Remembering Vietnam

Story of

THE VIETNAM  VETERANS  MEMORIAL

Tiffany  Thanh Kieu

10 Grade – Katella High School

Anaheim  - August 6,2003

Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Location: The Constitution Gardens within the Mall, Washington D.C.

Black granite

Length: 493.5 feet long

Panels: 2 ¾ inches thick, 40 inches wide; height varies from 8 inches to 10 feet, 1 inch

Size and weight: 3,000 cubic feet, 175 pounds per cubic foot;

total weight of granite without foundation is 525,000 lbs.

Date construction began: March 16, 1982

Date of dedication: November 13, 1982

       INTRODUCTION

            America has always been a land of pride and patriotism.  Men and women who served their country loyally would be recognized and rewarded.  The United States Capital had been a home to hundreds of memorials that recognize the hard work and dedication of its devoted citizens.  Some monuments, like the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial, “tower impressively above the nation’s capital,” but despite its modest size, the one memorial that had continuously gather the largest number of spectators year after year was the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.  Thousands of people each year came to visit this “low, shiny, black wall covered with names” of the missing and dead soldiers that served in the long, rigorous years of the Vietnam War.

            The Vietnam War was not a war of or within the United States.  Rather, the United States had sent its soldiers to help the foreign country of Vietnam’s civil war.  American’s aid started in late 1959 when President Eisenhower had sent a few U.S. military advisors to help train the South Vietnamese soldiers for their upcoming battle against the Northern Vietnamese Communist.  Yet by 1967, over half a million Americans were fighting in Vietnam!  These men and women risked their lives and devoted their services to fighting a no-win war for a country that was not even their own.  They fought with loyalty and bravery, and many even lost their lives.  Yet when they returned home, they were not received with open arms but rather with hatred and insults from on-lookers who did not recognize their courage but preferably focused on the killings and atrocities of warfare.  The bravery and services of the numerous Vietnam Veterans were quickly forgotten, but for the men and women who had been within the core of the misery could never forget the sorrow and horror of what had happened. 

It was not until the 1979 that Jan C. Scruggs, Robert W. Doubek, and John Wheeler, all veterans of the war, decided to create a memorial that would honor the soldiers who died or were still missing in Vietnam. Jan Scruggs was raised in Bowie, Maryland. After he graduated from High School he served with the US Army’s 199 Light Infantry Brigade. After valiantly serving his term in Vietnam he come home and attended American University in Washington, D. C., where he obtained a master degree in counseling. Jan keep thinking of thousands of others who died in the war. Their country has done nothing to honor them. He makes up his mind. He is going to make sure there is a special memorial for the Americans who fought in the Vietnam War. It will list the name of all men and women who went to Vietnam and never returned _ every last one.

Most people think Jan is crazy. What does he know about memorials ?  It will cost millions of dollars to build one . How will he get the money ? Why would Americans want to build a memorial for the Vietnam War anyway ? They just want to forget it .

Jan goes right ahead. He holds meetings. He makes speeches. At first no one listens, but then he finds other veterans who like his idea. They agree with Jan that ordinary Americans will want to contribute money to build a memorial. They call themselves  the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Fund.

Newspaper and TV reporters do stories about the fund. Contributions begin to trickle in. A young girl who lost her father in the war sends ten dollars. A vet with no job sends five. The parents of  a young man who had been killed in the war sent a check for $ 25. Jan is full of hope, but after two months he has only $ 144.50 . How will he ever be able to raise millions ?

 The fund - raising effort received a huge boost when Senator John Warner of Virginia donated $5,000 of his own money and helped raise another $ 50,000 . One of the major donors  was a Texan, H. Ross Perot. Eventually, donations exceeded $ 8,4 millions. The VVMF received private donations from more than 275,000 individuals.

U.S Senator Charles Mathias – a Republican from Maryland who had opposed American involvement in Vietnam, believed that a tribute to Vietnam Veterans could help heal differences  between Americans. So he surprised and pleased the VVMF organizers by picking a two- acre  site midway between two famous capital landmarks : the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Senator Mathias introduced a bill for the site to become a memorial. All one hundred U.S. Senators helped sponsor the legislation. It was passed on June 30,1980 . A similar bill was passed in the U.S. House of Representatives.

After more than a year of trying , something wonderful happens.

In summer of 1980, five years after the last Americans left Vietnam, President Jimmy Carter signed a bill that granted two acres of land for a memorial to Vietnam veterans. The land was located on the  National Mall , an open area  between the U.S Capital and the White House, which also contains the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and Jefferson Memorial.

They feel the soldiers who had to fight in Vietnam should be remembered Maybe in this way something good can come out of the war.The Memorial has become more than the dream of a few veterans. Now it is the goal of thousands of Americans from coast to coast.   

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 CONTEST.

The veterans decide to have a nationwide contest. They choose important artists and builders to judge it. Anyone over 18 years old can summit a design.

Jan’s original idea has not been forgotten. So there is one important rule. The memorial must include the name of every American man or woman killed or missing in the war.

  On March 31, 1981, the judges received 1,421 entries in response to a contest .There are so many they can’t fit them in an ordinary room. They have to put them in a kind of huge  hangar for airplanes.Then they look them over. The judges want to be fair , so no name appear on the designs, only numbers. That way the judges can’t tell who the artists are. They have no problems choosing . Every judge agrees. The best design is the one numbered 1,026.

Who is the winner ? Is it a famous artist ? A designer of many other memorials ?

No ! the designer of the winning entry is a college student, a completely unknown 21-year-old woman. Creating a design for the memorial had been a homework assignment. She never dreamed that she would win !The woman ‘s name is MAYA YING LIN. She is a Chinese- American. Her father’s name is HENRY LIN,an art professor at Ohio University and her mother ‘s name JULIA CHANG LIN, a professor of English and Asian Literature at Ohio University .

She was born in 1959 in Athens, Ohio An architect and sculptor , she comes from an artistically distinguished Chinese family that immigrated to United States in the 1940s. She doesn’t know much about the Vietnam War. She was a baby when America got into it. How did she create the prize- winning design ?

Maya says she visited the spot in Washington, D.C, where the memorial was to be build. She stood in the grassy park on the gray November day. She though about how it must feel to lose someone you love in the war. An idea come to her. She wanted to cut open the earth. She imagined a black wall standing between the sunny world and the great, dark world beyond that the living can never enter. A great black wall with names on it.

The judges are proud of their choice. So is Jan Scruggs.  However, not everyone shared the judges’ opinion.  A number of veterans and private organizations disagreed against the design and had considered it to be “a black gash of shame and sorrow.” They had expected a statue of brave soldiers in battle, like a famous one that honors the solsiers of World War Two. But many people liked the black wall. One was General William Westmoreland, who had commanded U.S Foces in Vietnam.  The yearlong controversy over the design of the memorial was settled with a compromising placement of a statue, a flag, and seals representing five military services at the entrance plaza of the memorial approximately 150 feet away.  With the statue, flag, and seals included, the protestors seemed to be more appreciative and accepting of the memorial.  The construction of the memorial was now set to begin.

Construction workers, technicians, artists, and landscapers commenced work on the memorial on March 16, 1982.  Eight months later on November 13, 1982, Veterans Day weekend, the memorial was dedicated in front of about 150,000 spectators who had made plans to be in the Mall specifically for the memorable day.  “Vietnam veterans, once ashamed or sad or angry, hopped on buses, planes, and trains headed for the nation’s capital.  They were joined by parents who had lost sons, sisters who had lost brothers, and friends who had lost friends.  They filled the hotels and motels in the Washington, D.C., area and overflowed into private homes, parks, parked cars, and recreational vehicles.”  Visitors brought flowers, pictures, letters, and other gifts to place alongside the names of the lost soldiers.  The once forgotten heroism of the Vietnam veterans would be forever honored with the foundation of this respectable memorial.

            CONSTRUCTION

            The design of the memorial was simplified to the maximum.  It was just two triangular panels that intersected at an  angle where they come together is 125 degrees , 12 minutes. There are 140 pilings with the average depth to bedrock 35 feet . The hight of the walls at the vertex is 10.1 feet .  Nearly 60,000 names of MIA’s, POW’s, and soldiers that have died during the battles in the Vietnam War would be etched onto the panels themselves. Since the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated , names have been added to the wall and changes made to the existing names .Orinally the wall contained 57,939 names. The wall today has more than 58,200 names. The purpose of the memorial was one of simplicity.  Its main function was to allow the visitors to reflect upon the lives of the men and women whose names stood before them.  The significance was not the wall but the names.

            The Department of Defense determines which names are placed on the wall according to criteria specified in Presidential Executive Orders from Presidents Johnson and Nixon. Those orders specified Vietnam and adjacent coastal waters , and later Laos and Cambodia, as a combat zone. Those who have died as a result of Agent  Orange–related diseases or post- traumatic stress suicides are not included on the wall. Since the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated , names have been added to the wall and change made to the existing names. Originally the wall contained 57,939 names. The wall today has more than 58,200 names.

            On March 16,1982, workers had begun prepping the site for the memorial.  “Groundbreaking took place on March 26, 1982.  The Gilbane Building Company acted as the general contractor, and the architectural firm of Cooper-Lecky Partnership supervised the construction.”  The first step was to break in the site that would be the foundation for the wall.  A triangular ditch approximately ten feet deep, 250 wide, and approximately 500 feet in length was cut into the ground to lay the foundation for the memorial.

            Maya Lin had designed the wall to be made purely of black granite.  However, large quantities of pure black granite were quite difficult to find within the United States.  Only three places in the entire world mass-produced black granite: India, Sweden, and South Africa.  The black granite used for the construction of the walls, safety curbs, and walkways of the memorial were brought in from Bangalore, India.  Once the stone arrived, it was then delivered to Barre, Vermont where it was to be cut and fabricated.  There are slight variations in color and texture between the panels, the curbs, and the walkways as a result of different finishing techniques of polishing, honing, and flame treating.

            The wall was not made in a continuous process but was split into segments.  Workers individually cut 148 panels in respect to their varied size and shape.  The panels all shared  similarities of being two and three-fourth inches thick and forty inches wide.  However, some panels were taller than others based on its placement within the wall; the height of the panels ranged from eight inches to ten feet, one inch.  The segmented structure of the wall allowed the names to be engraved onto the surface a lot more easily.

The wall would not have been finished in time for dedication on Veterans weekend 1982 if all of the nearly 60,000 names were hand carved onto the wall.  Each name was imprinted onto the wall by a computerized process by Datalantic, Incorporated in Atlanta, Georgia, called photo stencil gritblasting.  This special technique was developed by Larry Century specifically for the Memorial.  “The process is of a digitized typeface called Optima.  It involves a film negative at one-third in size from which an enlargement is made, a film positive at full size.”  The polished granite would then be coated with a photosensitive emulsion.  A process similar to silk-screening was then used to transfer the enlargement to the stone.  Once the process was complete, the stone within the area of the letters was exposed and the remaining surface was protected by the emulsion.  The letters were .53 inches in size and approximately .015 inches in depth.  The lettering was light gray in color, the natural color of the abraded stone, which contrasted sharply with the polished black surface, allowing it extremely legible.  The initial inscription was done by Binswanger Glasscraft Products, and the additional inscriptions done in the later ears were done by Great Panes Glasswork, Incorporated with a  coordinated effort by Cooper-Lecky Architects.

Once the granite panels were completed, they were set into place along the border of the ready-made ditch.  The curb and walkways were laid into place, and the landscapers constructed the surrounding area to provide the visitors with an area for meditation and contemplation.  All the details for the memorial were finished and ready for display.  Construction was completed in late October, and the wall was dedicated on its designated date on Veterans weekend

UNIFICATION AND HEALING.

Despite its basic design, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial conveys numerous values that constitutes with heroism, reflection, and harmony.  “…You feel you’re entering a cloistered space, set off from the busy surroundings.  Streets, and skylines disappear to leave you alone with the wall and its names.  Then, as you pass the angle and begin to climb, you feel yourself emerging again into the world of noise and light after a meditative experience.  At close range, the names dominate everything… The name of the first soldier who died is carved at the angle of the wall, and the names continue to the right in columns in chronological order of date of death, out to the east en where the wall fades into the earth.  The names begin again, with the next soldier who died, at the west end, where the wall emerges from the earth…”

The placement of the memorial itself played a significant part in its meaning.  Unlike the numerous other memorials in Washington, D.C., the memorial was not placed above ground level but rather cut into the ground itself to represent the sharp, painful scare of loss and death. “I thought about what death is, what a loss is.  A sharp pain that lessens with time, but can never quite heal over.  A scar.  The idea occurred to me there on the site.  Take a knife and cut open the earth, and with time the grass would heal it.  As if you cut open the rock and polished it.”  “I had an impulse to cut open the earth… an initial violence that in time would heal.  The grass would grow back, but the cut would remain, a pure, flat surface, like a geode when you cut it open and polish the edge…”

The memorial was designed to be a place of contemplation, an area where the visitor could reflect upon the history and tragedies of the war.  It allowed the guest a moment in time alone with their memories, the names on the wall, and an appreciation of the surroundings.  “I chose black granite to make the surface reflective and peaceful.” The viewer does not only see the name as they gaze upon the names on the walls, but they can also see themselves and the environment around them.  They have become a part of the wall, a part of this nation’s history.  “The more the visitors looked, the more they saw.  The black granite wall reflected faces, grass, falling leaves, and blue sky.”  The wall was not meant to an object of separation, but it was a device of unification and healing.  In order to heal, one must realize the truth and face the reality within oneself.

So many names are etched onto the wall; how would one be distinguished from the other?  How could one family’s Thomas Smiths be different from the other fourteen Thomas Smiths who also died beside him?  The significance of the names would be abandoned if all 58,325 names had been arranged in alphabetical order.  Their stories and journeys would be lost within a sea of deceased mentions.  Maya Lin recognized this disaster and wanted to give life to names by arranging them chronological order by date of death.  Although this method was time consuming when it came to looking for the name, it made the person a bit more special and significant from every other name on the wall.  The date of their death told a story of the events of that day and could possibly serve as an explanation of how or why they died.  There are 1170 dots that can be used to help find a name within the massive panels.  Each dot marked ten lines and were located on the even-numbered panels.

The wall does not merely mention the name of the individuals but also their state of being.  Diamond and plus signs were impressed beside each name to indicate whether a person was confirmed dead or remained missing.  The diamonds indicated that a person’s death was confirmed.  The cross-like plus signs indicated that a person remained missing and unaccounted for and no way were they meant to be a religious symbol.  A plus symbol could be easily turned into a diamond if the person was declared dead in the event of their remains being found.  In the case of an M.I.A. returning home, a circle would be inscribed around the plus.  As of this time, no circles appear on the wall.

As a result, the memorial had become an international icon of healing and closure for the many veterans and family members who lived and fought through the Vietnam War.  Their valor, turmoil, sorrow, anticipation, and tears lay within the black granite.  An event that was once shadowed in the darkness of history has now been brought to light for the entire world to acknowledge and appreciate.  From the moment that its idea was developed to its stance on solid ground today, the memorial remains a cherished symbol of the dedication and gallantry of the men and women who devoted themselves to the service of their country unconditionally.  The dead and missing of the lingering war will forever live within the hearts of the survivors and within the heart of the Washington Constitution Gardens.

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