why was the vietnam war memorial so controversial? why was the vietnam war memorial so controversial?

Medals, toys, flowers, photographsanything and everything is left at The Wall as family and friends seek to remember their loved ones who made the ultimate sacrifice in Vietnam. Ibid. 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. Wheeler recruited others to help, starting with a group of professional men, all Vietnam or Vietnam-era veterans: George Sandy Mayo, Arthur Mosley, John Morrison, Paul Haaga, Bill Marr, John Woods and certified public accountant Bob Frank, who agreed to become VVMFs treasurer. 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. Veterans needed this, and so did the nation. Mathias and Warner continued to rally support and ferry the legislation. 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. On April 30, their tanks entered Saigon. Most, like the Lincoln Memorial, were competitions between select designers. The Inspiration. Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 198182. On November 8, 1979, VVMF held a press conference in which Mathias, Warner, and several others announced the introduction of legislation to grant two acres of land near the Lincoln Memorial for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. On January 21, 1970, Jan Scruggs was having his morning cup of coffee, but he was far from his kitchen table at home. The following February a strategic hamlet program began; it forcibly relocated South Vietnamese peasants to fortified strategic hamlets. 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. 3. When they returned home from serving their country, there was no national show of gratitude. We are all equal in combat. After working alone for six months, Doubek was joined on the staff by Kathy Kielich, who served as the Office Manager throughout the project. North Vietnam But how and where could all of the submissions be displayed? You had to live through that period to really understand it. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. Furthermore, he explicitly framed his interpretation of the memorial in (perceived) opposition to an explicitly artistic perspective. The first phase encompassed the detail planning and preparations for holding the competition, said Spreiregen. Scruggs . Casualties for the Republic of South Vietnam will never be adequately resolved. Movies were dealing more realistically with their issues. 13. More than 150,000 veterans, families, loved ones and friends made plans to attend. 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. The Salute opened with a vigil Wednesday morning at the National Cathedral, where all of the nearly 58,000 names on The Wall were read by volunteers around the clock, day and night, through midnight Friday. Ibid. 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. With such an overwhelming response to the competition, logistics became an issue. 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. That bothered him. One needs no artistic education to see this design for what it is, a black trench that scars the Mall. On the other side, the same thing was occurring, with even more inflated numbersvastly more. 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. Direct mail was proving to be a highly effective fundraising tool. It was one of the most resounding defeats in all of military historyuntil it became a victory. General Westmoreland had been promoted to Army Chief of Staff and replaced in Vietnam by Gen. Creighton Abrams. 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. 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 entire text size and layout Lin saw as an open book. The memorial itself, was a . 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. Because he possessed great knowledge of history, he understood the extensive healing process required after war. Jack was the visionary, the creative, big-picture guy. Yet, to say the media cost America victory in Vietnam is vastly oversimplifying a very complex situation. A s memorials are objects of public commemoration, we demand a lot of them. The domino fell but did not take down any of those around it. Despite the fact that beyond certain superficial qualities, Lins memorial shared little in common with the work of classic Minimalist artists such as Richard Serra or Donald Judd, critics nonetheless conflated it with Serras equally controversial Tilted Arc, labeling it another example of an inscrutable Minimalist public artwork erected at taxpayers expense. The war was extremely divisive in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and elsewhere. Support for the war eroded further. There is considerable debate over whether he was primarily nationalist or communist, but he was not especially anti-Western. Charles Mac Mathias, a Navy veteran of World War II, had been opposed to the war in Vietnam, but he had always respected those who served in it. They serve as testaments to lives lost, as repositories of grief, and to facilitate processes of mourning. Jan was a great spokesperson. (Woods continues to serve on VVMFs Board of Directors to this day. 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. The South Vietnamese Army was showing improvement, winning 37 of their last 45 major engagements. Its primary goal was to demoralize the North Vietnamese and diminish their manufacturing and transportation abilities. On August 2, two North Vietnamese torpedo boats in broad daylight engaged USS Maddox, which was gathering communications intelligence in the Gulf of Tonkin. The idea for a memorial seemed like a natural extension of his work and his growing desire to find a way to help veterans. Their motto is: Honor the dead by serving the living. Volunteering to assist VVMF was an ideal opportunity for Cupp to do just that. Joe Biden's slogan that it was time "to end the forever war" in Afghanistan was called imbecilic by former Prime Minister Tony Blair. It consists of a black granite wall with the names of over 58,000 soldiers who were killed or went missing in action inscribed on it. As soon as ground was broken for The Wall in March 1982, planning for its dedication ceremonies began. It seemed every time they contacted someone, they were greeted with enthusiasm for the idea. 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. Maya Lin, has gone on to become a respected architect and artist, with a studio in New York City. When the winning Vietnam Veterans Memorial design was dedicated on November 13, 1982, a storm of controversy followed. Both the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (ARVN) and the VC used torture, to extract information or to cowl opposition. At that time, they just ignored you and wished you would go away. Hanoi offered to restart peace talks, yet remained intransigent in its demands. Peter Walker and Michael Arad. He could still picture the faces of his 12 buddies, but the passing years were making it harder and harder to remember their names. It was a whirlwind of events, and the press coverage was unbelievable. VVMFagreed to the statue compromise, as well as to adding a flag and to reviewing the inscription on the Memorial, but they did not want to wait untila statue was designed before breaking ground. For weeks, heated discussions took place around the topic of who should be part of the design jury. 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. 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. Some 80,000 Vietnamese from the south had moved to the north after the Geneva Agreements were signed. They were also the most collegial people, who would deliberate intensely but never argue or posture, Spreiregen remembered. 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. After the dedication, Scruggs and Wheeler walked together along the upper side of the Memorial ground, near Constitution Avenue. The shift, however, did not represent a resolved conflict between public art and public memory and memorialization, but merely a temporary relocation of the site of debate. The winning designwas the work of Maya Ying Lin of Athens, Ohio, a 21-year-old senior at Yale University. The memorial, located near the western end of the Mall, is a black granite V-shaped wall inscribed with the names of the approximately 58,000 men and women who were killed or missing in action. 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. Photo by William Bill Lecky. 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. ' Continuing, Wolfe sarcastically asked: Shouldnt public sculpture delight the public or inspire the public or at least remind the public of cherished traditions? 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. 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. No American air strikes came to aid the overstretched South Vietnamese, despite Nixons earlier assurances to Thieu. We do not seek to make any statement about the correctness of the war, Scruggs said. I am tired of hearing it called such by you. I just kept thinking to myself how quiet it was, and yet there was an immense feeling of community. Only a few, such as the St. Louis Gateway Arch, part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, had been the result of open competitions. By the time he returned home, three months after the explosion, the country was even further divided. The Vietnam War is the commonly used name for the Second Indochina War, 1954-1975. Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 198182. Swartz, 95. With permit in hand, Doubek instructedto commence construction immediately. 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. 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. Eventually, a compromise was reached with the commissioning of a traditional statue depicting three servicemen with a flag to stand at the entrance to the memorial. 12. They were real guys. These meanings serve as unifying forces, reinforcing the idea of a shared national identity and healing rifts in the communal experience of nationhood. On that January day, There was a big explosion, Scruggs recalled. and was so hurt by the controversy . History of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. 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. It was the most thoughtful and thorough discussion of design that I have ever heard, and I have heard many, he recalled. Black is not a color of shame. 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. It would be a way to honor the veterans and to help themand the countryheal. An air war was the most that could be done north of the 17th parallel, because the use of ground troops had been ruled out. Their military experience meant they had contacts far and wide, at all levels of all professions, within government and the private sector. They came from all parts of the country and represented every state. Never before or since have journalists been given such complete access to cover a war. The first fundraising letter was signed by Bob Hope. Hi, Im Claire. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was built without government funds. As Scruggs had always envisioned, the Memorial would feature all of the names of those who had died. In the Shadow of the Washington Monument. Could a memorial accomplish such an enormous and daunting task? Like all stereotypes, this one was unfair. Undoubtedly, news media played an important role in Americans saying, Enough. Indeed, Vo Nyugen Giap had always envisioned using media as one of his spear points for victory. 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.