The wall is the centerpiece of the memorial and is made up of two black granite walls, each 246 feet in length and 10 feet in height. No American air strikes came to aid the overstretched South Vietnamese, despite Nixons earlier assurances to Thieu. 1) it commemorated an unpopular war. But I was always impressed with the example my parents set.. Memory Foundations (planned design for former site of World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, New York). Michael Clark, Remembering Vietnam, Cultural Critique 3 (Spring 1986): 50. In response to the designs submitted to these various competitions (generated by famed architects, artists, and members of the general public alike), conflicting interpretations once again revolved around notions of elitism versus populismharkening back to the language of the controversy over Lins memorial.14 In a 2002 debate with architect Daniel Libeskind on the matter, New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier commented, There is something a little grotesque in the interpretation of Ground Zero as a lucky break for art. With the jury selected, the next task was to announce and promote the competition. Editors note: This essay was originally published on Art21.org in November 2011. By 1979, the country was beginning to have more positive feelings toward Vietnam veterans. I had my ear to the ground, Mathias recalled. The walls are inscribed with the names of more than 58,000 men and women . To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. Most importantly, they needed to navigate the channels of government authorizations and approvals. monument, Washington, District of Columbia, United States. In the Shadow of the Washington Monument. The list of tasks to achieve such a goal seemed endless. More than 150,000 veterans, families, loved ones and friends made plans to attend. 10. It seemed every time they contacted someone, they were greeted with enthusiasm for the idea. Furthermore, he explicitly framed his interpretation of the memorial in (perceived) opposition to an explicitly artistic perspective. The photo of the South Vietnamese police chief, for example, cannot by itself explain he had just seen the dead body of a close friend minutes before; even Eddie Adams, the photojournalist who snapped the photo felt it unfairly maligned Lt. Col. Loan. while the veterans were primarily concerned with the ability of the design to offer emotional comfort to veterans and the families of the dead, either in terms of forgiveness or honor.7. I ran over to see a truck on fire and a dozen of my friends dying. They had been unloading an ammunition truck when the explosion occurred. Also known as "America's Longest War," U.S. involvement in Vietnam War did not end until 1973. Ronald Reagans election in November 1980 ushered in the Reagan Revolution, and the first few years of Reagans presidency saw the largest tax cuts in American history. Scruggs took a bold step in contacting Virginia Senator John Warner. As Michael Clark points out in the essay, Remembering Vietnam, by the late 1960s, Hollywood and the mass media seized on this aspect of the veteran experience, creating variations of a fictionalized veteran who threatened at every moment to bring the war home with him in the form of flashbacks that turned firecrackers into artillery and passersby into the enemy.10 In Clarks analysis, these depictions of veterans served, for nonmilitary American citizens, as a way to launder the violence of the war by relegating it to some other place: Southeast Asia, and the [veterans] psychotic unconscious.11 Such representations enabled film viewers to reframe their experiences of the contemporaneous violence occurring at home, on American soil. Westmoreland adopted a search-and-destroy policy to find and engage the enemy and use superior firepower to destroy him. VVMFagreed to the statue compromise, as well as to adding a flag and to reviewing the inscription on the Memorial, but they did not want to wait untila statue was designed before breaking ground. The first cut was further reduced to 90 by midday Wednesday. Military personnel, including nurses, were warned not to wear their uniforms in the States. The design competition also needed to be able to attract design competitors.. The design team and VVMF searched for a way for the names to be sandblasted rather than hand-carved. Hidden in a hole in the ground, with no means of access for those Vietnam veterans who are condemned to spend the rest of their days in a wheelchair. 4. Ms Lin arrived at a design solution to note those that were MIA with a symbol()that could be altered if the service member was found. Your donation to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund will help expand our mission to honor, educate and heal. Kennedy saw American efforts in Southeast Asia almost as a crusade and believed increasing the military advisor program, coupled with political reform in South Vietnam, would strengthen the south and bring peace. The construction process hits a snag when relentless and powerful critics, led by Tom Carhart, find an unsavory political message in the supposedly apolitical winning design -- ultimately forcing a compromise, the addition of a flag and a statue with three soldiers to the Wall. Its detractors perceived it as "a monument to defeat, one that spoke more directly to a nation's guilt than to the honor of the war dead and the veterans," describing it as the "black gash of shame," the "degrading ditch," and a "wailing wall for draft dodgers and New Lefters of the future." 4 Responding to its lack of After meeting with the VVMF officers and advisors, Warner volunteered to help the organization raise the seed money needed to launch the fund raising campaign. He has written that he was prepared for a 25-year war; he realized he did not have to achieve military victory; he only had to avoid losing. Millionaire H. Ross Perot made a sizeable donation. The Inspiration. In fact, throughout the 1970s, there was little political impetus on any front to address these shortcomings. Today, The Wall continues to be the most-visited memorial on the National Mall, attracting more than five million people each year. Out of the nearly fifteen hundred entries in the competition, the eight jurors of the selection committee unanimously chose Maya Lins design on May 6, 1981. The war became the central rallying point of a burgeoning youth counterculture, and the coming years would see many such demonstrations, dividing generations and families.. On Christmas Eve, in Saigon, a VC set off an explosive at the American officers billet in the old Brink Hotel, killing two Americans and 51 South Vietnamese. Two nights later, Maddox and the destroyer USS Turner Joy were on patrol in the Gulf and reported they were under attack. By the time he returned home, three months after the explosion, the country was even further divided. To its own surprise, Hanoi found its forces advancing rapidly toward Saigon, realized victory was at hand, and renamed the operation the Ho Chi Minh Offensive. Letters came from moms, dads, grandparents, sons and daughters with heartfelt notes accompanied by checks and dollar bills. Usually it refers to the period when the United States and other members of the SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) joined the forces with the Republic of South Vietnam to contest communist forces, comprised of South Vietnamese guerrillas and regular-force units, generally known as Viet Cong (VC), and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). A different feeling prevailed among many within the U.S. government. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. Everything has to be thought out and in place before the launch button is pressed.. Its mere existence would be societal recognition that their sacrifices were honorable rather than dishonorable. Civilian deaths during that time period were estimated at 2 million, but the U.S. estimate of civilians killed in the north at 30,000. North Vietnam, had by then established a presence in Laos and developed the Ho Chi Minh Trail through that country in order to resupply and reinforce its forces in South Vietnam. Others questioned the intent of the Memorial. The Salute opened with a vigil Wednesday morning at the National Cathedral, where all of the nearly 58,000 names on The Wall were read by volunteers around the clock, day and night, through midnight Friday. I am always incredibly moved and heartened, especially when a veteran tells me that The Wall has helped them in some wayit could not mean more to me. Names of all who died in the war or . Karal Ann Marling and Robert Silberman, The Statue Near the Wall: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Art of Remembering, Smithsonian Studies in American Art 1, no. These meanings serve as unifying forces, reinforcing the idea of a shared national identity and healing rifts in the communal experience of nationhood. They needed to secure a plot of land, raise funds and public awareness, design the Memorial, coordinate construction, and organize the dedication ceremonies. However, that posed a problem of how tolocate an individual name. Every 15 minutes, there was a pause for prayer. ", 3: The Political Controversy, Diem fell from favor with his American patrons, partly over disagreements in how to handle the war against the VC and partly because of his unpopular suppression of religious sects and anyone he feared threatened his regime. President Johnson, watching the broadcast, said, If weve lost Walter Cronkite, weve lost the country. In May, Johnson announced he would not run for reelection. With such an overwhelming response to the competition, logistics became an issue. However, polls consistently showed the majority of Americans supported the war. It would be a way to honor the veterans and to help themand the countryheal. Four of the eight were themselves veterans of previous wars. Were all the result of our upbringing. The NVA suffered some 120,000 casualties. Ultimately, the Commission of Fine Arts, which had the final say in the matter, overruled Lins objections. 1. The VC and NVA dragged off as many of their dead and wounded as possible, sometimes impressing villagers into performing this task during battles, so determining their casualties was guesswork based on such things as the number of blood trails. They were the only father-son pair to die in Vietnam.) The Selective Service System during the Vietnam war was highly controversial, especially because early in the war draftees came disproportionately from poor, working-class, rural, and minority populations. By the end of 1967, there were 540,000 American troops in Vietnam, and the military draft was set to call up 302,000 young men in the coming year, an increase of 72,000 over 1967. The first American fatality was Air Force Technical Sergeant Richard B. Fitzgibbon, Jr., killed June 8, 1956. The proposed Vietnam memorial was a . Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. https://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/vietnam/r3/october/, https://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/vietnam/r4/1982/, https://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3407, Extending Beyond Craftsmanship, into Inquiry and Exploration, Horror, Contemporary Art, and Film: In Conversation with Dan Herschlein and Chad Laird. Eventually, a compromise was reached with the commissioning of a traditional statue depicting three servicemen with a flag to stand at the entrance to the memorial. Financial costs had risen to $30 billion a year. Civilian loss of life was also very heavy, with the lowest estimates around 415,000. They are a treasure of design insight and included many prescient thoughts as to how the Memorial would likely be experienced, Spreiregen wrote of Clays notes. We had been friends for a long time, Mathias said. The Vietnam Wall, as it's commonly known, stands as a tribute to the war's veterans, who consider it a tangible symbol that the American people recognized and honored for their service. 1. It was becoming apparent that we had been able to be instruments to something far greater than anything we had ever imagined.. What they did need, however, was an acceptable location for the Memorial and enough support to push the idea through various governmental committees and agencies. During the Second World War, Vichy France could do little to protect its colony from Japanese occupation. In retaliation for the invasion, and in hopes of forcing Hanoi to negotiate in good faith, Nixon ordered Haiphong harbor in North Vietnam to be mined and he intensified bombing of North Vietnam. Instead, the memorial became a dividing line between factions both real and imagined. Updates? In 2009 the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund assumed responsibility for the maintenance of the site. The idea for a memorial seemed like a natural extension of his work and his growing desire to find a way to help veterans. The choice of the lettering style Optima, designed by Hermann Zapf was a font Lin selected after considering a multitude of options.The font Optima seemed to fit that desire to match an almost printed quality with a hand-cut feel. The Tet Offensive shocked Americans at home, who thought the war was nearing victory. Washington, D.C. Aerial view. They were also the most collegial people, who would deliberate intensely but never argue or posture, Spreiregen remembered. The ARVN bent but did not break. The peasants resented being forced from their ancestral lands, and consolidating them gave the VC better targets. I am tired of hearing it called such by you. The U.S., possessing the largest foreign military presence, essentiallydirected the war from 1965 to 1968. The love and acceptance that the American people gave to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial have continued unabated for over 25 years. And if they were bitter, who could blame them? But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could. Before the 1880s, the French controlled Vietnam. There is considerable debate over whether he was primarily nationalist or communist, but he was not especially anti-Western.

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