Eleven O'Clock: Veterans Day on Day 42 of the Shutdown
At 11 a.m. Eastern today, at Arlington National Cemetery, the presidential wreath will be laid at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The 73rd National Veterans Day Observance begins at that exact hour.
The hour is not ceremony for its own sake. At 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918, the armistice took effect and the guns of the First World War fell silent. One hundred and eight years later, the country still stops at the same hour, first to remember that moment, then to honor everyone who has worn the uniform. Later this morning in New York, wreaths will be laid at the Eternal Light Flagstaff in Madison Square Park at 10:55. In Pacoima, in Los Angeles County, the San Fernando Valley parade steps off at 11:11 a.m. On the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the nation has pinned its remembrance to the numbers themselves.
A holiday for everyone who served
Veterans Day is often confused with Memorial Day in May. The distinction is simple. Memorial Day honors those who did not come home. Veterans Day honors everyone who served, including the roughly 17.59 million veterans still living among us. The holiday began as Armistice Day, proclaimed by President Wilson in 1919 and made a federal holiday in 1938. In 1954, President Eisenhower signed the law that struck the word Armistice and inserted Veterans, widening the day from the veterans of one war to the veterans of all wars. There was one detour. In 1968 the holiday was moved to a Monday in October to make a long weekend. States and veterans organizations objected, and in 1975 President Ford restored it to November 11, where it has stayed, observed on the day itself whatever the weekday. This year it falls on a Wednesday. There is no long weekend. The observance is on the day.
This year's observance carries one more layer. The year 2026 is the 250th anniversary of American independence. The White House issued its Veterans Day proclamation on November 10, and New York's Fifth Avenue parade has taken the nation's 250th birthday as one of its themes. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has reached a milestone of its own. The first unknown serviceman was buried there on November 11, 1921, one hundred and five years ago.
The honored are changing generations
The people being honored are changing, visibly and fast. By the VA's population model, about 17.59 million veterans are alive in the United States, of whom about 2.11 million, or 12 percent, are women. The World War II generation is nearly gone. Some 16 million Americans served in that war. About 45,418 are still living. Every Veterans Day, fewer of them can stand at the wreath laying in person. Meanwhile, veterans who served after September 11 now make up 26 percent of all veterans. The face of the word veteran is passing from our grandfathers' generation to our parents', our siblings', our own. That is GSM's first observation this year. The ritual has not changed, but the memory it guards is being handed from those who lived it to the whole of society, and the handover is on a shorter clock than most people realize.
Chinese American veterans: serving a country that would not yet claim them
For Chinese American readers, this day carries a second thread. When the Second World War began, there were only about 78,000 Chinese Americans on the U.S. mainland. As Congress recorded in the Chinese-American World War II Veteran Congressional Gold Medal Act of 2018, as many as 20,000 of them served, one in every five Chinese Americans, in every theater and every branch. About 40 percent of them were not United States citizens, because the exclusion-era laws denied citizenship to people of Chinese descent. They went to war for a country that would not yet claim them.
Among them was the only Chinese American to receive the Medal of Honor in that war, Army Captain Francis B. Wai. Formal recognition came more than seventy years later. The Gold Medal act was signed in December 2018, the award ceremony had to be held online in December 2020, and many veterans did not live to see it. The medal itself now rests with the Smithsonian Institution.
Recognition also grew at home, in the Chinatowns. Cathay Post 384 of the American Legion in San Francisco was founded in 1931, because Chinese American veterans of the First World War were not welcomed in other posts and built their own. It is the oldest predominantly Chinese American veterans post in the country, and it turned 95 this August. In New York's Chinatown, the Lt. B.R. Kim Lau Post 1291 was founded in 1945 by World War II veterans and named for a Chinese American bomber pilot killed over New Guinea. The Kimlau Memorial Arch the post raised at the entrance to Chinatown was unveiled in 1962 and designated a New York City landmark in 2021. Fang A. Wong, a past national commander of the American Legion, is a member of that post. Los Angeles Chinatown has its own Chinese American post, Post 628. On Veterans Day, these posts hold their ceremonies in their Chinatowns, the most concrete line between the Chinese American community and this holiday.
This year, the day comes with a vote tonight
Veterans Day 2026 falls on the 42nd day of the federal government shutdown. The wreaths will be laid and the parades will march, but the government that runs the nation's veterans programs woke up this morning, as of this writing, without a full-year budget. Two facts belong side by side. First, VA health care runs on advance appropriations, funded a year ahead, so VA hospitals have stayed open through the shutdown and care has not been interrupted. Second, the funding package the Senate passed 60 to 40 on Monday night carries full-year appropriations for three bills, and one of them is the veterans affairs and military construction bill. The House votes on it tonight. If it passes and the president signs it, the government reopens and the VA's full-year budget is settled with it.
That is GSM's second observation. The honoring happens at 11 a.m. The delivering happens in tonight's vote. Ceremony expresses gratitude. Appropriations decide whether that gratitude becomes, next year, a clinic room, a benefits check, a repaired national cemetery. The day is only complete when both are seen together.
Where to observe today, across the country and in Southern California
The national observance at Arlington begins at 11 a.m., is open to the public, and is carried live on the VA's official channels. The VA and the Veterans Day National Committee have designated 48 regional sites in 24 states this year, and local ceremonies in most places echo the Arlington hour.
New York's Fifth Avenue parade is the largest in the nation. It steps off at 12:30 p.m. from 26th Street and marches north, with more than 20,000 participants. This year's grand marshal is Suni Williams, a retired Navy officer and NASA astronaut.
Southern California offers plenty. Palm Springs holds its 29th annual parade at 3:30 p.m., from Ramon Road and Palm Canyon Drive, followed by a patriotic concert and fireworks. The city is a VA-designated regional site. San Diego's parade begins at 10 a.m. on Harbor Drive and this year marks the 35th anniversary of the Gulf War. The San Fernando Valley parade, the largest in Los Angeles County, steps off at 11:11 a.m. in Pacoima. Forest Lawn in the Hollywood Hills holds its ceremony at 11 a.m., and Burbank's 11 a.m. ceremony at the McCambridge Park War Memorial includes a flyover. Murrieta, in Riverside County, holds its 24th annual parade. The Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach admits veterans and active-duty service members free today. Check the organizer's same-day notice before heading out, as times and routes occasionally shift.
What is open, what is closed
Veterans Day is one of the eleven federal holidays. Federal offices are closed today. The Postal Service makes no regular deliveries and post office counters are closed, with regular service resuming November 12. The Federal Reserve is closed, and most bank branches follow it, though ATMs and mobile banking run as usual. The bond market is closed all day. The stock market, however, is open. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq trade on their normal schedules, the small oddity of this holiday. The government takes the day off. The market does not. School closures are set district by district. New York City public schools, for instance, are closed today. National parks waive entrance fees today for U.S. citizens and residents, and veterans and Gold Star families hold free lifetime passes in any case. Many restaurant chains offer free meals to veterans and service members today. The VA maintains a national list of Veterans Day discounts on its website. A military ID is generally required, and most offers are dine-in.
Back to eleven o'clock
At eleven o'clock in 1918, the guns stopped. At eleven o'clock in 2026, the wreath goes down at Arlington, the wreath goes down in New York, and across a continent in Pacoima, a parade takes its first step at 11:11. The country uses a single hour to tell itself that some debts cannot live only in history books.
For the Chinese American community, the sentence runs one step further. Of those 20,000 Chinese American soldiers, about 40 percent went to war without citizenship. Their medal waited more than seventy years. Their posts have kept watch in America's Chinatowns for a century. Remembrance was never only about thanks. It is about making sure recognition stops arriving late, so that when the next eleven o'clock comes, no one's story still needs to be rediscovered.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 配图：阿灵顿国家公墓无名战士墓前，一名老兵俯身安放花圈，身后坐着同行的老兵姐妹。她们是全美首个全女性「荣誉航班」（Honor Flight）老兵团，成员来自二战、朝鲜战争与越南战争年代。美国陆军官方照片，公共领域，经 Wikimedia Commons（2015年9月22日资料图）。 / Photo: A veteran lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery as fellow veterans look on. The group, the first all-female Honor Flight in the United States, brought together veterans of World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. U.S. Army photo, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (file photo, September 22, 2015).
