including their spouses and minor children. Eligibility for burial in the Battle Monuments cemeteries is closed except for cases previously mentioned. The Veterans Administration usually restricts eligibility to veterans who die in VA facilities or in the vicinity thereof and whose bodies are unclaimed. Veterans' widows and children may be included under certain circumstances.

Although eligibility for burial in Federally-operated cemeteries legally extends to approximately 26 million living ex-servicemen, in practice, eligibility is limited by the restricted availability of space and by the geographical distribution of the cemeteries. In fiscal years 1963-65, approximately fifteen percent of all veterans who died were buried in Federal cemeteries. However, of those who died within 100 miles of a national cemetery in 1963, approximately 50 percent were buried in a Federal cemetery. Thus, opportunity to exercise the benefit is unequal and will become more so as cemeteries are filled. If the rate of burial in national cemeteries should continue as in fiscal years 1963-65, all developed gravesites will be filled by 1974 and the now undeveloped acreage would be exhausted before the year 2000. But the 1963-65 rate cannot be maintained because of the imminent closing of some cemeteries, while others will continue in operation many years beyond the year 2000.

The present jurisdictional arrangements involve four agencies of the government only one of which, the Battle Monuments Commission, has a primary mission dealing with cemetery management. Proposals have been and continue to be made that the four systems be merged under a single management. To the Commission, the Veterans Administration, which is organized to administer the affairs of veterans, is the most logical choice for administering cemeterial activities related to the interment of veterans.

The Commission is pleased to note that on October 20, 1967, the House of Representatives transferred oversight of all Federal cemeteries where veterans are, or may be, buried, in this country and abroad, from the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs to the Veterans' Affairs Committee, with the exception of those few national cemeteries administered by the Secretary of the Interior as part of the National Park System. The Commission believes that the oversight of veterans cemeteries by the same Congressional body which deals with all other veterans legislative matters is distinctly a forward step.

The Commission fully endorses the President's message of January 30, 1968, and believes that the recommendations contained herein fulfill the President's request for positive proposals to assure that veterans have an opportunity to be buried in a national cemetery near their home. The Commission also realizes that the question of entitlement for a cemetery plot cannot be isolated completely from the question of the current burial allowance. The Commission firmly believes that the existence of veterans burial allowances should not be compromised by the existence of any other burial or death benefit, public or private.

While recognizing the progress that has been made, the Commission makes the following recommendations:

(1) that the entire Federal cemetery function, with exception of the Department of Interior cemeteries, be reassigned to the Veterans Administration;

(2) that, without delay, the Administrator of Veterans Affairs conduct a study on methods of providing burial grounds for all veterans convenient to their homes;

(3) that the Administrator establish uniform criteria for eligibility for burial in the Federal cemetery system;

(4) that Arlington National Cemetery be reopened to all eligible veterans until it is completely filled;

(5) that the burial allowance for veterans be increased to $400, $100 of which shall be reserved for payment toward a gravesite for those not buried in national cemeteries;

(6) that the burial allowance not be denied to any veteran because of the existence of any other burial or death benefit, public or private.

Mr. TEAGUE of Texas. The first witness this morning will be Mr. Charles Mattingly, assistant director, National Legislative Commission. Chuck are you going to introduce somebody else?

Mr. MATTINGLY. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Teague, members of this distinguished special subcommittee, before introducing our witness I would like to introduce Mr. Pete Toloczko, assistant director for claims of our Rehabilitation

Commission and Bernard A. Nolan, assistant director for program management.

Mr. Chairman, I thank you on behalf of the American Legion for holding these hearings on a problem of many years standing our national cemeteries system. The American Legion was much encouraged during the first session of the 90th Congress when you sponsored and obtained approval of House Resolution 241 changing the rules of the House to vest legislative oversight of all national cemeteries with the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

We believe this was the first logical step to permit a thorough study of this problem. These hearings today are the next logical step toward solving the problem. The American Legion is grateful to you and the members of your distinguished subcommittee for this opportunity to make the views of our organization known on this subject.

Our witness this morning, Mr. Chairman, is no stranger to you nor to the members of your subcommittee. However, this is the first time that he has appeared before you in his new capacity as director of our National Rehabilitation Commission. Mr. Chairman, Edward H. Golembieski.

STATEMENT BY EDWARD H. GOLEMBIESKI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL REHABILITATION COMMISSION, THE AMERICAN LEGION, BEFORE THE SPECIAL SUBCOMMITTEE ON CEMETERIES, HOUSE COMMITTEE ON VETERANS' AFFAIRS

Mr. GOLEMBIESKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman and members of the special subcommittee, we appreciate this opportunity to appear before you to speak on a matter of continued and increasing concern to the American Legion-the inadequacy of our national cemetery system to provide a sufficient number of burial sites for those who have earned the privilege of interment

therein.

The present situation is the result of a policy of the Executive Office of the President that existed prior to January 30, 1968, whereby expansion and development of the cemetery system was discouraged and opposed.

Our unique and impressive system inadequate though it may be to meet current and future needs-is an outgrowth of the Civil War. As casualties occurred in its early months, military and local cemeteries were used, whenever practicable, for the burial of the war dead.

In addition, a general order published in 1862 required commanders. of troops to lay off plots of suitable ground near every battlefield for the burial of the battlefield dead. That same year, the national cemetery system was established, when Congress authorized the President of the United States to purchase cemetery grounds for the burial of soldiers who died in the service of their country.

By the end of 1862, 13 cemeteries had been established. In the next 2 years, the number was increased to 22. Since, from the beginning, they were established for the burial of battlefield casualties, these early cemeteries varied in size, and their distribution, geographically, was unequal.

Subsequent to the Civil War, newly created cemeteries followed, to a great extent, the westward movement of the Nation's frontiers.

Through 1899, the Federal Government had established 81 national cemeteries. Notwithstanding the ever-increasing number of those eligible for burial in these cemeteries between that date and 1950 only 17 additional cemeteries were established.

Although initial eligibility for burial in these cemeteries was limited to those who fell in battle or who died of a disease or injury in the field and in military hospitals, gradually, over the years following the Civil War, eligibility for burial in them was extended either by legislation or regulation to additional categories of persons.

Eligibility criteria were last liberalized by the act of September 14, 1959. In general, the following persons are now eligible for burial in national cemeteries:

(1) Any member or former member of the Armed Forces who served on active duty-other than for training-and whose last such service terminated honorably.

(2) Any member of a Reserve component of the Armed Forces, and any member of the Army National Guard or the Air National Guard, whose death occurs under honorable conditions while he is

(a) on active duty for training, or performing authorized full-time service;

(b) performing authorized travel to or from that duty or service; (c) on authorized inactive duty training, including training performed as a member of the Army National Guard or the Air National Guard: or

(d) hospitalized or undergoing treatment, at the expense of the United States, for injury or disease contracted or incurred under honorable conditions while he is on that duty or service; performing that travel or inactive duty training; or undergoing that hospitalization or treatment at the expense of the United States.

(3) Any member of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps of the Army, Navy, or Air Force whose death occurs under honorable conditions while he is

(a) attending an authorized training camp or on an authorized practice cruise;

(b) performing authorized travel to or from that camp or cruise; or (c) hospitalized or undergoing treatment, at the expense of the United States, for injury or disease contracted or incurred under honorable conditions while he is attending that camp or on that cruise; performing that travel; or undergoing that hospitalization or treatment, at the expense of the United States.

(4) Any citizen of the United States who, during any war in which the United States is or has been engaged, served in the Armed Forces of any government allied with the United States during that war, and whose last such service terminated honorably.

(5) The wife, husband, surviving spouse, minor child, and, in the discretion of the Secretary of the Army, unmarried adult child of any of the persons listed in the first four categories above.

Although the number of those with eligible military or naval service has risen following the Civil War from 2.2 million to better than 26 million at the present time, excluding those who have deceased in the interim, it is evident from the foregoing historical development and the enlargement of the list of those eligible for burial in them, that

the national cemetery system did not develop in an orderly or planned

manner.

Neither Congress nor responsible Federal Government officials foresaw nor anticipated that the right of burial would accrue to everyone who served honorably in the Armed Forces either in time of war or in time of peace; they did not assess the effect of available burial sites of those legislative or administrative actions that enlarged on the categories of those eligible for burial; and they did not plan on a continuing basis for facilities and resources needed to meet the additional demand that would be made of the existing national cemetery system for burial sites.

Neither did they foresee the problems that would arise because of the changing geographical disposition of those elgible for the honor and privilege who now are too far removed from a national cemetery to take advantage of the privilege for burial therein from the standpoint of economic convenience.

Possibly the nearest realistic assessment of a needed national cemetery system was made in 1947 by the Department of the Army. This study recognized the fact that cemetery locations, with some exceptions, were haphazard and were selected solely to secure and protect and maintain the graves of those already dead and without thought of future interments from the standpoint of location and accessibility. It took recognition, too, of the fact that 20 States lacked a national cemetery. In addition, the study said their size and location was a negative answer to the thousands of veterans families who were offered the privilege of burial in a national cemetery of their loved ones.

In its study, the Department of the Army emphasized its merits by drawing attention to the following facts:

(a) The United States was the first nation that had assumed the responsibility to collect the remains of its deceased soldiers and sailors and bury them in national cemeteries established as their final resting places, and thereafter provide for their perpetual care and maintenance.

(b) The national cemetery plan, which the Congress in its wisdom has extended to permit burial of members of the Armed Forces who may die after their honorable discharge from the service, has not only given deserved recognition to veterans after death, but has been most economical in its administration.

(c) There is something about a national cemetery set aside by the Government exclusively for the burial of men who died in battle or who served in the Armed Forces during a war which has a patriotic appeal to every citizen of our Nation.

The study, cognizant of the steady increase in the death rate of veterans, suggested the addition of 79 national cemeteries to the then existing system, as well as the expension of 13. In recommending these additions and expansions, the study said:

The total population of the suggested new areas is 26.2 million. To these can be added the population of those cities where national cemeteries are now located and are continued in this study.

At that time, nearly one-fourth of the population of the United States would have had direct access to our national cemeteries, within or just beyond the corporate limits of the suggested or established locations. It was estimated that within 50 miles from these 89 cities,

approximately 60 percent of the veteran population then resided, and that 75 percent of the population would be found within a radius of 100 miles from them.

Thus, on or about the end of World War II, the Department of the Army was making a meaningful approach to the problem of making our national cemetery system one that would be responsive to our growing eligible veteran population and their dependents eligible for burial therein.

Whether it was because of the experience gained from the repatriation of our overseas World War II dead, or for reasons of national economy, no action was taken to effect the expansion in the cemetery system recommended by the 1947 study.

In 1947, cost estimates of the 79 cemetery expansions were approximately $123 million. A less ambitious program proposed in 1961 was conservatively priced at over $2 billion.

According to some discussions, the bulk of this money would have been used to purchase expensive lands near urban areas were existing national cemeteries are already surrounded by high-rise apartments, or valuable commercial property. Little of this cost would be attributable to development of the site, such as drainage, landscaping, and cemetery layout.

Although the National Cemeteries Act of 1948 codified the eligibility requirements for burial, and left all decisions on expansion to the Secretary of the Army, the Secretary assumed the position that major additions to the system were matters of public policy to be decided by the Congress.

Finally, the President announced the policy, on February 12, 1962, to interested committees on Congress, heads of Government agencies, and others, that cash burial benefits, such as those payable by the Veterans' Administration and the Social Security Administration, were preferable to the furnishing of interment facilities by the Federal Government. From that date until January 30, 1968, it was the adamant policy of the Bureau of the Budget and the Executive Office of the President that it favored, with the exclusion of Arlington National Cemetery, the phaseout of national cemeteries.

As you know, Mr. Chairman, this policy received a sudden reversal when the President, in his message of January 30, 1968, on America's servicemen and veterans, announced

Every veteran who wants it-those who risked their lives at Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima and the DMZ--should have the right to burial in a national cemetery situation reasonably close to his home. I have asked the Administrator of Veterans Affairs to make certain that the recommendations of the (Veterans Advisory) Commission include proposals to assure this right in a meaningful sense.

Parenthetically, Mr. Chairman, I think they should have mentioned Pork Chop Hill because the veteran is deserving of burial in these cemeteries.

Mr. Chairman, it is the position of the American Legion that the Congress of the United States has already developed and determined through an accumulation of laws of more than a century a national policy on the privilege of burial in a national cemetery.

We seek to have that policy reaffirmed by the Congress in such manner as will assure that the national cemetery system will be continued and expanded as needed in an orderly and systematic fashion and in