As a taste of a post I am working on, I am researching American Military Cemeteries, specifically those in the United States (U. S.) and its sixteen (16) territories. I am not counting the cemeteries that are on foreign and managed by the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC). In the U. S., there are four federal agencies who manage federal military cemeteries, memorials, and monuments within the U. S. and its territories: the Veterans Administration (V. A.), the Army, National Parks Service (NPS), and the ABMC (which only has a few memorials and monuments within the U. S.). I am not sure how soon I will be able to finish the post as it’s taking a while to compile the list and compare the ranking between the four (4) agencies.
The post came up as a result of several bloggers who were talking about the largest American military cemetery or the two largest American military cemeteries. I already knew if somebody asked me to name the two largest American cemeteries in the U. S. or its territories, I knew there were several answers that could be correct. The answers may surprise you. Here’s part of my comment in the post I am working on:
If you were to ask me to name the two largest American military cemeteries that were in the United States, I would ask you to clarify your question with at least the following categories: V. A. (What Are V. A. Cemeteries?) or non-V. A. (while most federal U. S. military cemeteries in the U. S. are run by the V. A., there are a couple of exceptions and that’s not including any state or local military cemeteries that are not part of the federal V. A. cemetery system or any of the other three groups); by land area or number of burials (burials including burials, entombments, inurnments, scattering of ashes, etc.); by number of burials per year; and probably a few other categories that I am missing.
From my research so far, I don’t see a listing where the above four groups: V. A., Army, NPS, and ABMC are categorized together that would easily allow me to figure out which were the two largest by each of the above questions. The burial question would be the most difficult as most of the open cemeteries have funerals on a regular basis. In terms of land area, that would be somewhat easy although given the total number of federal military cemeteries involved and the occasional land acquisitions to enlarge some of them, it would take a fair amount of time. That’s not counting the state and local military cemeteries. I don’t think most of those would fall within the Top Ten for any of the above questions.
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