The memorial was established by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund,Inc. They raised over $8,000,000 from private sources to build the wall then announced a nation wide design competition open to any U.S. citizen over the age of 18. Maya Lin was the person who won the competition. The construction of the wall was completed in October 1982.
58,000 names of the men and women who died are set into the wall. The wall is made of cut stone masonry. The design of the wall is set to a Chinese symbol called "Ren" which means man. The wall takes the shape of this symbol.
Some controversy surrounding this wall is that when the war ended in 1975, communist Vietnam failed to return living or dead POW/MIAs or give an honest and full accounting to what happened to them. From this controversy the POW/MIA flag was created to represent this issue. This flag has never been allowed to be part of the wall though. The designers and creaters of the wall decided that this flag or any thing else should not be allowed to be added. Their reason is that by adding anything else, the design of the wall's simplistic design will be ruined.
Some say that the POW/MIA flag is a lost cause. Some say that by having this dispute between Vietnam and America is causing a lack of forgiveness and healing between the two countries.
Interestingly, with use of the symbol Ren as the layout for the wall, many people consider the wall to be a part of the philosophy of Confucianism. That means to some people the wall and even the peoples names on the wall are being associated with religion even though the wall is supposed to represent all on it and be of simple nature.
Such a simple wall meant to represent lost lives, hope for the future and American history is surrounded in controversy. Some may think these thoughts are absurd while others may think it is nothing more than some stone with engraving. Hopefully this wall stationed in Washington,D.C. is not a wall between Vietnam and America.
Sources.
www.greatbuildings.com
www.usvetdsp.com
www.vvmf.org
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