What is being ridiculed in the poem "Green Memory" by Langston Hughes?

The American capitalist war machine is certainly being ridiculed in the poem "Green Memory" by Langston Hughes. The word "wonderful" in the first line is archly ironic. War is not wonderful for the men who fight in it, but war can lead to wonderful profits for companies that build airplanes and battleships and tanks. "A wonderful time" sounds more like a description of a picnic than of a World War. That the word "War" is capitalized in that first line is interesting too; War is big and important, unlike the inconsequential men whose "blood rolled out" as they fought in it. "Money" too is capitalized at the beginning of the last line, even though other beginnings of lines have not been capitalized. So Money must be bigger and more important than soldiers too. In fact, the whole memory of the war in America is "Green" per the title of the poem; WWII made America the top dog economic powerhouse on the international scene, no matter the millions of American men who lost their lives - boys who were sent "far away from here" to die. Except for Pearl Harbor, WWII didn't touch American soil, so the country was able to grow in a time of global death, was able bloom green and new. The American war machine "rolled in" to existence, and it rolls on today.

“Green Memory” is about how wartime is advantageous for those who are not directly involved in combat.
The title itself suggests this. Connotatively, green can suggest greed or naivety. In this poem, the speaker indicates that people’s memories of the “War” are tainted with the color green. The dual meaning of the color suggests that many people at home benefitted from the economic boom that occurred in the United States during World War II, thus framing their interpretations of a deadly international conflict. Hughes seems to criticize the tendency to overlook the violence and bloodshed of war when one profits from it.
Hughes might be criticizing the average citizen who filled a job left vacant by a soldier, but based on Hughes body of work in which he criticizes society as a whole, it is more likely that Hughes is criticizing that citizen’s blindness to the system that profits from war. Considering that Eisenhower popularized the idea of the military-industrial complex just ten years after this poem was written, Hughes might be pointing out the corporate interests of war—and how the average person is oblivious to the powers at work as long as he or she is kept complacent.
The “blood rolled out” might also suggest that people sacrificed their lives for money, which Hughes finds deplorable. His ironic use of the word “wonderful” in the first line underscores his critical attitude toward the causal relationship between massive death tolls and thriving economies.