why was the vietnam war memorial so controversial?
why was the vietnam war memorial so controversial?
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. Instead, Lin found John Benson, a master stonecutter, to hand cut the text at the apex the years of the earliest and latest casualties from the Department of Defense list and the brief prologue and epilogue adjacent to the dates. It just resonated, he explained. At 21 and still an undergraduate, Linconceived her design as creating a park within a park a quiet protected place unto itself, yet harmonious with the overall plan of Constitution Gardens. History of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial - Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund This presented the new MACV commander (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam), General William C. Westmoreland with a thorny challenge: how to show the American people progress was being made. The VVMF group liked them all and approved of them with trust and enthusiasm, even selecting three sculptors, making a total of eight jurors. Healing meant many things to many people. Over 500,000 wounded, Explore articles from the HistoryNet archives about Vietnam War. Together, we can make sure our heroes will get the reverence they deserve and the stories and sacrifices of our heroes will never be forgotten. 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. General Price, along with Senators Warner and Mathias and future Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, gave moving addresses before the command was given, and 150 shovels entered the ground with enthusiastic veterans enjoying the moment. The selected design then had to go through Federal agency approval and development into finished plans. 5. Wheeler suggested that it should be a landscaped solution: a peaceful, park-like setting that could exist harmoniously with the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. It was designed by American architect Maya Lin. Also known as "America's Longest War," U.S. involvement in Vietnam War did not end until 1973. 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. He had studied the work of psychiatrist Carl Jung, a student of Sigmund Freud, who wrote of shared societal values. The text size is less than half an inch, which is unusual for monument design, but was selected to make the memorial read more like a book. On August 2, two North Vietnamese torpedo boats in broad daylight engaged USS Maddox, which was gathering communications intelligence in the Gulf of Tonkin. Among South Vietnams other allies, Australia had over 400 killed and 2,400 wounded; New Zealand, over 80 KIA; Republic of Korea, 4,400 KIA; and Thailand 350 killed. He, in turn, called the Buddhists VC sympathizers. China conquered the northern part of modern Vietnam in 111 BC and retained control until 938 AD; it continued to exert some control over the Vietnamese until 1885. Having chosen Libeskinds overarching vision, titled Memory Foundations, in February 2003, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (tasked with coordinating the redevelopment of lower Manhattan and administering the nearly $10 billion in federal funds devoted to supporting that effort) two months later announced the memorial design competition. This 21-Year-Old College Student Designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Jan came to our headquarters to see if we had any room to help them get started, Cupp remembered. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall was dedicated in 1982. For the millions of people who visit each year, Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall sends a chilling message about war, heroism, and sacrifice. A few of the most vocal opponents, including James Webb and H. Ross Perot, had previously been strong supporters of a memorial. Millionaire H. Ross Perot made a sizeable donation. We are all equal in combat. Ibid. Memory Foundations (planned design for former site of World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, New York). The photo was published worldwide under the title The Ultimate Protest, raising (or in some cases reinforcing) doubts about the government that the democratic United States was supporting. The ARVN bent but did not break. Black is not a color of shame. They came from all parts of the country and represented every state. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) advised that was not the caseAmerica had a strong military presence in the Pacific that would serve as a deterrent. Each juror was required to read Fields of Fire, A Rumor of War, and other current literature about the Vietnam War. 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. William Jayne, who had been wounded in Vietnam, volunteered to head up public relations activities. It set the tone for the ensuing cultural debates pitting the people against the elites, as found in Tom Wolfes criticism of Lins memorial design. They came from veterans and from the neighbors, teachers, coaches and friends of veterans. Or, people would tell me, Well why did you let him go? Of course, what choice do you have?. It's the most-visited memorial on the National Mall in Washington, attracting more than 5 million people each year - the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. They treated the moms the same as they treated the vets. Perhaps thats an appropriate design for those who would spit on us still. [3] It was the first representation of an African American on the National Mall. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. (Credit: In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images) . It also offered a way to exorcise lingering bitterness and anxieties that the war had propagated. Early on in the effort to get the Memorial built, there were traces of controversy. North Vietnam was a prodigy of both the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Red China. Vietnam Veterans Memorial - National Park Service His research had proven that post-traumatic stress was real and had shone a light on the challenges faced by a significant number of military veterans. New York Close Up artist Dan Herschlein, and professor, Chad Laird, discuss the intersection of contemporary art, film and horror. On March 5, 1975, the NVA invaded again. He also wanted to find a way to help them heal and suggested that the country build a national memorial as a symbol that the country cared about them. Vietnam Veterans Memorial - Wikipedia 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. Vietnam Veterans Memorial | Encyclopedia.com Many felt it should be composed primarily of veterans; others felt it should be made up only of professionals; some thought a mix of the two would be best. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. They responded quickly, recapturing lost ground and decimating an enemy who had finally come out to fight in the open. Communist losses were extremely heavy. 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. And if they themselves didnt know how to help, they knew someone who did. Sturken notes, "the memorial was seen 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." The disagreements over the design revealed anxiety about ownership of the war's representation. I have a Master's degree in military history from King's College, London and my cornucopia of interests include: World War II, World War II, and World War II. You had to live through that period to really understand it. It ended with communist victory in April 1975. On September 30, 1964, the first large-scale antiwar demonstration took place in America, on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. Both sides were fighting a war of attrition, so communist commanders sent Hanoi battle reports that often were pure fantasy. For Woods, 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. The number of parties who claimed direct investmentwhether emotional, psychological, or financialin the site and its future form and use only made the issue more complex and difficult to resolve. Instead they found bitterness and discontent and they were often disliked by the public. The "Black Gash of Shame"Revisiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Mao Zedongs Communist Party had won the Chinese Civil War in 1949, and western governmentsparticularly that of the U.Sfeared communist expansion throughout Southeast Asia. Spreiregen, a graduate of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, was a Fulbright Scholar who had served as the director of urban design programs at the American Institute of Architects (AIA) from 1962-66 and as the first director of architecture programs at the National Endowment for the Arts from 1966-70. Cupp attended many of their meetings on Capitol Hill as they drummed up support. In an article in the Washington Post, writer Tom Wolfe defined the debate over the inclusion of Harts figurative memorial as a story of art experts and the Vietnam veteransand of how the veterans asked for a war memorial and wound up with an enormous pit they now refer to as a tribute to Jane Fonda. This grew into the operation known as Rolling Thunder that began on March 2, 1965, and continued to November 2, 1968. On the second day, the jury examined the designs together, walking the many aisles and stopping at each of the 232 designs that had been flagged by one or more of the jurors, pausing to discuss each design that had been noted. Bronze. 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. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Additionally, the emergence of Park51the proposed Muslim community and cultural center to be located a few blocks from the former World Trade Center siteas a major point of public interest and debate, which peaked during the 2010 congressional elections, confirms the continued political potency and cultural power of memorials as embodiments of representational practice. The VC were often supplemented by units of the Peoples Army of Vietnam (PAVN), more often called simply the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) by those fighting against it. Larry Century, a young inventor from Cleveland, Ohio,was selected to serve as a consultant to Binswanger Glass Company in Memphis, Tennessee, which was awarded the contract for inscribing the names. Architectural drawings and a one-page written summary, 1980 or 1981. Corrections? As Scruggs had always envisioned, the Memorial would feature all of the names of those who had died. Lacking sufficient services to assist their recovery, some of these unassimilated veterans turned to alcohol and other drugs, their addictions only sending them further to the margins of society. Hi, Im Claire. Once there was no more room for conflictthe memorials form, upon dedication, was no longer negotiablethe front in this culture war moved elsewhere. 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. 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. You may have been tear-choked as you touched or watched others touch "the Wall" at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the most visited war memorial in our nation's capital. The senior staffers were against it. Following a march by thousands of veterans through the streets of Washington, D.C., to the National Mall site, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated on November 13, 1982. The Gold Star Mothers is a group of mothers whose sons or daughters have died serving their country. More than 150,000 veterans, families, loved ones and friends made plans to attend. Inscribed on the black granite walls are the names of more than 58,000 men and women who gave their lives or remain missing. Adding to Americans disillusionment was the race issue. 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. Maya Lin was practically a kid when her design was selected to become the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC. A memorial made perfect sense to him. I had calculated that it was possible to see all of them in a minimum of 3 1/2 hours. A s memorials are objects of public commemoration, we demand a lot of them. But the slogan has proved remarkably effective and points to a deep truth: forever is a very short time in democratic politics, writes Philip Collins. In fact, throughout the 1970s, there was little political impetus on any front to address these shortcomings. They werent nice. Scruggs added: Make this place look like an airstrike was called in, he instructed. Remembering Vietnam | National Archives They stressed that all funds for the Memorial would be raised from private donations. Its detractors perceived it as a monument to defeat, one that spoke more directly to a nations 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 narrative content, Senator James Webb called it nihilistic. Interestingly (given their opposing political positions), both the National Review and the New Republic equated the list of names with a police report on a traffic accident. The chief design criteria were that the memorial be 1) reflective and contemplative in character; 2) be harmonious with its site and environment, 3) make no political statement about the war itself, and 4) contain the names of all who died or remained missing. As Scruggs analyzed the concept of collective psychological states, he realized that, just as veterans needed psychological healing, so too did the nation. 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. . And if they themselves didnt know how to help, they knew someone who did. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemys intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. One of the lingering legacies of the Vietnam War is the widespread belief in America that the media cost us the war in Vietnam. Images such as the burning monk; South Vietnamese Police Chief Lt. Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan about to pull the trigger of a pistol pointed at the head of a bound VC prisoner; of a naked young girl running crying down a road after an American napalm strike that left her badly burnedthese images and others became seared into the minds of Americans on the homefront, and in those of civilians in allied nations such as Australia. 19. North Vietnam spent two years rebuilding its military; South Vietnam was hamstrung in its responses by a fear the U.S. Congress would cut off all aid if it took military action against communist buildup. Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington D.C. Like many veterans, Carhart read Lins design through the lens of his own experience: encountering an America that was at best indifferent and at worst outright hostile towards soldiers returning from Vietnam. About Vietnam Veterans Memorial. That disparity would decline before the war ended, but the racial tensions at home began to insert themselves into the military in Vietnam, damaging unit morale. Black walls, the universal color of shame and sorrow and degradation.. Free of overt historical reference to either the Egyptian or Greco-Roman traditions of monument designthe main visual touchstones for American memorial-buildingLins design broke with these traditions through its use of black granite, polished to a reflective smoothness (instead of white limestone or marble); its horizontal orientation, submerged into the earth instead of rising vertically; and its lack of any figurative ornamentation or any embellishment at all, save for the chronological listing of names of soldiers killed in the course of the war, etched into the granites mirror-like surface. The wars length and the growing number of casualties were fueling tensions. The Civil Rights Movement had produced significant victories, but many blacks had come to describe Vietnam as a white mans war, a black mans fight. Between 1961 and 1966, black males accounted for about 13 percent of the U.S. population and less than 10 percent of military personnel but almost 20 percent of all combat-related deaths. Memorials are built to give context and, possibly, meaning to suffering that is otherwise incomprehensible. There were four phases to the design competition spanning almost one year: planning and preparation; the launch; the design phase; the design evaluation and selection; the press conference and public presentation. But the meeting gave Scruggs his first ally: former Air Force intelligence officer and attorney Robert Doubek, who thought a memorial was a good idea. One example, cited in Grab Their Belts to Fight Them: The Viet Congs Big-Unit War Against the U.S., 19651966, by Warren Wilkins, is a description of the first major battle between the VC and American ForcesU.S. Ruling out an invasion of North Vietnam assured that a purely military victory would not be possible, a fact that was at odds with many Americans expectations for the war. He organized the advisors and volunteers into task groups: public relations, financial management, fund raising, legislation, site selection, and design/construction. 3 (August 2004): 122. Despite the stated wishes of the VVMF, Lins design proved instantaneously divisive. In the nine months since hed been in-country, Scruggs had already seen a lot of action and had been wounded in a battle near Xuan Loc. 4: The Artistic Controversy, 3/1982-11/1985 >>>>> 1988. While many veterans successfully reintegrated into their families and communities, tucking their experiences in combat away on a mental back shelf, others were unable to cope on their own. And Congress had declared a Vietnam Veterans Week for that April to honor those who had returned home. The names are inscribed in the chronological order of their dates of casualty, showing the war as a series of individual human sacrifices and giving each name a special place in history. The solution on how to locate a name evolved into a directory of names with an alphabetical listing andthe panel and line number of each name. By years end, 23,000 American military personnel would be in South Vietnam. The following week, Kurt Anderson recapped the festivities for TIME magazine: Saturdays three-hour parade down Constitution Avenue, led by [Gen. William] Westmoreland, was the vets own show. Everything has to be thought out and in place before the launch button is pressed.. Originally, Vietnam ended at the 17th parallel, but it gradually conquered all the area southward along the coastline of the South China Sea and west to Cambodia. 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. Washington, D.C. Aerial view. Never before or since have journalists been given such complete access to cover a war. This development was shaped by the theories of economic neoliberals on the one hand and by the values of their socially conservative allies on the other. Although thousands of people were there, It was so very quiet, Wheeler recalled. Many pushed friends in wheelchairs. The Memorial had several purposes, he explained. Everyone wanted to join the effort. 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. Why the Vietnam War Memorial is amazing - Military Times Military personnel, including nurses, were warned not to wear their uniforms in the States. Just before Christmas 1979, Warner hosted a fundraising breakfast in his Georgetown home. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. On January 21, 1970, Jan Scruggs was having his morning cup of coffee, but he was far from his kitchen table at home. Bob was the detail person and a good writer. Vietnam veterans memorial controversy. Vietnam War Memorial Scruggs . The act of dark tourism is somewhat controversial, with some viewing it as an act of respect and others as unethical practice. 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. I just kept thinking to myself how quiet it was, and yet there was an immense feeling of community. The Vietnam Women's Memorial was established to honor the women who risked their lives to serve their country. Confused times need simple forms., According to the description of the design concept: The jury chose a design which will stimulate thought rather than contain it.. The original design proposal called for all of the names to be individually hand-chiseled in the stone, but it was soon realized the time and money it would take to do that were impractical. Ibid. 18. 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.