Robert Dornan: “I decided that although I got this time, from the Speaker, to honor our Americans that died over the longest period of…”

“I decided that although I got this time, from the Speaker, to honor our Americans that died over the longest period of any sea battle in history, Guadalcanal was 7 months of land and sea battles, but the battle of Okinawa, which began on April 1, 1945, 50 years ago, and reached a crescendo today after a slow beginning that persisted for over 87 days, with one of our Members who has served on both sides of the aisle, Bob Stump, a conservative Democrat, came here with me in our bicentennial year election, sworn in January 4, 1977, and after 6 years of seeing his party drift to the left, actually not 6 years, less than that, about half of that, he became a Republican, and now is the No. 2 Republican in seniority on the National Security Committee, formerly the Armed Services Committee. Bob Stump was a young 18-year-old sailor--he had joined at 16--in that battle of Okinawa, and he saw many sailors burned to death before his eyes in the fuel spread across the seas, watched some of the 34 ships that we lost sunk, and I will come back in May and do a full hour on the battle of Okinawa.”