What Memorial Day Means to Me

Let me start by saying that I have not lost a loved one or family member in active military service. I know many who have. However, like so many people, I owe my very existence to those who served and who died in service to this nation and its values. For that, I am grateful and today, I honor their memory.

On a day like this, there are many stories. I’d like to share mine.

My Father

My father has been an employee of the US Department of the Army for over 40 years. First, as an active member of the US Army and, today as a civilian. My father worked for most of his career at Walter Reed Army Medical Center until its recent closure.

In 1968, my father graduated from the University of Connecticut when the war in Vietnam bitterly divided this nation. When many of his peers were burning their draft cards, my father, ever the contrarian, actively volunteered for service. Let’s just say my dad was unusual for his era. Then a Goldwater Republican, my dad was always the straightest of straight arrows. His biggest act of rebellion was growing a Marlboro Man mustache (there is photographic evidence of this) and smoking cigarettes. My dad really, really liked Richard Nixon and was bummed when he resigned. So, that's my dad in a nutshell.

The men in my father’s family were Army men that served during World War II. When the time came, my father enlisted in the Army as well, fully expecting to be sent to Vietnam. But he was not. Instead, he was assigned to active duty in South Korea. Why? Because my father is blind as a bat. I often joke that had his vision been better, I would have been born half-Vietnamese not half-Korean. It's only funny because it's true.

In South Korea, shortly after arriving, he met and married my mother.

My Mother

My mother was born in 1942. She was a child of the “police action” that divided her nation. My mother was just 8 years old when the Korean War broke out. Her memories were faded by time but her recollections were largely of hiding, of abject poverty, and of being terribly, painfully hungry on a daily basis. My mother’s family hails from Pohang, an important port city along the southeastern coast of the Korean peninsula. Because of its location Pohang was the site of some of the most intense fighting early in the war. Her family barely survived.

My story is simple. Had the US military not played a role in the war in Korea and had my father not been a member of the US Army assigned to protect South Korea, I quite literally would not exist. I owe my life to the US Army.

Returning to Korea

About 3 years ago I visited South Korea for the first time since leaving as an infant. I was 6 months old when I came to the United States. I was 40 years old when I returned, arriving there on a business trip to speak at a privacy conference in Seoul. Seoul is now a huge, sprawling, vibrant city. Certainly nothing like the city of my birth 40 years earlier. It wasn’t seeing Seoul or even the hospital I was born in that was the most emotional part of my trip. It was standing at the edge of the de-militarized zone along the 38th parallel, that was the single most haunting experience of that trip. It was one of the most moving experiences of my life.

As I visited the de-militarized zone, I was overcome with a profound and unexpected sadness. Standing along the border of one of the most digitally and industrially advanced nations in the world, you peer out across a thin strip of land filled with weird fake buildings and very real land mines, to an isolated, impoverished country where people struggle to eek out an existence. It’s chilling to walk through the train station built within the DMZ that stands ready, symbolically and optimistically, to someday transport people across the border. You look across the barbed wire and you are reminded that the basic human rights we take for granted in the US are a mere pipe dream to the people there. It's well-known that people in North Korea are afraid to even think disloyal thoughts, convinced their all-powerful leader can read their minds. How can such places exist in the world today? As Americans, it’s easy to take what we have for granted.

American Values and Freedom

Throughout my career at Yahoo!, and later at Google, I spent countless hours thinking about freedom of expression and about how global companies can set appropriate boundaries that are culturally sensitive to global audiences and yet are consistent with the corporate values inherent in being an unabashedly young, often idealistic, American company. This is no easy task. American companies, particularly American Internet companies, are often criticized abroad for exporting American values around the globe.

One such debate has centered around the so-called "right to be forgotten." This has made headlines recently. This is not about an individual's right to curate their online identity as they see fit, although it's often boiled down into that kind of a simple narrative. The question is really, should someone’s right to be forgotten trump my right to free speech and expression? The EU has made their position clear and their answer is yes. Here in the US we frequently take a different stance on which right trumps the other. Make no mistake – this is not simply about the Internet remembering things you would want it to forget. At its core, this is a debate about how far an American-based value and right, freedom of expression, extends globally. The debate is not as simple as it looks. It is, as they say, complicated. The implications are far-reaching. I don't think it would be an overstatement to say that this is a battle over the very soul of the Internet.

I’m not suggesting that American values are appropriate for everyone around the world, nor that US military power should be used to propagate them. But today, on Memorial Day, I am thinking a lot about the Americans who gave their lives so we could have the rights we so often take for granted that are embedded in those values. I am thinking about the people around the world who don’t have those rights and who may never have them. I am thinking about how lucky I am that the United States and the world intervened to protect South Korea so that the kind of tyranny (yes, tyranny) seen in North Korea is not the norm across the Korean peninsula. I am thinking how lucky I am that my father has crappy vision.

Gratitude

Today, and everyday, I am grateful for the US Army and the US Armed Forces. I am grateful for the privilege of growing up here. Today, and everyday, but especially today, I am grateful for everyone who has given their lives in service to this nation. Without them, I most certainly would not be here.

To those who served and died, and to their families that grieve their loss, thank you so very, very much for all your have given us. We don't take that for granted. I don't take it for granted.

Photo: Me, age 4, living off-base at Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, TX