why was the vietnam war memorial so controversial?

She is still remembered fondly by veterans for the moving Memorial she designed for them. . During the Second World War, Vichy France could do little to protect its colony from Japanese occupation. (His son, Marine Corps lance corporal Richard Fitzgibbon III would be killed in action in Vietnam September 7, 1965. Scruggs and Doubek realized that Cupp could be instrumental in helping communicate the all-important personal, emotional side of the healing story. . Following the Tet Offensive of 1968, the NVA had to assume the major combat role because the VC was decimated during the offensive. 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. Photo by William Bill Lecky. Based on a program the British had employed successfully against insurgents in Malaya, it didnt work in Vietnam. The greatest challenge VVMF faced, said Doubek, was to put together a functioning organization with people who didnt know one another, people who were very young and didnt have a lot of experience. 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. He found that returning veterans were finding it hard to trust people. Thus, it is unsurprising that the first skirmish of the culture wars of the 1980s can be traced back to the public debate that broke out in reaction to Maya Lins design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. The NVA suffered some 120,000 casualties. 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. 16. 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. Population in the south was mostly clustered in a few areas along the coast; the north always enjoyed a larger population. There is considerable debate over whether he was primarily nationalist or communist, but he was not especially anti-Western. 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. Ho attempted to contact Eisenhower to discuss Vietnam but received no answer. 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. Associated Press correspondent Malcolm Mal Browne photographed him sitting quietly in the lotus position as the flames consumed him. 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. And her design was nearly as controversial as the war it commemorated. Afghanistan and the forever war myth | Philip Collins IAI TV 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. 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. 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. One of Mathias early key suggestions was that the memorial should be on the Mall, especially because the anti-war demonstrations had taken place there. This fear evolved into the Domino Theory; if one country fell to communist control, its neighbors would also soon fall like a row of dominos. 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. . Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund | 3033 Wilson Blvd, Suite 300 | Arlington VA 22201 | 202.393.0090 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. Cupp had experienced firsthand the pains caused by the war. Ibid. 1. We had to build credibility among the design community, but also build credibility with the veterans, said Woods. A memorial made perfect sense to him. Today, The Wall continues to be the most-visited memorial on the National Mall, attracting more than five million people each year. . Jack was the visionary, the creative, big-picture guy. For weeks, heated discussions took place around the topic of who should be part of the design jury. Reagans 1981 inaugural speech exemplified the political rhetoric used by his administration to promote his vision to the American public. History of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial - Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund Early on in the effort to get the Memorial built, there were traces of controversy. Perhaps thats an appropriate design for those who would spit on us still. Vietnam Veterans Memorial (eBook) - Julia Hargrove 2002-03-01 The Vietnam conflict was one of the most controversial engagements in the history of the United States. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. And if they were bitter, who could blame them? They came from veterans and from the neighbors, teachers, coaches and friends of veterans. Washington, D.C. As memorials are objects of public commemoration, we demand a lot of them. This 21-Year-Old College Student Designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial In an interview he was asked if there was light at the end of the tunnel, and he responded that the U.S. and its allies had turned a corner in Vietnam. 1) it commemorated an unpopular war. It seemed every time they contacted someone, they were greeted with enthusiasm for the idea. When I meet Vietnam veterans who stop me to say thank you for creating the Memorial, I always want to say: thank you, for the service and sacrifices that all of you have made in service to your country, she added. 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. History of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Buddhists, who comprised South Vietnams majority, claimed Diem, a Catholic, favored citizens of his religion in distributing aid. She was regularly swept up and raced to the bomb shelter with her parents and siblings. Memory Foundations (planned design for former site of World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, New York). 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. Ibid. The jurors began by touring the site and then returned to Hangar #3 at Andrews to view each of the 1,421 designs individually. Both Scruggss and the VVMFs statements clearly conveyed that the memorial the veterans sought was to be an apolitical tabula rasa that would neither contribute to nor comment upon the unresolved controversies surrounding the war. PDF A New World - US History Options 15. North Vietnamese officers, after the war, said the only thing they feared was an American-led invasion of the north, but the U.S. was not going to risk starting World War III, and at the time that seemed to loom as a distinct possibility. As a first step, VVMF retained architect Paul Spreiregen to serve as the Professional Advisor for the competition. The Vietnam Wall Controversy - About - Overview - Lehigh University Also known as "America's Longest War," U.S. involvement in Vietnam War did not end until 1973. Paul Haagas spouse, Heather Sturt Haaga, soon came forward to lend her experience in fund raising. Hamburger hill number - Math Formulas This began a series of destabilizing changes in government leadership. We had to constantly find the most effective next step to take and be sure not to get waylaid by tangents. The group started to hold regular planning meetings. 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. By June they had stalled the invasion, with the help of American airpower. Ibid. 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. More than 150,000 veterans, families, loved ones and friends made plans to attend. Rather, by honoring those who sacrificed, we hope to provide a symbol of national unity and reconciliation.1. 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. Ike may not have seen the message, but at any rate he was focused on establishing NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) as a wall against additional communist advances in Europe and was intent on securing Frances participation in NATO. Mai also remembers being annoyed when her playtime was interrupted by the air-raid sirens. Critics of Lins design proposed that a second work be included on the memorial site, as a solution to the problem of the original memorial design: a figurative bronze statue by Frederick Hart of three soldiers in uniform, which had placed third in the initial competition. Such images pack tremendous emotional punch but often lack context. 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. Like the war itself, this memorialization was highly controversial, but the site has become the most frequently visited memorial in Washington, D.C., drawing over 4 million visitors annually. Unveiled on Veterans Day, November 11, 1984, [1] on the National Mall, it is part of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial [2] commemorating the Vietnam War. A few preliminary concepts were embraced. 4. 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. It was designed by American architect Maya Lin. Video: 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. News footage showed the fighting in Saigon and Hue. The Memorials walls point to the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial, thus bringing the Memorial into the historical context of our country. 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. It also offered a way to exorcise lingering bitterness and anxieties that the war had propagated. The flag-waving crowds even cheered., Over the four days there were also workshops, parties, events, and reunions. In the end, the quarry in India was selected. As the commentaries of Wolfe, the New Republic, and the National Review demonstrate, the media was happy to add fuel to the fire of the veterans indignation through editorial contributions and obsessive coverage of the debate. 12 (2006): 95. 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 winning designwas the work of Maya Ying Lin of Athens, Ohio, a 21-year-old senior at Yale University. and was so hurt by the controversy . Frances military involvement in Vietnam began when it sent warships in 1847, ostensibly to protect Christians from the ruling emperor Gia Long. The Veterans Administration hospital system was underfunded and ill-equipped to help Vietnam veterans deal with either their physical ailments or the psychological challenges of post-traumatic stress disorder. Although publicly the war in the south was described as a civil war within South Vietnam, it was guided, equipped and reinforced by the communist leadership in Hanoi. The eldest juror, Pietro Belluschi, took a full day, said Spreiregen. Vietnam Veterans Memorial - U.S. Department of Defense Swartz, 95. 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. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. 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. 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. But I was always impressed with the example my parents set.. 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. 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. 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