why was the vietnam war memorial so controversial? why was the vietnam war memorial so controversial?

The selected design then had to go through Federal agency approval and development into finished plans. The memorial consists of three parts: the Three Servicemen Statue, the Vietnam Women's Memorial, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. . Everyone wanted to join the effort. By the time of World War II, a number of groups sought Vietnamese independence but as Vo Nguyen Giapwho would build Vietnams postWWII armyexpressed it, the communists were the best organized and most action-oriented of these groups. The two sections were not unlike North and South in the United States prior to the Civil War; their people did not fully trust each other. At the time of the memorials design, many veterans who had been exposed to Agent Orange, a chemical weapon used by the U.S. military as an herbicide and defoliant, still suffered ongoing health problems. Jan Scruggss and VVMF members desire for a memorial that would heal the social rifts wrought by the war was wishful thinking. It was a whirlwind of events, and the press coverage was unbelievable. Letters came from moms, dads, grandparents, sons and daughters with heartfelt notes accompanied by checks and dollar bills. Vietnam has a long history of being ruled by foreign powers, and this led many Vietnamese to see the United States involvement in their country as neo-colonialism. 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. (His son, Marine Corps lance corporal Richard Fitzgibbon III would be killed in action in Vietnam September 7, 1965. 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. Spreiregen wrote, I saw this as a needed opportunity to honor the service and lives of the soldiers we had lost and do so by running a model competition., Arthur Mosley headed the site selection task group and was assisted by John Woods, a structural engineer, who had been permanently disabled in a helicopter crash in Vietnam. At the time, well-managed open design competitions were common in Europe, but not in the United States. The U.S., possessing the largest foreign military presence, essentiallydirected the war from 1965 to 1968. By Thursday morning, it was down to 39. On April 30, 1980, the Senate approved legislation authorizing the Memorial, followed by approval in the House on May 20, 1980. And if they were bitter, who could blame them? The Memorials walls point to the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial, thus bringing the Memorial into the historical context of our country. Over 1 million wounded, 50,000 plus civilian The military dog tags, flowers, war medals, photographs, and even favorite toys left behind aid the healing process. Warner, who had served as Secretary of the Navy during the war, was himself a veteran of World War II and the Korean War. A tabula rasa upon which individuals could project their individual, personal experiences of the war was what the VVMF desired and, as historian Marita Sturken and others have observed, a tabula rasa was what they got. 17. About Vietnam Veterans Memorial. 4: The Artistic Controversy, 3/1982-11/1985 >>>>> 1988. Descriptions of the desired qualities for the memorial design included harmonious, contemplative and reflective, and again, conciliatory.2 The booklet concluded with the following passage: Finally, we wish to repeat that the memorial is not to be a political statement, and that its purpose is to honor the service and memory of the wars dead, its missing, and its veteransnot the war itself. Associated Press correspondent Malcolm Mal Browne photographed him sitting quietly in the lotus position as the flames consumed him. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial stands as a symbol of America's honor and recognition of the men and women who served and sacrificed their lives in the Vietnam War. Jan C. Scruggs, a wounded Vietnam War vet, studied what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder upon his return to. He had spent three months recovering in a hospital before being sent back to fight with rocket-propelled grenade fragments permanently embedded in his body. The French suffered a major defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, leading to negotiations that ended with the Geneva Agreements, July 21, 1954. Its army lacked reserves, while the NVA was growing. Jan came to our headquarters to see if we had any room to help them get started, Cupp remembered. The administration was caught by surprise, however, when Diem was murdered during the coup, which was led by General Duong Van Minh. American helicopters rescued members of its embassy and flew some South Vietnamese to safety, but most were left behind. It was like a Woodstock atmosphere in Washington for those who had served in Vietnam, recalled Scruggs. One needs no artistic education to see this design for what it is, a black trench that scars the Mall. The love and acceptance that the American people gave to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial have continued unabated for over 25 years. And Congress had declared a Vietnam Veterans Week for that April to honor those who had returned home. The families of service members who were missing in action originally wanted their names listed separately. 1. Could a memorial accomplish such an enormous and daunting task? . Most, like the Lincoln Memorial, were competitions between select designers. 19. That same month, Kennedy himself was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. These mass-media fictions enabled the very real neglect of veterans by the institutions tasked with tending to their needs. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. The design aroused a great deal of controversy, reflecting the lack of resolution of the national conflicts over the war as well as the lack of consensus over what constituted an appropriate memorial at the end of the 20th century. Vietnam, however, was divided at the 17th parallel. 9. Ultimately, the Commission of Fine Arts, which had the final say in the matter, overruled Lins objections. The U.S. suffered over 47,000 killed in action plus another 11,000 non-combat deaths; over 150,000 were wounded and 10,000 missing. By years end, 23,000 American military personnel would be in South Vietnam. In December Doubek became the Executive Director, working on a half-time basis for the first few months, and opened the VVMF office on January 2, 1980. By early 1980, contributions started to arrive. But if the challenges seemed insurmountable, no one expressed any fears. By endowing memorials with the ability to accomplish these tasks, we bestow them with an extraordinary amount of power and authority. 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. Once there was no more room for conflictthe memorials form, upon dedication, was no longer negotiablethe front in this culture war moved elsewhere. Washington, D.C. Aerial view. Ironically, the leadership of North Vietnam came to a similar conclusion: they had to inflict enough casualties on Americans to end support for the war on the U.S. homefront and force a withdrawal before the U.S. could build up sufficient numbers of men and material to defeat them. The war was extremely divisive in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and elsewhere. 8. It consists of a black granite wall with the names of over 58,000 soldiers who were killed or went missing in action inscribed on it. To created credibility for the fledgling effort, they formed the National Sponsoring Committee, which included then-first lady Rosalynn Carter, former President Gerald Ford, Bob Hope, future first lady Nancy Reagan, Gen. William C. Westmoreland, USA, Vietnam veteran author James Webb, and Adm. James J. Stockdale, USN. More than 150,000 veterans, families, loved ones and friends made plans to attend. Dark tourism, also known as black tourism, thanatourism or grief tourism, is tourism that is associated with death or tragedy. The names of the eight women who died in Vietnam are included on the list of over 58,000 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Images of fighting, of dead and wounded soldiers, of POWs held in North Vietnam were beamed into Americas living rooms night after night, as was footage of hundreds, sometimes thousands of antiwar protestors marching through the streets. 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. It was surreal.. After the dedication, Scruggs and Wheeler walked together along the upper side of the Memorial ground, near Constitution Avenue. In less than two weeks, these strategic bombers had shattered the norths defenses. Ike may not have seen the message, but at any rate he was focused on establishing NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) as a wall against additional communist advances in Europe and was intent on securing Frances participation in NATO. Most at the meeting told him they didnt want a memorial; they wanted more benefits and government support. During the 1970s, it . The Inspiration. Low estimates calculate 110,000 combat KIA and a half-million wounded. Joe Biden's slogan that it was time "to end the forever war" in Afghanistan was called imbecilic by former Prime Minister Tony Blair. On January 21, 1970, Jan Scruggs was having his morning cup of coffee, but he was far from his kitchen table at home. Frederick Hart. Washington, D.C. As memorials are objects of public commemoration, we demand a lot of them. Most importantly, they needed to navigate the channels of government authorizations and approvals. Veterans needed this, and so did the nation. The memorial, located near the western end of the Mall, is a black granite V-shaped wall inscribed with the names of the approximately 58,000 men and women who were killed or missing in action. Each contestant sealed his or her name in an envelope and taped it to the back of the submission. The mission of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF) is to honor and preserve the legacy of service and educate all generations about the impact of the Vietnam War. The first phase encompassed the detail planning and preparations for holding the competition, said Spreiregen. 20. 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. Inscribed on the black granite walls are the names of more than 58,000 men and women who gave their lives or remain missing. As Sturken notes in her essay, The Aesthetics of Absence: Rebuilding Ground Zero, the impetus to create a memorial at the site of the Twin Towers was almost instantaneousby the next day, even as the names and number of dead remained unknown, there was discussion of a memorial.13 Discussions about what to do with the site addressed two twin concerns: the redevelopment of what had been both a hub of commercial activity and an integral part of a broader residential neighborhoodlower Manhattanand the memorialization of the loss of lives that occurred at the site. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? My background was relatively modest, he said. He cited the growing coalition was a prime example of its not what you know, its who you know. These people, though a small group, were able to reach out to their networks and their extensive contacts to recruit the type of expertise and support required for such a mammoth initiative. They came from veterans and from the neighbors, teachers, coaches and friends of veterans. Its primary goal was to demoralize the North Vietnamese and diminish their manufacturing and transportation abilities. Ibid. An ad hoc group of veterans had scheduled a meeting to try to use Vietnam Veterans Week to generate publicity for veterans need, and Scruggs thought that would be a good time to announce his plans. By now, we are so accustomed to its visual rhetoricthe polished black granite, the lists of names, the horizontal positioningthat to think of these components as anything but standard practice takes an act of real imagination. This fear evolved into the Domino Theory; if one country fell to communist control, its neighbors would also soon fall like a row of dominos. In August of 1981, VVMF selected a building company and architecture firm to develop the plans and build Lins design. Scruggs, Wheeler, and Doubek then scouted the Mall sometimes by bicycle to identify the ideal spot: a stretch of parkland known as Constitution Gardens, located on the National Mall adjacent to the Lincoln Memorial. With such an overwhelming response to the competition, logistics became an issue. Marinesnear Van Truong, from the VC point of view. 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 Movies were dealing more realistically with their issues. Bronze. 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. Many veterans, politicians, critics, and the general public read its refusal to explicitly glorify the war or frame the listed soldiers sacrifice in recognizably heroic terms as an ideological statement, proof of Linsand the memorialspurported anti-war position. 1 (Spring 1987): 10. The debate over Minimalism, applied to Lins design, provided new terms through which to resurrect Americas internal debate over the validity of the Vietnam War. Ibid. In the Rose Garden of the White House, immediately following President Jimmy Carters signing of the bill, Scruggs explained to the press the vision of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF), the non-profit organization that collected and administered the funds for the memorial. 3. South Korea: 50,000 Maya Lin was practically a kid when her design was selected to become the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Prior war memorials had depicted brave soldiers riding horses, shooting guns, or at some other moment of triumphfor example, the massive Marine Corps War Memorial with its enormous bronze figures raising the American flag over Iwo Jima. Seven more such immolations occurred that year. Crowd at the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1982. American Artist discusses science fiction in the context of contemporary art and the concept of Colored Time.. His reasoning was that a complete mess would make it tough to stop construction. We are all equal in combat. Yet, this seemingly god-given shrine wears political feet of clay, and behind it lies a fierce controversy that re-opened the wounds of the war the memorial was designed to heal. By the time he returned home, three months after the explosion, the country was even further divided. Scruggs and Doubek realized that Cupp could be instrumental in helping communicate the all-important personal, emotional side of the healing story. Two nights later, Maddox and the destroyer USS Turner Joy were on patrol in the Gulf and reported they were under attack. From the registration forms, it was apparent that architects, artists, designers, as well as veterans and students of all ages and all levels of experience were planning to participate. Memorials are built to give context and, possibly, meaning to suffering that is otherwise incomprehensible. I had calculated that it was possible to see all of them in a minimum of 3 1/2 hours. Popular dark tourism attractions include Auschwitz, Chernobyl and Ground Zero. The communist takeover of China and subsequent war in Korea (1950-53) against North Korean and Chinese troops had focused a great deal of attention on Southeast Asia as a place to take a strong stand against the spread of communism. Here are four facts about the provocative memorial. Military personnel, including nurses, were warned not to wear their uniforms in the States. News footage showed the fighting in Saigon and Hue. This message of personal responsibility, in contrast to governance by an elite group on behalf of individuals, became a hallmark of the Reagan administration. But the memorial might not exist in the form we see today if it weren't for the support of architects who defended the young architect's controversial design. Swartz, 95. The Vietnam War was the longest in U.S. history until the Afghanistan War (20012021). It was a direct result of the First Indochina War (19461954) between France, which claimed Vietnam as a colony, and the communist forces then known as Viet Minh.