The first observance of what came to be known as Memorial Day was on May 30, 1868, when a Civil War general. appeal to the Americans to commemorate the sacrifices of Union soldiers. It was originally called Decoration Day, for the practice of decorating graves with wreaths and flags. And there were many graves – more than 300,000 men had died on the Union sideand almost as many for the Federation. In general, most died on both sides of the Civil War than in every other US conflict through the Korean War, combined.
However, it didn’t take long before the memorial began to be overshadowed by celebrations. Within a year, the The New York Times commented the holiday would no longer be “holy” if parades and speeches were more important than the act of remembering the dead. Which is exactly what happened, especially after Congress in 1971 established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May, making it a perfect place to kick off summer, and increasingly a nod to the holiday’s original purpose.
The gap between those for whom Memorial Day is a time of remembrance versus three days of hot dogs and hamburgers is only likely to grow in the future, as veterans of previous wars pass and The divide between America’s volunteer military and its citizens is growing. Less than 1 percent of American adults serve in the military, and those who are still enlisting are increasingly dropping out a minority of regions and families with a history of military service. (You can include my family in that rarer number: My brother is a retired Army captain who served in Iraq.)
With ever-increasing military use – it’s over $1 trillion, according to one estimate – the footprint of the US military is not decreasing, but the number of those who will be called to give what Abraham Lincoln called “the final full measure of worship” is.
There is still an even greater gap placed on Memorial Day: It is among those who died as combatants (to use one of Pentagon provisions), and the largest number worldwide who have died not as participants in the war, but as its victims.
And this year, the gap is different. Memorial Day 2026 falls even as America is still mired in the war it helped start. The conflict with Iran it has killed thousands of people across the region in less than two months of fighting. Human Rights Activists News Agency recorded 1,701 Iranian civilian deathsmost of them were caused by US and Israeli airstrikes.
On the first day of the war, the US Tomahawk missile attack on Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in the province of Hormozgan in Iran they killed 156 people, including 120 students and 26 teachers, according to the preliminary results of the investigation. More than 3,000 civilians died in neighboring Lebanon for that period. Among the casualties in the Gulf were migrant delivery workers killed by debris from intercepted Iranian missiles.
At least 13 US service members have been killed so far during the war. They will be remembered this Memorial Day. Iranian school children will not.
When civilians die in war
The past is not only a foreign country to us, but a bloody one. From interpersonal to international, conflict was a constant throughout most of human history. Between 1500 and 1800, there was not a year when the great powers were not. engulfed in some kind of war.
Although the wars decreased somewhat as we entered the 1900s, they were less dangerous. Besides – while the number of war deaths in the past was more concentrated among the combatants, the 20th century saw the terrible flowering of total war, where very little distinction was made between those fighting the war and the civilians on the sidelines, and new weapons made it possible to kill many people, without discrimination.
Go back to the Civil War, which sits at the crossroads between the longest and scariest wars ever fought. More than 600,000 soldiers were killed in the war, against at least 50,000 citizensfrom those who were directly killed to many who died after the war, from hunger and disease.
The number was terrible, but in the next war, it would only increase.
In World War I, approximately the same number of combatants and civilians were killed worldwide – about 10 million each way. In World War II, more combatants were killed than in any other war in human history, a number approaching 15 million. But for every soldier, sailor, or airman killed, about one and a half civilians would die, in total, by one count, about 40 million.
The last of the dead would come to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when about 210,000 people – almost all Japanese citizens – died in the first and so far only atomic bombings. Not only were these new weapons capable of killing on a much larger scale than before, but they existed specifically to threaten the lives of non-combatants.
Fortunately, given the weapons that soldiers now had, World War II was a record high for war deaths. In the decades that followed, deaths in war for both fighters and civilians it decreased rapidlyexcluding the occasional escalation in conflicts such as the Korean and Vietnam wars. Even with the recent resurgence of conflictpeople all over the world today are much less likely to die in war than their ancestorswhich is one of the undeniable – if enduring – hallmarks of our species’ unappreciated progress.
Yet even in this era of relative peace, civilians still bear the brunt of war when it comes, including when it is fought by the United States. According to Brown University Costs of the War projectmore civilians were directly killed in the post-9/11 war than combatants on both sides – and time number of indirect deaths from starvation and destruction are included, the gulf only widens.
In Ukraine, approximately 12,910 civilians have been killed in the war as of March 31, including nearly 700 children, while nearly 31,000 civilians have been injured. In one major Russian missile attack on April 24, about nine civilians were killed and 90 were injured, including 12 children.
In Ukraine, the United Nations has now confirmed the deaths of 15,850 civiliansincluding 791 children, since the 2022 invasion of Russia. The first four months of 2026 saw more civilians killed in Ukraine than during the same period in the previous three years, and April only recorded The highest monthly toll since July 2025: 238 killed and 1,404 injured, as Russian missiles and drones wreak havoc in towns far from the frontline.
In Gaza, the recorded death toll has rose to over 72,000 according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, and more than 172,000 injured. A representative study of the population published in Lancet earlier this year it endorsed the ministry’s approach and estimated that 3 to 4 percent of Gaza’s pre-war population has now been brutally killed. Add in indirect deaths from starvation, disease, and the collapse of medical infrastructure, and other estimates exceed 100,000. Of course, Israel itself has lost more than 1,000 civilians in the October 7 attacks and in the subsequent fighting.
And the ongoing war in Sudan – which has received only part of international attention to Ukraine and Gaza – has resulted in alarming levels of civilian casualties. Last year Tom Perriello, then the US envoy to Sudan, estimated that at least 150,000 people died of war-related causes, while 13 million people have been forced to leave their homes.
And the war in Sudan, which has received only a small part of the international attention of Ukraine and Gaza, has it is now in its fourth yearwith approximately 9 million Sudanese still displaced. Estimates of war-related deaths ranging from 150,000 to 400,000, and the United Nations now reports that drone strikes have the main cause of civilian deaths in the waraccounting for more than 80 percent of civilian deaths in the first four months of 2026.
A new type of Memorial Day
The United States has its own Memorial Day to honor fallen soldiers, while other countries have theirs Memorial Daythey Victory Day. There are still only a few graves to honor countless a large number of civilians killed in the war.
It’s not hard to imagine why. As the change in attitude towards the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has shown – from unpatriotic cruelty to the celebrated work of national mourning – we can honor the sacrifice of service members who died in war, even if we don’t believe in war. But the death of those who died without a gun in hand, who died in infancy and childhood, who died because they could not fight and could not be defended, shows war for what it is in the end: losing. And we can’t begin to figure out how to mark the unmarked.
America has been a historical exception in many ways, but perhaps none more than that its citizens have largely escaped the catastrophe of war. (Though the same, of course, cannot be said for its indigenous population, who have long been treated as enemy combatants in their own country.) Americans have fought and Americans have died, but at an increasing rate, a distance that grows every Memorial Day.
The overall decline in war is one of our greatest achievements as humans, something to be celebrated without a doubt. Perhaps we would feel that way more if we gave the deaths of civilians the same respect as those of soldiers — a new kind of Memorial Day that could begin here.
A version of this story was originally published in Future Perfect magazine. Register here to register!
Update, May 25, 2026, 8 am ET: This story was originally published on May 31, 2023, and has been updated to include new data on civilian casualties in Gaza. Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Sudan, and Ukraine, among other countries.
