American Battle Monuments Commission ABMC

After World War I, tens of thousands of American dead remained buried in Europe, and Congress created the American Battle Monuments Commission in a law signed on March 4, 1923, to build and maintain permanent cemeteries and memorials abroad. General John J. Pershing, who had commanded U.S. forces in the war, served as its first chairman. The Commission is a small independent agency whose members, often veterans, are appointed by the President, and whose day-to-day work is run by a Secretary.

The ABMC administers 26 permanent American military cemeteries in other countries, most of them in France, Belgium, and elsewhere in Europe, along with a larger number of memorials, monuments, and markers on several continents. Among them are the Normandy American Cemetery above Omaha Beach and the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines, the largest. More than 200,000 service members are buried or commemorated on the walls of the missing at its sites. Each cemetery is on land granted by the host nation in perpetuity, free of charge or taxes.

The Commission's sites are visited by millions of people each year and serve as settings for anniversary ceremonies attended by presidents and foreign leaders, such as the commemorations of D-Day. It also builds new memorials when Congress directs, maintains a database of those buried and memorialized, and runs education programs. Because it is small and largely uncontroversial, its main challenges are maintaining aging sites and telling the stories of those buried there to new generations.