Sue Lani Madsen: This immigrant’s story has many layers, complexities

History is more than a timeline of truths and facts. It is the lived experience of people, full of joy, tragedy and irony. When told well, it connects with our own history. Perhaps the story of these two men will resonate with your experience of the world.

He was the beloved son of an immigrant father. Like many of the second generation, eager to show gratitude to the country that had been so good to his family, perhaps eager for adventure, he sought out an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy after graduating from Gonzaga.

After commissioning, the young ensign found himself involved in a battle that didn’t belong to him, in a foreign nation where America’s interests were murky but where his duty was clear. He came to the defense of a wounded comrade without regard for the danger to himself. We honor men and women for such actions.

The setting could have been Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Vietnam. For Ensign John Monaghan, it was a civil war in Samoa.

His father, James Monaghan, arrived in New York from Ireland in 1856. He was 16, an economic migrant from famine and the passage of the repressive “peace preservation act” imposed by the British government.

Or perhaps he was also young man eager for adventure.

James Monaghan left the East Coast and arrived in Washington state via the Isthmus of Panama before there was a canal. According to local historian Kirk Carlson, the elder Monaghan built a variety of entrepreneurial ventures in the area not yet known as Lincoln, Stevens and Spokane counties, starting with a ferry across the Spokane River in the vicinity of what is now known as Long Lake Dam.

For James, the loss of his son in a conflict between the superpower he’d fled and the emerging superpower of his adopted country must have been heartbreaking.

History unfolds in layers as time adds context and insight. James Monaghan became an investor in mines, president of banks, builder of edifices, founder of the St. Vincent de Paul Society for relief after the great fire of 1889, signer of the original city charter for Spokane in 1891, and grieving father.

Now some would dismiss the John Monaghan statue as a story about a rich kid with a problematic plaque.

Thousands of American families have found themselves mourning a beloved son or daughter under similar circumstances over the past century. Emily Jacobs is the interpretive program manager with Washington State Parks. She is working with Washington State Historical Society on the statewide review of monuments and their place in history. “Interpretive signage needs to connect history with our lives today,” Jacobs said. “There’s many sides to every story, we’re always adding new layers of understanding.”

The Monaghan statue provides an opportunity to add another layer to the story of the sacrifices of our U.S. military and their families, and to Samoan history.

The website samoa.travel/discover/our-history/ describes the invasion of Samoa by Tongan warriors about 950 AD and ongoing battles between villages for control of the coastline, resulting in many years of Pacific wars for the next three centuries. The Samoan civil wars of succession invited competing interests from Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. to take advantage for control of territory in the Samoan Islands. The U.K. apparently backed off and the Germans and Americans split the islands. The Germans were later forced to retreat from the Pacific after losing a European war. The Americans stayed.

Historical monuments are an invitation to connect to the ways our society has changed. In 1906, the immigrant story was unremarkable and Samoa was an unimaginably foreign place. The U.S. was just beginning to dabble in the foreign entanglements President George Washington warned us about in his farewell address.

Immigration is now a focus for contentious debate. American Samoa is famous as the birthplace of excellent football players. And we have committed many more generations of our sons and daughters to face warfare in places far from home for uncertain political goals.

Washington’s review of monuments and their interpretation is engaging tribal communities to bring their stories into our shared history. “Rather than replacing monuments, it’s an opportunity to start conversations with people who haven’t been part of the narrative,” Jacobs said.

It’s an opportunity to add layers and insights to our history.

Contact Sue Lani Madsen at rulingpen@gmail.com