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Why was the Vietnam women's memorial so significant? Could a memorial accomplish such an enormous and daunting task? Mathias had grown increasingly concerned about how veterans had been treated on their return. The more people you got to co-sponsor, the more people wanted to join.. End-to-end, the total number of submissions would have stretched one and one third linear miles. Warner, at the time married to Elizabeth Taylor, had strong connections to both Hollywood and the corporate world. On January 21, 1970, Jan Scruggs was having his morning cup of coffee, but he was far from his kitchen table at home. Ibid. By June 1977, Scruggs was attending graduate school at American University in Washington, D.C. and had embarked on a research study exploring the social and psychological consequences of Vietnam military duties. Daniel Libeskind. I was dumbfounded that we had succeeded at doing this. Like all stereotypes, this one was unfair. In 2009 the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund assumed responsibility for the maintenance of the site. The Vietnam War Starts In 1954, following the defeat of the French colonialists at the hands of the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu, the last battle of the First Indochina War, the country of. Instead, the memorial became a dividing line between factions both real and imagined. In 1973 a third Vietnam war begana continuation, actuallybetween North and South Vietnam but without significant U.S. involvement. He had been a war correspondent during World War II and had reported from Vietnam during Americas early involvement. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. Lins minimal plan was in sharp contrast to the traditional format for a memorial, which usually included figurative heroic sculpture. He would never forget those friends. Swartz, 95. In the fall of 1980, VVMF announced the national design competition open to any U.S. citizen, who was over 18 years old. The controversy overshadowed the mission and what we were doing, until the Salute brought it all together. Waiting meant they would never reach their dedication deadline of November 11, 1982. The battle was suddenly over.. But I was always impressed with the example my parents set.. The insurgency was called the National Liberation Front (PLF); however, its soldiers and operatives became more commonly known by their opponents as the Viet Cong (VC), short for Vietnamese Communists. That same month, Kennedy himself was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. 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. 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. It was the Senators gut feeling that we needed to do this., This was serious business, Mathias said. Revisiting the terms of this conflict not only provides insight into how and why visual art came to be so politicized in the 1980s, but also sheds light on the debates of our present historical moment, which, in many ways, parallel the debates of that period regarding the social purpose of art. 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. As Scruggs had always envisioned, the Memorial would feature all of the names of those who had died. Ibid. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. There were so many people helping to get the legislation [passed], remembered Healy. United States: 540,000 12. Among other duties, Healy was the member of Mathias staff who handled memorials and worked as the liaison with the U.S. Department of the Interior. The winning designwas the work of Maya Ying Lin of Athens, Ohio, a 21-year-old senior at Yale University. 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. Scruggs and Doubek met with Mathias to outline their plans. By the time the compromise statue is dedicated, a move for the addition of a women's memorial is already underway. Intellectually and emotionally, America could embrace the idea. 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. 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. The In Memory plaque, dedicated in 2004, is near The Three Servicemen and honors the men and women who died as a result of their service in Vietnam. The design competition also needed to be able to attract design competitors.. 16. 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. ), For three solid months, Spreiregen, Mosley, Woods, and Doubek planned the competition. Scruggs took a bold step in contacting Virginia Senator John Warner. They treated the moms the same as they treated the vets. North Vietnam was a prodigy of both the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Red China. 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. In the nine months since he'd been in-country, Scruggs had already seen a lot of action and had been wounded in a battle near Xuan Loc. Adding to Americans disillusionment was the race issue. 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. Scruggs added: Make this place look like an airstrike was called in, he instructed. 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. The controversy over the planned 9/11 memorial at the former site of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, which began nearly a decade ago, harkened back to the debates of the early 1980s and heralds the current resurgence of cultural warfare. The design team and VVMF searched for a way for the names to be sandblasted rather than hand-carved. And that message got through to me.. Bronze. In July 1959, North Vietnams leaders passed an ordinance called for continued socialist revolution in the north and a simultaneous revolution in South Vietnam. Why the Battle for Hamburger Hill Was So Controversial. Their military experience meant they had contacts far and wide, at all levels of all professions, within government and the private sector. Doubek approached Scruggs after the meeting and suggested that he form a nonprofit corporation as a vehicle to build a memorial. Here are four facts about the provocative memorial. 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. Earlier, Wild Bill Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the World War II forerunner of the CIA, had also advised that the U.S. had nothing to gain and much to lose by becoming involved in what was then French Indochina. The Three Soldiers. I had calculated that it was possible to see all of them in a minimum of 3 1/2 hours. In fact, throughout the 1970s, there was little political impetus on any front to address these shortcomings. Both sides were fighting a war of attrition, so communist commanders sent Hanoi battle reports that often were pure fantasy. 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. An author, teacher, and lecturer, Spreiregen had written the authoritative book on design competitions. The location secured, the seemingly uncontroversial process of articulating goals for a memorial and staging a competition draws over 1100 entries then the largest such design competition in the United States and the winner is Maya Lin's "Wall. Though its location on federally owned property and its maintenance by the National Park Service might imply otherwise, the impetus to create the Vietnam Veterans Memorial came entirely from the private sector and from one man in particular: Jan Scruggs, a Vietnam veteran who had been wounded in the line of duty. Its mere existence would be societal recognition that their sacrifices were honorable rather than dishonorable. But Lin doesn't like anybody "drawing mustaches" on her design and, with the support of many in the Art world, pressures the Commission of Fine Arts to scuttle the compromise and hatch a new one. We expect them to do the work of history writing, to draw single comprehensible narratives out of a Gorgon's nest of individual, often contradictory, experiences. I remember The Washington Post had pages and pages of stories in the A section. Vietnam veterans were, at long last, receiving the recognition they deserved. 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. (His son, Marine Corps lance corporal Richard Fitzgibbon III would be killed in action in Vietnam September 7, 1965. Many had worked together, some in Washington. The families of service members who were missing in action originally wanted their names listed separately. As noted above, a number of sources warned U.S. leaders against becoming embroiled in Southeast Asia. Similar, even larger, atrocities were conducted by VC and NVA unitssuch as an NVA attack on a Buddhist orphanage at An Hoa in September 1970 or the execution of 5,000 people at Hue during the Tet Offensivebut the concept of American soldiers killing civilians in cold blood was more than many Americans could bear. The first fundraising letter was signed by Bob Hope. 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. 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. But the war news was hopeful. Or, people would tell me, Well why did you let him go? Of course, what choice do you have?. The French suffered a major defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, leading to negotiations that ended with the Geneva Agreements, July 21, 1954. 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. Paul Haagas spouse, Heather Sturt Haaga, soon came forward to lend her experience in fund raising. In less than two weeks, these strategic bombers had shattered the norths defenses. Earlier, in March 1968, the Americal Division had been involved in what became known as the My Lai Massacre, in which over 100 men, women and children were killed. A different feeling prevailed among many within the U.S. government. 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. The Vietnam Women's Memorial was established to honor the women who risked their lives to serve their country. Why Were Vietnam War Vets Treated Poorly When They . Every 15 minutes, there was a pause for prayer. Early in his efforts Scruggs had called on Emogene Cupp, then the national president of the American Gold Star Mothers. But how and where could all of the submissions be displayed? 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. He closed by saying: To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. 1. The memorial was built to honor that spirit and the sacrifice of so many who gave everything they had to give. Why were people angry about the Vietnam War memorial? Editors note: This essay was originally published on Art21.org in November 2011. North and South Vietnam were combined into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1976. Vietnam veteran Joseph Zengerle, then an Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, volunteered the use of an aircraft hangar at Andrews Air Force Base. 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 19. The Vietnam War was the longest in U.S. history until the Afghanistan War (20012021). Guerrilla warfare (asymmetrical warfare) does not permit such clear-cut data. The domino fell but did not take down any of those around it. They were real guys. Corruption and instability in South Vietnams government did not instill confidence in its people, or in the Americans working with it. The Memorials walls point to the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial, thus bringing the Memorial into the historical context of our country. Though a congressional investigative committee the previous year had warned that America could find itself slipping into in a morass that would require more and more military participation in Vietnam, Johnson began a steady escalation of the war, hoping to bring it to a quick conclusion. Maya Lin was practically a kid when her design was selected to become the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC. While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. 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 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. 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. On April 27, 1979, Doubek incorporated the fledgling entity, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, and Scruggs asked him to be an officer and director. 8. 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. One needs no artistic education to see this design for what it is, a black trench that scars the Mall. 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. Please leave evidence I will report anything other than this 1 See answer Advertisement lheduardomarques Heralding the end of one era and the commencement of a new one, Reagan famously proclaimed, Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem, further adding that: From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. 400,000 1 million military The program, which had been poorly managed, was abandoned after about two years, following the coup that deposed Diem. It was the reminder that the men who died in Vietnam all had faces and names, as well as friends and families who loved them dearly. To bring the design into reality would require an architect of record. We do not seek to make any statement about the correctness of the war, Scruggs said. But the veterans had real problems. Emphasis switched to Vietnamization, preparing South Vietnams military to take over responsibility for continuing the war. It claimed,In one day of ferocious fighting we had eliminated from the field of battle a total of 919 American troops, had knocked out 22 enemy vehicles and 13 helicopters, and had captured one M-14 rifle. Marine losses actually were 45 dead, 203 wounded, and a few vehicles damaged. It was surreal.. The body count policy fell into disfavor and was not employed in future American wars; in Vietnam it led officers to inflate enemy casualties. However, the media was not the only entity invested in the veterans compelling predicament. Under those agreements, Cambodia and Laoswhich had been part of the French colonyreceived their independence. But the fact that the language deployed to critique Arads and Walkers design so closely echoed the criticism launched against Lin in the early 1980s signifies that the debates of that era remain unresolved. Some of the juror comments included: 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. The VVMF group liked them all and approved of them with trust and enthusiasm, even selecting three sculptors, making a total of eight jurors. Rip it apart.. It also offered a way to exorcise lingering bitterness and anxieties that the war had propagated. They stressed that all funds for the Memorial would be raised from private donations. On January 30, 1968, during Vietnams celebration of Tet, the lunar new year, VC and NVA units launched a massive attack in every province of South Vietnam. With the jury selected, the next task was to announce and promote the competition. Sturken, 322. The following February a strategic hamlet program began; it forcibly relocated South Vietnamese peasants to fortified strategic hamlets. Based on a program the British had employed successfully against insurgents in Malaya, it didnt work in Vietnam. During President Dwight Eisenhowers administration (19531961), financial aid was given to pay South Vietnams military forces and American advisors were sent to help train them. 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. 3. In July 1980, Congress passed a bill authorizing three acres on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to serve as the memorial site. Ultimately, the Commission of Fine Arts, which had the final say in the matter, overruled Lins objections. The proposed Vietnam memorial was a . Most at the meeting told him they didnt want a memorial; they wanted more benefits and government support. 20. The Tet Offensive shocked Americans at home, who thought the war was nearing victory. But instead of enthusiasm, he received skepticism. Ultimately, the VVMF Board agreed on a jury of the most experienced and prestigious artists and designers that could be found, since it took a mature eye to envision from two-dimensional renderings how a design would look when built. All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden.12. We do not memorialize bus accidents, which by nature are contextless, meaningless. They were also the most collegial people, who would deliberate intensely but never argue or posture, Spreiregen remembered. The NVA had to take over. 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. 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. Inscribed on the black granite walls are the names of more than 58,000 men and women who gave their lives or remain missing. Mathias set up a meeting so he could learn more. 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. Few areas of the world have been as hotly contested as the India-Pakistan border. Both the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (ARVN) and the VC used torture, to extract information or to cowl opposition. To Heal a Nation, a book written by Jan Scruggs and Joel Swerdlow about the creation of the Memorial, provides a vivid sketch of the scene: I have heard your arguments, said General Price. Perhaps Lins centralitytwenty years after the construction of the Vietnam Veterans Memorialto the debate over Arads and Walkers design was inevitable, given her presence on the design competitions selection committee as well as her legacy as the definitive memorial builder of the late twentieth century. General Westmoreland had been promoted to Army Chief of Staff and replaced in Vietnam by Gen. Creighton Abrams. But if the challenges seemed insurmountable, no one expressed any fears. 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. On April 30, their tanks entered Saigon. (Woods continues to serve on VVMFs Board of Directors to this day. The earliest of these battles was the controversy over Lins design. Today, The Wall continues to be the most-visited memorial on the National Mall, attracting more than five million people each year. Jan was a great spokesperson. On July 9, 1964, China had announced it would step in if the U.S. attacked North Vietnam, as China had done in the Korean War. . 13. They werent nice. With the seed money from several defense industry donors, especially Grumman Aerospace, VVMF launched its first large-scale direct mail campaign to reach out to the public. Lin moved to Washington and immediately became part of an internal struggle for control of the design. The memorial itself, was a . Movies were dealing more realistically with their issues. They needed to secure a plot of land, raise funds and public awareness, design the Memorial, coordinate construction, and organize the dedication ceremonies. News footage showed the fighting in Saigon and Hue. On August 2, two North Vietnamese torpedo boats in broad daylight engaged USS Maddox, which was gathering communications intelligence in the Gulf of Tonkin. That would have made any negotiation with Ho politically ticklish. Tour Washington D.C.'s Arlington National Cemetery, Tomb of the Unknowns, and Vietnam Veterans Memorial, This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Vietnam-Veterans-Memorial, How Stuff Works - History - Vietnam Veterans Memorial, National Park Service - Vietnam Veterans Memorial. They came from all parts of the country and represented every state. On September 30, 1964, the first large-scale antiwar demonstration took place in America, on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. Just before Christmas 1979, Warner hosted a fundraising breakfast in his Georgetown home. Significant funding cuts to programs that had been instigated in the 1960s under Lyndon Johnsons Great Society domestic agenda followed, in addition to a major attack on union power. She greeted each visitor in a regal fashion, wearing a dressing gown, perfect makeup, and beautiful shoes that curled up at the toes. Population in the south was mostly clustered in a few areas along the coast; the north always enjoyed a larger population.