Vietnam War Memorial

¶ … 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 largely seen by many as unnecessary; the action of a military-industrial complex that sent young men to die lest they be imprisoned or forced to leave the United States. 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 award. Ms. Ying was an undergraduate student at Yale University who had been born in Athens, Ohio in 1949. Her concept of the memorial was that it would be a 'park within a park;' a quiet, protected grove shaded from the scale of the Constitutional Gardens area of the Mall in Washington, DC. She was awarded fifty thousand dollars and received a commission to assist the architectural firm that was responsible for developing the design for construction.

The entire Memorial features the famous wall, an American flag and a statue of three soldiers. However, the most prominent and psychologically resonant aspect of the Memorial was the Wall, which was completed in late October of 1982. She designed the wall to have a mirror-like surface of polished black granite from Bangalore, India that reflects the surrounding trees, lawns, monuments, and visitors. The wall stretches along the ground, reaching toward the Lincoln and Washington Memorials in the West and east. The Wall features the names of the dead and missing, and grows gradually from the left to the right as names appear according to the year in which a soldier or airman was killed or missing in action. The list grows from the first years of the conflict in which military specialists and observers were sent to help the South Vietnam government stay the influence of communist insurgents to the draft years in which thousands of young draftees were brought to the country to die. The names are in chronological order, according to the date of casualty, and for each day the names are alphabetized. The Memorial is often colloquially referred to as 'The Wall.'

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."