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¶ … popular painting of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial features a lone man in a business suit, his head bowed, placing his hand on the dark, black granite wall of the memorial on which are written the names of the dead and missing. Reflected in the monument are the images of the men he remembers that were stationed with him. Such powerful emotional images are not uncommon to veterans who share the usually painful memory of having served in the military action that lasted from 1959 until 1973 and claimed 58,226 American lives.
According to the National Park Service, the Memorial is not a war Memorial but rather a Memorial to those who served in the war, both living and dead. This follows a popular theme of creating holidays such as Veterans Day and Memorial Day that attempted to recognize the contributions of servicemen rather than to glorify war. This idea is in many ways unique, for instance in Russia a day is dedicated to all men who serve in wars and roughly translates as The Day for the Defenders of the Fatherland.
The critical requirements for the design of the memorial were that it: be reflective and contemplative in character; harmonize with its surroundings; contain the names of those who had died in the conflict or who were still missing; and make no political statement about the war. This was important at the time of construction because the war was...
President Jimmy Carter in 1977 had officially pardoned all draft dodgers, retroactively legitimizing some of the claims of the war's opponents. The purpose of the monument would be to separate the political notions associated with the war from the grief felt by families and friends at the loss of their loved ones. Many at the time thought that the men who did give their lives had been morally abandoned by the government, and were left without a feeling of closure.
The fund that had been privately established by veterans for the creation of the monument solicited entries for the design of the Memorial in October of 1980 through a national competition. By the deadline of March 31, 1981, 1,421 design entries had been submitted for review and were judged by eight jury members. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Inc. was the principal fund raiser and the impetus behind the creation of the Wall. This Fund raised nearly nine million dollars through private contributions. These came from corporations, foundations, unions, veterans and civic organizations, as well as more than 275,000 individuals.
On May 1, Maya Ying, a first-generation Chinese-American whose parents had fled Communist China, won the…
The design and plans received final Federal approval in March of 1982, and work at the site was begun on March 16, 1982. The architectural firm of Cooper-Lecky Partnership supervised construction. Maya Ying Lin was quoted as saying that "...this memorial is for those who have died, and for us to remember them."
The wall begins with the inscription "In honor of the men and women of the armed forces of the United States who served in the Vietnam War. The names of those who gave their lives and of those who remain missing are inscribed in the order they were taken from us." It ends by saying, "Our nation honors the courage, sacrifice and devotion to duty and country of its Vietnam veterans. This Memorial was built with private contributions from the American People. November 11, 1982.
The memorial, which underwent some criticism when it was erected, now enjoys the solemn respect of almost everyone in the country. Loved ones regularly drop off flowers, but it is the other things left that are the most haunting; things such as six-packs of beer, favorite shirts, and pictures of smiling friends. These are collected by the nearby Smithsonian Museum and examples are regularly displayed.
Vietnam War The lessons from Vietnam War The quest for independence in Vietnam m was widely violent and involved factions arming themselves to face the other. Ho Chi Minh who was a communist activist by 1941 sneaked back to Vietnam after 30 years in exile and helps put together Vietnam Independence League. Immediately after World War II, Ho Chi Minh sent his guerillas to help free some captured American pilots from the
America's wars have historically been a reflection of America's very own cultural tendencies; they're usually enormous in scale, they traditionally consist of a colorful variety of fronts and they are most often regarded as a man's game. So it doesn't strike one as peculiar, perhaps, that the perpetually striking images of Vietnam are of camouflaged nineteen-year-old men enduring the graces and horrors hosted by Southeast Asia during the skirmish that
Student Unrest and the Vietnam War It is certainly a fact that the widespread and sometimes violent student unrest in the 1960s was largely based on young people's objections to the war in Vietnam. But it should be noted that the youthful rage against the American involvement was not driven exclusively by moral, political and social issues. But that rage was also fueled the fact that during the 1960s young people
This connects with the physical layout of the Mall, which appears to connect each monument in relation to all the other monuments. This is the premise that Griswold uses for his third section, where he connects his discussion of the VVM with the preceding sections. In this way, the article in many ways resembles the relationship between the different monuments in the Mall. The article concludes by addressing the unique
War Is Permanent "Nothing, nothing will ever be the same" is the last line in Peg Lauber's poem "Six National Guardsmen Blown Up Together." And it's true; nothing is the same after war. The ravages of war and conflict are permanent, indelible. This is a theme that is explored in the aforementioned Peg Lauber poem as well as in the poem "Facing It" by Yusef Komunyakaa. It is the purpose of
U.S. WAR IN VIETNAM UNJUSTIFIED US IN VIETNAM WAR UNJUSTIFIED intervention in Vietnam was utterly unjustifiable and uncalled for action. It all began when an otherwise peaceful country resorted in civil war that was orchestrated by the spread of communism. Vietnam, which was a colony of French, had fallen into the offensive communist movement led by Ho Chi Minh and his communist rebels. This event occurred immediately after World War II in