Dedication of the “Saipan Time Capsule”
At the American Memorial Park, Garapan, Saipan
After being positioned below ground in a water proof container, the Saipan Time Capsule will remain undisturbed for the next four generations not to be opened until the 160th anniversary of the invasion. The messages and memorabilia it contains are left behind for those of a future time.
To provide a historical military marker 160 years is as distant in time from the date of the invasion in 1944 and the date the capsule will be recovered as the Saipan invasion is distant from the year 1784 when the Treaty of Paris was signed officially terminating the Revolutionary War with Great Britain.
When the contents of the capsule are recovered and opened for examination on that distant day hopefully, it will be re-dedicated and returned to its resting place for discovery at a still more distant future time. One can only wonder what the island and the world will be like when the contents of the capsule are again seen and studied by people of the distant future. Someone once said, “time passes” but for this capsule, “time will remain we will pass” .
For the old soldier’s nightmares and memories of long lost friends and of a youth foregone -- Soon no living memory will bear witness to the events that occurred here sixty years ago. The faint echoes of faded memories of shells exploding and the pungent smell of cordite grow ever dim. For many the eye of their personal storm which broke on these shores in 1944 will sleep within this Time Capsule for others they will rest elsewhere.
From this moment a setting sun will measure the cadence at the end of each day and we know that no man who crossed those beaches or flew the long flight so many years ago will mark its recovery.
Author Thomas Carlyle wrote: “The true past departs not; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die; but all is still here and recognized or not lives and works through endless changes. “
With this Time capsule we praise the past; for the old to extol the days of their youth;
the weak, the time of their strength;
the sick, the season of their vigor;
and the disappointed, the spring of their hopes.
Time has no harbor, it has no shore, like the ocean tide it rushes on and carries us with it. Time and tide waits for no-one. Leaving us to enjoy each fugitive hour.
Your yesterdays have returned to an island long locked in memories of a place where youth left.
The lengthening shadows on hallowed ground concealing its contents as dedicated on this day will remind us of the dark shadow of time on our own lives as marked by the dusk of each passing day.
Protected from the ravenous vultures of the air and sea in this casket of memories, we know life’s message that time flies and draws us with it. The moment in which we speak is already far from us.
Someone once observed: “ Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future has not yet come, and the present becomes the past even while we attempt to define it, and, like the flash of lightning, it exists and expires” .
Some 50 years before the birth of Christ, the Roman poet Horace said: “Time will bring to light what ever is hidden; it will conceal and cover up what is now shining”
Author Dava Sobel has observed: “even when the bulb of the hourglass shatters; when darkness withholds the shadow from the sundial; when the mainspring winds down so far that the clock hands hold still as death; time itself keeps on. “
Since time sets its own tempo, like a heartbeat or an ebb tide, time capsules don’t really keep time. They just hold a piece of it for reflection by faded memories.
And time capsules only hold small pieces of life’s memories evidence of life’s moments that time has passed. Almost without notice the years will slip away until this capsule is recovered, slip away just as it has from that time in this place 60 years ago.
So as we leave this spot and the names of those forever etched on the Circle of Honor --
Try not to be dismayed at good-byes;
A farewell is necessary before anyone can meet again;
And meeting again, whether after moments or lifetimes before or after wars be it over the horizon and beyond the stars, is always hoped for among lost friends. “
When memories wane --and trumpets fade, Let it be said --- Here a difference was made.