizable (though steadily decreasing) portion of Americans oppose same-sex marriage. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), prohibiting the marriage of any same-sex couple, was signed into Federal law during the Clinton (I) Administration. Thirty-six states have enacted their own legislation prohibiting same-sex marriage, and 26 have added such amendments to their state constitutions. Virginia, where I live, has some of the most draconian laws on the books, prohibiting not only marriage, but civil unions, domestic partnerships, and all contracts purporting to provide the same benefits as marriage, between two people of the same sex.

It may take 50 more years or maybe even 100, but eventually same-sex marriage will be as common - and as legal - as interracial marriage is today. I consider my uncle part of the reason for the change in interracial marriage, and I look to him for inspiration to continue the fight for my civil rights.