New York City Vietnam Veterans Memorial Plaza

Predictions/Inquiries: 

• How is Vietnam memory reflected in NYC?
• How is NYC reflected in the memorial?
• Does the memorial take a perspective on the War?
• Who or what is memorialized…? ...all? …NYC residents alone? …those fallen? …all of the above?

 

At the Memorial: 

I don’t recall ever being emotionally moved to tears at any memorial I’ve ever been to, but the New York City Vietnam memorial did it.  What caught me was one of the eighty quotes etched into the glass block memorial.  The quote was from a military doctor writing to his mother about an interaction that he had with a head wound victim.  He wrote: “…I checked one patient over…the kid looked scared, but didn’t cry or scream once.  He was really a brave boy…I kept holding his hand, wiping the blood off his face.  He looked up, smiled, and said “Thanks Doc.”  I felt like crying to see the way he acted.  All my love, Gary.”  What caught me was both the humanity of Gary and the image of my own son in the wounded boy’s place that popped into my head.  A sense of anger followed toward all those who allowed the Vietnam conflict to get to that point which settled into a bitter reality that the U.S. continues to enlist our young people in too often meaningless and futile military conflicts abroad. 

Settling down and observing more objectively, I was impressed to learn that NYC Mayor Ed Koch commissioned the memorial in 1982 with the intention that the it “would reflect the conflicting emotions of the Vietnam war.” This is a much more holistic and inclusive approach toward all those who not only participated in the war effort but who lived through the Era as well.  To accomplish this, the memorial includes quotes from American servicemen from all over the country that offer a variety of experience and feeling about the war.  For its departure from your typical memorial, which usually contain no counter-perspective, a quote that caught my attention is from Charles Dawson who wrote: “I often wonder if what we’re fighting for is worth a human life.”

In addition to the glass block memorial is a fountain, and a walkway, called the “Walk of Honor,” lined by twelve, four-foot-high, granite plinths that list the names of the 1,741 New Yorkers who died during the conflict (I was surprised by how high that number was).  I’m not sure if it’s deliberate or not but the fountain sometimes sounds like machine gun fire and at other times sounds like a helicopter.  I imagine that its form and coloring mean something too but such info was not readily available in the literature at the plaza.  Taking in the whole of the landscape, it is a beautiful little plaza that, given its purpose, I was surprised to see a couple making out, garbage scattered throughout, people eating lunch, and one man even eating his meal while sitting on the granite wall on the “Walk of Honor.”  Perhaps it is a lack of awareness or a desensitization of place, war, and Vietnam, or even the result of a country that sees Vietnam as a scar on its record and thus doesn’t care.  The scraped-up map of Vietnam at the entrance to the memorial would attest to the latter.  However, whatever your feelings are on Vietnam, or even war more broadly, I feel that NYC’s attempt to present a balanced commemoration of a controversial topic, and that honors much more than just New Yorkers, is worthy of appreciation.