How the past is commemorated through a country's war memorials mirrors what people want to remember, and lack of attention reflects what they wish to forget.
(James Mayo, War Memorials as Political Landscape [NY: Praeger, 1989], 13)

    The U.S. war in Vietnam--a war we did not win; after the Civil War, the most divisive war in American history. What do Americans want to remember about this war? What can we remember, even if we overcome a wish to forget this chapter in our history?
    Responding to official lack of attention to the war (the wish to forget?), a group of American Vietnam veterans formed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund in 1979. Believing that our war in Vietnam should be publicly remembered, the aim of the Fund was to construct a memorial to the veterans of that war, at private expense but in a prominent public space in Washington, DC.
    The Fund conducted an open, juried contest for the design of the Memorial. Fund organizers wanted a memorial that would "begin a healing process, a reconciliation of the grievous divisions wrought by the war." (Jan Scruggs and Joel Swerdlow, To Heal a Nation: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial [NY: Harper & Row, 1985], 124)
    The winning design was by Maya Lin, then a 21-year-old undergraduate at Yale University. (Her design earned her a B in her funerary architecture class at Yale!) Lin's design called for a simple black granite V, the walls inscribed with the names of all those Americans who died in Vietnam or who are still missing in action. The site was a grassy slope in the Constitution Gardens, on the Mall in Washington.
    This design was immediately controversial. It was by a young Asian-American woman, lacking credibility for many veterans and politicians. There was nothing heroic in the design; contrasts with the Iwo Jima Monument and the standard soldier-on-horseback war memorial are obvious. Lin's design was vilified as a "black gash of shame," a "degrading ditch," a "black spot in American history," a "tombstone," a "slap in the face," a "wailing wall for draft dodgers and New Lefters of the future." Opponents--led by Ross Perot and James Watt, President Reagan's Secretary of the Interior--insisted on modifying the plan by adding an American flag and a realistic bronze statue of three "fighting men" showing the war's "faces of honor." Lin's Memorial Wall was constructed and dedicated in 1982. Against her objections, the flag and bronze sculpture were added in 1984. The Vietnam Women's Memorial, another realistic bronze sculpture, was added to the site in 1993.
    Despite the early controversy, the Vietnam Memorial has become one of the most loved and frequently visited sites in Washington, DC. The Wall itself is made of black granite slabs set into the earth. The walls form a V, deepest in the earth at the vertex, tapering and rising to ground-level over their length of nearly 500 feet. Meeting at an angle of 125 degrees 12 minutes, the walls point precisely to the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial--embedding the Memorial within the rich fabric of American history.
    The names of over 58,000 American who died in the war or who are still missing are inscribed on the Wall. Names are listed, without other identification, in chronological order by date of death. The names begin at the vertex on the right-hand side of the V and continue to the end of the right wall; they begin again at the far end of the left wall and end at the center--thus joining the first and last Americans to be killed in Vietnam. The surface of the back granite is highly polished, so that we see the reflections of our own faces as we read the names of those who were killed.
    Thus, we become participants in the Memorial as we read the Wall. But, despite the utter simplicity of its "naming of names," we may each read the Wall differently. The V-shape for some is an open, respectful, even sacred "book of the dead." For others, it remains a "gash of shame." It is the traditional V-for-victory sign (Winston Churchill and Richard Nixon); but it is also the V-for-peace sign of 1960s war protestors (Abbie Hoffman and Jane Fonda).
    The popular Traveling Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall will be installed in Charleston at Patriots Point in March 2000. Please visit. What will the Wall mean to you? How will you remember Vietnam?

Hugh Wilder
Professor and Chair
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
College of Charleston