Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund | 3033 Wilson Blvd, Suite 300 | Arlington VA 22201 | 202.393.0090 To treat the Vietnam dead like the victims of some monstrous traffic accident is more than a disservice to history; it is a disservice to the memory of the 57,000.5. Why Were Vietnam War Vets Treated Poorly When They . Each submittal had to be hung at eye level for review by the jury. Popular dark tourism attractions include Auschwitz, Chernobyl and Ground Zero. The VVMF group liked them all and approved of them with trust and enthusiasm, even selecting three sculptors, making a total of eight jurors. To achieve this effect she chose polished black granite for the walls. Its mirror-like surface reflects the images of the surrounding trees, lawns and monuments. (His son, Marine Corps lance corporal Richard Fitzgibbon III would be killed in action in Vietnam September 7, 1965. The Selective Service System during the Vietnam war was highly controversial, especially because early in the war draftees came disproportionately from poor, working-class, rural, and minority populations. 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. This began a series of destabilizing changes in government leadership. In the fall of 1980, VVMF announced the national design competition open to any U.S. citizen, who was over 18 years old. Jan C. Scruggs, a wounded Vietnam War vet, studied what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder upon his return to. On that January day, There was a big explosion, Scruggs recalled. For the first time, MACV worked with South Vietnams government to create annual plans. 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. Before the 1880s, the French controlled Vietnam. Healing meant many things to many people. End-to-end, the total number of submissions would have stretched one and one third linear miles. The ARVN bent but did not break. We had to build credibility among the design community, but also build credibility with the veterans, said Woods. 20. Hanoi offered to restart peace talks, yet remained intransigent in its demands. As Scruggs had always envisioned, the Memorial would feature all of the names of those who had died. Veterans needed this, and so did the nation. 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. The eldest juror, Pietro Belluschi, took a full day, said Spreiregen. He was an excellent partner and fundraiser. Mathias knew the legislative process. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. Adding to Americans disillusionment was the race issue. American troops had won every major battle they fought, and General Nguyen Van Thieu had come to power in South Vietnam in September; he would remain in office until 1975, bringing a new measure of stability to the government, though he could not end its endemic corruption. The winning designwas the work of Maya Ying Lin of Athens, Ohio, a 21-year-old senior at Yale University. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. The Vietnam War is the commonly used name for the Second Indochina War, 1954-1975. Ho Chi Minh led a communist government in the north (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) with its capital at Hanoi, and a new Republic of South Vietnam was established under President Ngo Dinh Diem, with its capital at Saigon. Her only son Robert, an Army draftee, was killed by a land mine on his 21st birthday, June 6, 1968. Warner, who had served as Secretary of the Navy during the war, was himself a veteran of World War II and the Korean War. Like all stereotypes, this one was unfair. Why was Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial initially controversial? Ultimately, one of the greatest challenges was how to get that many names on the wall panels in such a short period of time. But the meeting gave Scruggs his first ally: former Air Force intelligence officer and attorney Robert Doubek, who thought a memorial was a good idea. Maya Lin, has gone on to become a respected architect and artist, with a studio in New York City. On one side were the proponents of Lins memorials, defined in the media and the public imagination as Wolfes elitist art mullahs, draft dodgers, the future New Leftists, and, of course, followers of Jane Fonda (infamously dubbed Hanoi Jane after a trip to North Vietnam, during which she made statements condemning the U.S. military). Lin moved to Washington and immediately became part of an internal struggle for control of the design. And if they were bitter, who could blame them? By early 1980, contributions started to arrive. On April 27, 1979, Doubek incorporated the fledgling entity, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, and Scruggs asked him to be an officer and director. The program, which had been poorly managed, was abandoned after about two years, following the coup that deposed Diem. The administration was caught by surprise, however, when Diem was murdered during the coup, which was led by General Duong Van Minh. They are a treasure of design insight and included many prescient thoughts as to how the Memorial would likely be experienced, Spreiregen wrote of Clays notes. As VVMF focused on fundraising, Sens. Movies were dealing more realistically with their issues. Shortly after the dedication of the land for the memorial, the VVMF announced an open competition for designs for the memorial itself. There were four phases to the design competition spanning almost one year: planning and preparation; the launch; the design phase; the design evaluation and selection; the press conference and public presentation. On January 21, 1970, Jan Scruggs was having his morning cup of coffee, but he was far from his kitchen table at home. Ho attempted to contact Eisenhower to discuss Vietnam but received no answer. 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. By 1979, the country was beginning to have more positive feelings toward Vietnam veterans. 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. Together, we can make sure our heroes will get the reverence they deserve and the stories and sacrifices of our heroes will never be forgotten. He has written that he was prepared for a 25-year war; he realized he did not have to achieve military victory; he only had to avoid losing. 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. Bob was the detail person and a good writer. Sturken, 125. And Congress had declared a Vietnam Veterans Week for that April to honor those who had returned home. At that time, they just ignored you and wished you would go away. 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. They really worked well together and were the driving force. Today, The Wall continues to be the most-visited memorial on the National Mall, attracting more than five million people each year. They would include a big National Salute to Vietnam Veterans at Veterans Day. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was built without government funds. 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. They found that they were very real people who did many of the same things they did, recalled Spreiregen. 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. 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. Ibid. By June they had stalled the invasion, with the help of American airpower. 170,000220,000 military Cambodia Usually it refers to the period when the United States and other members of the SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) joined the forces with the Republic of South Vietnam to contest communist forces, comprised of South Vietnamese guerrillas and regular-force units, generally known as Viet Cong (VC), and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. 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. They came from veterans and from the neighbors, teachers, coaches and friends of veterans. Daniel Libeskind. Sturken, 322. 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. . Over 500,000 wounded, Explore articles from the HistoryNet archives about Vietnam War. Westmoreland adopted a search-and-destroy policy to find and engage the enemy and use superior firepower to destroy him. 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. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. However, the media was not the only entity invested in the veterans compelling predicament. On September 30, 1964, the first large-scale antiwar demonstration took place in America, on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. By years end, 23,000 American military personnel would be in South Vietnam. They set their sights in support of the clear, simple vision Scruggs outlined:to honor the warrior and not the war. Photo by William Bill Lecky. Such images pack tremendous emotional punch but often lack context. However, the years that saw the memorials proposal, design, and construction1980 to 1982coincided with a momentous shift in the topography of American political culture: the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the ensuing negotiation of a new federal agenda. I just kept thinking to myself how quiet it was, and yet there was an immense feeling of community. Mathias also knew the country was ready, Healy recalled. 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. 4: The Artistic Controversy, 3/1982-11/1985 >>>>> 1988. To make matters worse, Diem responded by sending troops to raid pagodas. 17. 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. Sturken, 322. An author, teacher, and lecturer, Spreiregen had written the authoritative book on design competitions. Im sure I looked like a deer in the headlights, I was so nervous, Scruggs recalled. And her design was nearly as controversial as the war it commemorated. Ibid. 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. When they returned home from serving their country, there was no national show of gratitude. His reasoning was that a complete mess would make it tough to stop construction. But if the challenges seemed insurmountable, no one expressed any fears. The women soldiers the nurses suffered too. In response to the designs submitted to these various competitions (generated by famed architects, artists, and members of the general public alike), conflicting interpretations once again revolved around notions of elitism versus populismharkening back to the language of the controversy over Lins memorial.14 In a 2002 debate with architect Daniel Libeskind on the matter, New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier commented, There is something a little grotesque in the interpretation of Ground Zero as a lucky break for art. The hope is that the creation of the Memorial will begin a healing process, Doubek wrote. 1. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. 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. After the dedication, Scruggs and Wheeler walked together along the upper side of the Memorial ground, near Constitution Avenue. Most, like the Lincoln Memorial, were competitions between select designers. 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. The Three Soldiers, 198284. 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. They were also the most collegial people, who would deliberate intensely but never argue or posture, Spreiregen remembered. Which Secretary of the Interior James Watt then threatens to scuttle! The memorial itself, was a . This message of personal responsibility, in contrast to governance by an elite group on behalf of individuals, became a hallmark of the Reagan administration. Two U.S. helicopter units arrived in Saigon in 1961. Confused times need simple forms., According to the description of the design concept: The jury chose a design which will stimulate thought rather than contain it.. In July 1959 Major Dale Buis and Master Sergeant Chester Ovnand were off duty when they were killed during an attack at Bien Hoa. Prior war memorials had depicted brave soldiers riding horses, shooting guns, or at some other moment of triumphfor example, the massive Marine Corps War Memorial with its enormous bronze figures raising the American flag over Iwo Jima. 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.