--- title: Why the First Veterans Day Saw a Mass Citizenship Ceremony description: The first official Veterans Day was marked in the U.S. on Nov. 11, 1954. On that day, thousands of people became citizens. canonical: https://time.com/4976729/first-veterans-day-immigrants-citizenship/ author: Olivia B. Waxman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-11-10T16:00:55.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:02:02.378Z og:title: Why the First Veterans Day Saw a Mass Citizenship Ceremony og:description: The first official Veterans Day was marked in the U.S. on Nov. 11, 1954. On that day, thousands of people became citizens og:url: https://time.com/4976729/first-veterans-day-immigrants-citizenship/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltac9d41f0931e0359/6988e15722fb852d92e23364/veterans-day-citizen-ceremony-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1622 og:image:height: 912 og:image:alt: 1954 U.S. Citizenship Ceremony og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why the First Veterans Day Saw a Mass Citizenship Ceremony twitter:description: The first official Veterans Day was marked in the U.S. on Nov. 11, 1954. On that day, thousands of people became citizens twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltac9d41f0931e0359/6988e15722fb852d92e23364/veterans-day-citizen-ceremony-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Thousands of People Became American Citizens on the First Official Veterans Day > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=80bed629-428c-49a0-91f5-f9d62760122d&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=80bed629-428c-49a0-91f5-f9d62760122d&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: the Influencers: Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sebastian Junger [Watch (HLS stream): the Influencers: Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sebastian Junger](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ApkZjOyL.m3u8) (6:16)  _Published 2017-09-26. Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sebastian Junger on war and human nature_  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Nov 10, 2017 4:00 PM UTC  Caption from LIFE. In mass induction of 9,000 new citizens, men and women at New York's Polo Grounds raise their right hands to take oath of allegiance. Caption from LIFE. In mass induction of 9,000 new citizens, men and women at New York's Polo Grounds raise their right hands to take oath of allegiance. Lisa Larsen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Nov 10, 2017 4:00 PM UTC  From the Nov. 22, 1954 issue of LIFE magazine. LIFE Magazine Veterans Day, which falls each year on November 11, is a time for Americans to remember the sacrifices made by those who served in the U.S. military. But first Veterans Day that was dedicated to veterans of all wars also happened to honor a different group of Americans. On Veterans Day in 1954 — one month after President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued the[ first Veterans Day proclamation](https://www.va.gov/opa/vetsday/docs/proclamation%5F1954.pdf) and the new holiday [officially](http://time.com/vault/issue/1954-06-07/page/23/) replaced Armistice Day — a whopping 50,000 men and women from coast to coast were sworn in as new U.S. citizens in what LIFE magazine called “the first time in U.S. history that citizenship was conferred upon so many people in so many mass ceremonies.” A photo in the Nov. 22, 1954, issue showed three Japanese people getting sworn in on the battleship _U.S.S. Missouri_ in Bremerton, Wash., on the same deck on which the Japanese signed their surrender on Sept. 2, 1945, ending World War II — but many more photos from that day exist in LIFE’s archives, and they provide a unique look at that historic day. At a ceremony at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field — where 1,600 men and women took the oath of citizenship — U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. [acknowledged](https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/ag/legacy/2011/09/12/11-11-1954.pdf) the renewed significance of the ceremony’s overlap on Veterans Day. “November 11th is a hallowed day for all Americans,” he said, “And it continues as a day dedicated to memory of the past and hope for the future — hope that all men can learn to live together in peace as we have done in this American melting pot of the world.” He also emphasized that swearing allegiance as a U.S. citizen was more important than ever in 1954, with the Cold War in full swing. In fact, the Cold War had changed the character of the country’s most famous immigration station, [Ellis Island](http://time.com/3563179/ellis-island/), as it was put to use in the ’50s to implement a post-WWII policy “banned anyone who had ever been affiliated with a totalitarian party,” as [TIME has previously reported](http://time.com/3563179/ellis-island/). But as Brownell said in his speech, only a few hundred had been detained there in recent months — [compared to the 1.2 million that Ellis Island processed in 1907](http://time.com/4740248/ellis-island-busiest-day/) — so its place as a symbol of immigration to the United States was fading. Immigration function in New York would be moved to a different building, off the island, on Nov. 12, 1954, the day after this historic Veterans Day, Ellis Island [closed](http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/12/newsid%5F3963000/3963251.stm) as an immigration center. “The island buildings, I feel sure, can be put to useful service in other work,” Brownell said. In the decades that followed, the immigration center would be reoped as a museum — one that, all these years later, sees even [more visitors each year](https://www.libertyellisfoundation.org/ellis-island-history#1965) than the number who came through Ellis Island annually at the height of immigration.  Caption from LIFE. In mass induction of 9,000 new citizens, men and women at New York's Polo Grounds raise their right hands to take oath of allegiance. Lisa Larsen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Mass induction of 9,000 new citizens at the Polo Grounds in New York on Veterans Day, 1954. Lisa Larsen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Mass induction of 9,000 new citizens at the Polo Grounds in New York on Veterans Day, 1954. Lisa Larsen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Mass induction of 9,000 new citizens at the Polo Grounds in New York on Veterans Day, 1954. Lisa Larsen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Mass induction of 9,000 new citizens at the Polo Grounds in New York on Veterans Day, 1954. Lisa Larsen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Mass induction of 9,000 new citizens at the Polo Grounds in New York on Veterans Day, 1954. Lisa Larsen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Mass induction of 9,000 new citizens at the Polo Grounds in New York on Veterans Day, 1954. Lisa Larsen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Mass induction of 9,000 new citizens at the Polo Grounds in New York on Veterans Day, 1954. Lisa Larsen—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images ## Transcript [ BLANK_AUDIO ] We study war because we know, obviously, it brings out the worst. But we study war because it also brings out the very, very best. [ MUSIC ] The demonstrators resisted when police attempted to arrest a young man who tried to rip down an American flag. We spent ten years working on the Vietnam war. We wake up, and our films about mass demonstrations taking place all across the United States against the current administration. About a White House obsessed with leaks, in total disarray. About a president who thinks the press is lying and making stuff up about him. About asymmetrical warfare, about huge document drops of stolen classified material into the public sphere. And about accusations that a political campaign reached out during the time of a national election to influence that campaign And we kinda go wait a second, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. A quote that's attributed to Mark Twain. This is all Vietnam and hundreds of other things rhyme, and I'm thinking what you're doing and the kind of stuff you're trying to grapple with seems almost exactly the same thing we're trying to grapple with. But specifically about who these people are that we make Do the fighting that we ask to put their lives on the line. Well, you know I'm anthropologist and I look at all my journalism and film making through that lens. We're a dominant species because we're capable of organized aggression against enemies, we are mean. [ FOREIGN ] [ SOUND ] And I think you have this dynamic tension in human society which is why you keep getting these stories repeated over and over and over again You have the sort of the collective will of the people and there's a certain sense of egalitarianism and fairness. And then you have a very necessary sort of hierarchical structure that keeps order in society. And people in power then resort to a kind of top- down hierarchy and abuse it. If war is human behavior, human nature on steroids, then Also it shows the exaggerated positiveness of our species because in these moments of our worst behaviour we also see this empathetic tendencies, the love. The lost soldiers that I know of [ UNKNOWN ]. Right. A lot of people that I know who look through catastrophes. [ INAUDIBLE ] I know a woman who [ INAUDIBLE ] my first [ INAUDIBLE ] early 90's Right . >> Now decades later, I interviewed her and she said a lot of people in [ UNKNOWN ] missed the war - >> Yes, right . >> Because it brought everyone together [ MUSIC ] You know, from the Vietnam era as you were talking I'm thinking it's not just soldiers who feel that way, it's people who protested the war. They were part of something that was deeply meaningful to them and they thought they sacrificed. Some of them went to jail, went to Canada. You know, really committed themselves in a deep way to something they though was right. It didn't involve aggression in the way that Going to wars but there was a sense of life being higher, more powerful, more [ UNKNOWN ] like I was saying. [ UNKNOWN ] primarily two things a sense of meeting within our community and closeness and the closer you get to a catastrophe, to a disaster, to a war. The more people depend on you and vice versa. And that's what humans are evolved for. You clearly have studied this. I wanna know stuff to do. I don't mean no more wars. We know that's never gonna happen because, as you suggest, people are kind of excited about that stuff. But what is it that we and do? I mean we remember that sense of collective solidarity in a Few weeks post 9 / 11 that got squandered by the hierarchy that said go shopping, rather than please pay 50 cents more a gallon per gas. Right. Please don't do this. Please do this All of which every single American would have done. Done with glee but now we just got a kind of political sense in which we don't ask anything of Americans, we want to cut their taxes even more we want to do all this stuff and have the same smoke and mirrors. I'm not suggesting a political answer from you but there's a social and human set of actions, perhaps is the way to say it, that might help This. Psychologists will tell you the more you sacrifice for something the more you value it and the problem in modern America one says very lucky that we're such a wealthy safe nation that we don't require individual sacrifice of anyone. In some sense that's very lucky. But in other sense is actually not very good for us. I'm against the draft, I think it's [ UNKNOWN ] for someone to fight a war that they don't believe in but I would be completely for national service. Yeah, we agree completely. Yes. [ CROSSTALK ] And if you do that, because people are sacrificing a year or two of their lives towards this collective goal of having this nation You raise the value of the nation in people's hearts and that's when you start to feel a real part of something. I mean, just thinking about Vietnam and we've been thinking about it for so long that the lack of [ UNKNOWN ] was usually traumatic for soldiers and for the people on the other side, too. That the country didn't know there was such incredible. Profound cognitive dissonance That's right. About what we were doing. And it was on every level. Modern society is easy on the body and hard on the mind. Most of the country, Democrat or Republican, either way, I think most people want a kind of collective good for country Yes, I agree. Right? The country has to come up with norms of behavior that confront and contradict what has happened in our political world. In a crisis obviously, we've seen in Texas, people do that immediately. Right. Right, no black, white, rich, poor, no one cares. Right. That's humans at their best. But can we achieve that without the hurricane, without the war, without the fight, can we do it? I think we can, but we have to espouse it in a proactive way. Well, it seems like counting on the politicians to beat in the lead on that is probably unlikely, but it can bubble up through the way people tell stories and the way human experiences [ CROSSTALK ]. [ CROSSTALK ]. [ MUSIC ]. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4976729/first-veterans-day-immigrants-citizenship/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4976729/first-veterans-day-immigrants-citizenship/"},"headline":"Thousands of People Became American Citizens on the First Official Veterans Day","datePublished":"2017-11-10T16:00:55.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:02:02.378Z","description":"The first official Veterans Day was marked in the U.S. on Nov. 11, 1954. 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