On January 27, 1973, peace accords were signed between North Vietnam and the U.S. Color should mean nothing now., Sideys piece continued: At the end of five hours and much shouting, General Mike Davison, retired, who led the Cambodian incursion in 1970, proposed a compromise: add the figure of a soldier in front of the long granite walls that will bear the 57,709 names of those who died or are missing and the tribute to all who served. It was the Senators gut feeling that we needed to do this., This was serious business, Mathias said. The controversial Vietnam War was long and drawn out, fought in a humid terrain alien to American soldiers. 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. The bronze sculpture, depicting three women caring for an injured soldier, recognized the work of the more than 10,000 women who served in Vietnam. The Vietnam War was an extremely long conflict, lasting from the sending of a group of advisors to aid South Vietnam on November 1, 1955, to the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. Two nights later, Maddox and the destroyer USS Turner Joy were on patrol in the Gulf and reported they were under attack. 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. After 25 years, the way in which visitors have embraced and cherished this work has been a great gift to me, she wrote in the program for the 25th anniversary ceremony. First Inaugural Address (January 20, 1981), Ronald Wilson Reagan, Miller Center For Public Affairs, University of Virginia, accessed April 21, 2011, https://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3407. Private Funding No government funds were used to build the memorial, only public land. Many people will not comprehend this design until they experience it. The domino fell but did not take down any of those around it. Within months after he recovered from his wounds and returned to his unit, the American public was learning the details of the events at My Lai. Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 198182. Why the Battle for Hamburger Hill Was So Controversial. Yet, to say the media cost America victory in Vietnam is vastly oversimplifying a very complex situation. The Tet Offensive shocked Americans at home, who thought the war was nearing victory. Scruggs and Doubek realized that Cupp could be instrumental in helping communicate the all-important personal, emotional side of the healing story. He would never forget those friends. The battle was suddenly over.. Casualties for the Republic of South Vietnam will never be adequately resolved. Over 1 million wounded, 50,000 plus civilian Some of the juror comments included: 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. Ultimately, the Commission of Fine Arts, which had the final say in the matter, overruled Lins objections. Vietnam veteran Jan Scruggs, the individual to first pitch the idea of a memorial, used $2,800 of his own money to begin the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund in 1979, according to History. 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. 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. Few areas of the world have been as hotly contested as the India-Pakistan border. 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. In fact, throughout the 1970s, there was little political impetus on any front to address these shortcomings. On September 30, 1964, the first large-scale antiwar demonstration took place in America, on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. William Jayne, who had been wounded in Vietnam, volunteered to head up public relations activities. It just resonated, he explained. Inscribed on the black granite walls are the names of more than 58,000 men and women who gave their lives or remain missing. A chronological listing would also allow a returning veteran to find his or her time of service on The Wall and those who died together to remain together forever on The Wall. A different feeling prevailed among many within the U.S. government. By early 1980, contributions started to arrive. Civilian loss of life was also very heavy, with the lowest estimates around 415,000. News footage showed the fighting in Saigon and Hue. Sturken, 322; Anne Swartz, American Art After September 11: A Consideration of the Twin Towers, Symploke 14, nos. The proposed Vietnam memorial was a . The Best Answer To The Question Why was the vietnam war memorial so controversial? 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. Seven more such immolations occurred that year. They serve as testaments to lives lost, as repositories of grief, and to facilitate processes of mourning. American drawdown continued, with only 43,000 personnel left in-country by mid-August. By 1979, the country was beginning to have more positive feelings toward Vietnam veterans. "The veterans were asking me, 'What do you think people are going to do when they first come here?'" Lin recalls. Jan Scruggss and VVMF members desire for a memorial that would heal the social rifts wrought by the war was wishful thinking. 15. monument, Washington, District of Columbia, United States. 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. 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. Swartz, 95. 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. 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. 20. Video: History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. Or, people would tell me, Well why did you let him go? Of course, what choice do you have?. A flower is laid on the names of fallen troops on "The Wall" of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington on Nov. 12, 2018. . HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. More than 150,000 veterans, families, loved ones and friends made plans to attend. 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. In July 1959, North Vietnams leaders passed an ordinance called for continued socialist revolution in the north and a simultaneous revolution 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. He was in Vietnam, serving in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade. They needed support, friendship and help. Congress swiftly passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that removed most restrictions from the president in regards to Vietnam. 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. Before he spoke, however, all eyes had turned toward the kitchen door, from which has emerged his then-wife, actress Elizabeth Taylor. 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. Although thousands of people were there, It was so very quiet, Wheeler recalled. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was built without government funds. A cadre was drawn from those who went north; they were trained, equipped and sent back to the south to aid in organizing and guiding the insurgency. 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. Unlike previous wars, where only still images or short movie newsreels were available for conveying images, this was Americas first television war. 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. He also said there would be a pause in the air attacks on North Vietnam as the first step to de-escalate and promised America would substantially reduce the present level of hostilities.. Its mirror-like surface reflects the images of the surrounding trees, lawns and monuments. 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. 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. Four of the eight were themselves veterans of previous wars. Sturken, 320. But several weeks after the announcement, a handful of people began to protest the design. 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. The first phase encompassed the detail planning and preparations for holding the competition, said Spreiregen. The division was supposed to be temporary: elections were to be held in both sections in 1956 to determine the countrys future. 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. Initially, however, homefront support for the war effort grew, but by March Americans, perceiving no change in strategy that would bring the war to a conclusion, became increasingly disillusioned. The design team and VVMF searched for a way for the names to be sandblasted rather than hand-carved. . (Some in the North Vietnamese government thought the course of war in the south was unwise, but they were overruled.) Lin and VVMF eventually selectedthe Cooper-Lecky Partnership as the architect-of-record, with Lin as the projects design consultant. 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. Antiwar protests continued across America and in many other countries, but on April 28, 1967, Gen. Westmoreland became the first battlefield commander ever to address a joint session of Congress in wartime, and Time magazine named him Man of the Year. 1 (Spring 1987): 10. 3 (August 2004): 122. 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. Also known as "America's Longest War," U.S. involvement in Vietnam War did not end until 1973. When Scruggs went to see the movie in early 1979, it wasnt the graphic war scenes that haunted 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. But if the challenges seemed insurmountable, no one expressed any fears. ", 3: The Political Controversy,
Ho Chi Minh had been educated in Paris. And none of them discussed their own personal feelings or political views regarding the war. 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. 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. 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. The ceasefire allowed Nixon to declare peace with honor, but no provisions existed for enforcing the terms of the accords. North and South Vietnam were combined into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1976. The winning designwas the work of Maya Ying Lin of Athens, Ohio, a 21-year-old senior at Yale University. American helicopters rescued members of its embassy and flew some South Vietnamese to safety, but most were left behind. It was surreal.. In accordance with the strict competition guidelines, anonymity of all designs was carefully observed. 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. No American air strikes came to aid the overstretched South Vietnamese, despite Nixons earlier assurances to Thieu. Over 500,000 wounded, Explore articles from the HistoryNet archives about Vietnam War. 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. Which Secretary of the Interior James Watt then threatens to scuttle! In the fall of 1980, VVMF announced the national design competition open to any U.S. citizen, who was over 18 years old. 16. Many who visit leave behind items in memoriam to those that have served. On that January day, There was a big explosion, Scruggs recalled. He was in Vietnam, serving in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade. 12 (2006): 95. On April 27, 1979, four years after the fall of Saigon, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Inc. (VVMF) was incorporated as a non-profit organization to establish a memorial to honor the veterans of the Vietnam War. Although differences in the two bills required a Conference Committee to meet, on July 1, at a White House Rose Garden ceremony, President Jimmy Carter signed legislation providing two acres for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall. It was becoming apparent that we had been able to be instruments to something far greater than anything we had ever imagined.. That would have made any negotiation with Ho politically ticklish. The designs were received and processed in a large warehouse east of Washington. My background was relatively modest, he said. Once there was no more room for conflictthe memorials form, upon dedication, was no longer negotiablethe front in this culture war moved elsewhere. 3) It provoked antiwar sentiment. 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. 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. Not only was Harts statue included at the memorial site, but a flagpole was added as well. 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. Today, The Wall continues to be the most-visited memorial on the National Mall, attracting more than five million people each year. They were either ignored or shouted at and called vicious names. 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. Tensions between blacks and whites had been intensifying for years as African Americans sought to change centuries-old racial policies. Sturken, 125. Population in the south was mostly clustered in a few areas along the coast; the north always enjoyed a larger population. Daniel Abramson, Maya Lin and the 1960s: Monuments, Time Lines, and Minimalism, Critical Inquiry 22, no. Why was the memorial so controversial? 3. 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. Lower Manhattan must not be transformed into a vast mausoleum, obviously, but neither must it be transformed into a theme park for advanced architectural taste.15, Such rhetoric spilled over from the initial debates surrounding the redevelopment of the site of the Twin Towers to those regarding the design for the memorial. On April 30, their tanks entered Saigon. Scruggs took two weeks off from his job at the Department of Labor to develop the idea further. 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. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? Some felt that the money to build a memorial could be better spent delivering the many services veterans needed. 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. On April 30, 1980, the Senate approved legislation authorizing the Memorial, followed by approval in the House on May 20, 1980. In a February 27, 1968, broadcast he summed up what he had found during his return trip to the war zone. By early 1982, VVMF asked Warner to bring together both sides for a closed-door session to hammer out the issues. Then, in October 1980, veteran and lawyer Tom Carhart, also a former supporter, testified before the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) against the design, saying that One needs no artistic education to see this design for what it is, a black trench that scars the Mall. Another article in the same issue of the Post echoed Wolfes definition of the terms of the debate, commenting that: There is a discordance between the sophisticated wall and the unsophisticated statue. Architectural drawings and a one-page written summary, 1980 or 1981. 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. CBS evening news anchor Walter Cronkite returned to Vietnam to see for himself what was happening. I heard that those present agreed to double their contributions after Taylor completed her remarks, Scruggs said. Cupp attended many of their meetings on Capitol Hill as they drummed up support. Because the U.S. failed to achieve a military victory and the Republic of South Vietnam was ultimately taken over by North Vietnam, the Vietnam experience became known as the only war America ever lost. It remains a very controversial topic that continues to affect political and military decisions today. 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. The National Park Service archives most of the nonperishable items left at The Wall. On Saturday, a grand parade took place where veterans marched joyously out of sync, some hand-in-hand or with their arms draped around one another, holding banners, flags, and signs. Under those agreements, Cambodia and Laoswhich had been part of the French colonyreceived their independence. 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. A few preliminary concepts were embraced. 4. Her only son Robert, an Army draftee, was killed by a land mine on his 21st birthday, June 6, 1968. Republican Richard Nixon won the presidency in the fall elections. They found that they were very real people who did many of the same things they did, recalled Spreiregen. The memorial consists of three parts: the Three Servicemen Statue, the Vietnam Women's Memorial, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. Healing meant many things to many people. Mathias and Warner continued to rally support and ferry the legislation. As soon as the design was chosen,the next step was to consider the all-important details of getting it built. 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. Far from being a fait accompli, amassing the public will to support this new agenda took real work. In 1973 a "third" Vietnam war begana continuation, actuallybetween North and South Vietnam but without significant U.S. involvement. The timing and scale of the offensive caught ARVN, the U.S. and other SEATO troops by surprise, however. They serve as testaments to lives lost, as repositories of grief, and to facilitate processes of mourning. 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. Holding a competition is like launching a rocket. 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. They came from veterans and from the neighbors, teachers, coaches and friends of veterans. Black walls, the universal color of shame and sorrow and degradation.. Such images pack tremendous emotional punch but often lack context. Social critics and commentators quickly picked up and elaborated on Carharts characterization of the memorial.
