The Vietnam Memorial
Essay Preview: The Vietnam Memorial
Report this essay
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national war memorial located in Washington, D.C. that honors members of the U.S. armed forces who served in the Vietnam War. The Memorial consists of three separate parts — the Three Soldiers statue, the Vietnam Womens Memorial, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, which is the most recognized part of the memorial.
The main part of the memorial was completed in 1982 and is located in Constitution Gardens on the National Mall, just northeast of the Lincoln Memorial. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is maintained by the U.S. National Park Service, and receives around 3 million visitors each year.
The first official attempt to memorialize veterans of the Vietnam War came in 1978, three years after the conflict had ended. The Pentagon, instead of adding two unidentified bodies of Vietnam veterans to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, recommended that a display of medals be added behind the tomb with a plaque reading:
“Let all know that the United States of America pays tribute to the members of the Armed Forces who answered their countrys call.”
A Veterans Affairs subcommittee later changed the statement to read:
“Let all know that the United States of America pays tribute to the members of the Armed Forces who served honorably in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam Era.”
Later, in 1978, Congress, prodded by the Vietnam-Era Caucus (composed of veteran Congressmen), discussed creating a “Vietnam Veterans Week” to honor the survivors of the war.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Inc., was incorporated on April 27, 1979 as a non-profit organization to establish a memorial to veterans of the Vietnam War. Much of the impetus behind the formation of the Fund came from a wounded Vietnam veteran, Jan Scruggs, who was inspired by the film The Deer-hunter. Eventually, $8.4 million was raised by private donations.
Congress authorized the site on July 1, 1980, and a competition to design the memorial was announced later that year. On May 6, 1981 a jury of eight architects and sculptors unanimously selected a design by Maya Ying Lin, a 21 year old Yale University architecture student from Athens, Ohio, as the winner from 1,421 entries. Lin had originally designed the Memorial Wall as a student project. Controversially, the design lacked many of the elements traditionally present in war memorials, such as patriotic writings and heroic statues, and a flagstaff and figurative sculpture, The Three Soldiers, was added to the design on January 1982.
The design was formally approved on March 11, 1982 and the ground was formally broken on March 26, 1982, with dedication of the memorial on November 13, 1982 after a march to its site by thousands of Vietnam War veterans. The Three Soldiers statue was installed in 1984, and the Vietnam Womens Memorial was dedicated on November 11, 1993.
Controversy surrounded the walls dedication, with some veterans groups decrying it as inappropriate or unpatriotic. Since then, however, both veterans and the American public in general have come to admire the Wall, which is one of the most visited sites in Washington.
The Memorial Wall is made up of two black granite walls 246 feet 9 inches (75 metres) long, designed by Maya Ying Lin. The walls are sunk into the ground, with the top flush with the earth behind them. At the highest point (the apex where they meet), they are 10.1 feet (3 m) high, and they taper to a height of eight inches (20cm) at their extremities. Granite for the wall came from Bangalore, India and was deliberately chosen because of its reflective quality. The concept is that, while a visitor looks upon the wall, their reflection can be seen simultaneously with the engraved names, thereby bringing the past and present together. One wall points toward the Washington Monument, the other in the direction of the Lincoln Memorial, meeting at an angle of 125Ðo 12′. Each wall has 72 panels, 70 listing names (numbered 1E through