WEATHER UPDATE: Hoboken Event Will Commemorate 100th Anniversary of U.S. Entry Into WWI

Update: Due to a forecast of heavy rain, the county and city are moving the WWI Centennial Commemoration to Wednesday, April 26, at noon. Other details remain the same. There is an additional rain date of April 27. Our original article is below.

From Hudson County Office of Veteran Affairs, Hudson County History Advocates, City of Hoboken: On Thursday, April 6, at 12 pm, the public is invited to join Hudson County and Hoboken officials, along with Hoboken High School’s band and chorus and the Hudson County Sheriff’s Color Guard, for a ceremony commemorating the centennial of the United States’ declaration of war on Germany. The ceremony will take place, rain or shine, on Pier A Park at Sinatra Drive by the WWI Memorial, which was dedicated in 1925 to the “valiant American Expeditionary Forces who embarked from this port to participate in the World War 1917 - 1918.”

Organized by the Hudson County Executive’s Office of Veterans’ Affairs, Hudson County History Advocates and the City of Hoboken, the ceremony will feature special guests Hudson County Freeholder Anthony Romano, Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer, Hoboken Historical Museum Director Bob Foster and veterans Jack O’Brien and Vinnie Wassman. O’Brien, a veteran of WWII and the son of a WWI veteran, will play patriotic tunes on a fife. Wassman, who served in both WWII and the Korean War, will recite John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields.” The Hoboken High School Band and Chorus will perform songs associated with “The Great War.”

According to event organizers:

"On April 6, 1917, the U.S. Government officially declared war on Germany; among its first official acts was the seizure of Hoboken’s German-owned shipping piers, which were soon converted into the port of embarkation for the U.S. Expeditionary Forces. Between spring 1917 and fall 1918, two million American servicemen passed through Hoboken on their way to and from Europe. Nine months earlier, on July 30, 1916, Jersey City was rocked by one of the most audacious acts of foreign espionage on U.S. soil, the explosion of an arms depot at Black Tom Island, in the Hudson River. The blast shattered windows for miles around.

"In May 1917, Congress passed the Selective Service Act, requiring American men ages 21 – 30 to register for the draft. By war’s end 24 million Americans had registered. Hoboken City Clerk James Farina will display Hoboken’s original 1917 Selective Service draft registration ledger.

"Hoboken was one of the most German cities in New Jersey, with nearly 26 percent of its 70,000 residents being either German-born or the children of German immigrants. All German-born residents were required to register as “enemy aliens,” and many lost their jobs, homes, and businesses. Some were interned on Ellis Island during the war. To learn more about Hoboken and the Great War, click here."

The Hoboken Historical Museum has been marking the centennial with a lecture series and a newly launched reading discussion group. The group is reading a collection of writings about and from the WWI period, and will gather for its first discussion at the Hoboken Historical Museum, 1301 Hudson St., at 5:30 pm on Sunday, April 23, after the next lecture.

To download the reader, click here. To download the proposed reading list, click here.

The remaining lectures will take place on:

• April 23, 4 pm: “A Seaport at War with Itself: Germans, Irish, Jews, Italians and African Americans in Wartime Greater New York,” by Steven H. Jaffe, author of New York at War: Four Centuries of Combat, Fear, and Intrigue in Gotham (Basic Books, 2012)
• May 7, 4 pm: “Heaven, Hell, or Hoboken: The U.S. Army Port of Embarkation in Hoboken During World War I,” by Mark Van Ellis, PhD, Professor of History, Queensborough Community College, and author of America and World War I: A Traveler’s Guide (Interlink Books, 2014).

On August 6, 2017, the Museum will open a new exhibition, “World War I Centennial: Heaven, Hell or Hoboken,” named for the rallying cry made famous by General John Pershing.

Photo courtesy of Hudson County Office of Veteran Affairs, Hudson County History Advocates, City of Hoboken