Tourist Destinations: Vietnam Veterans Memorial

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is also one of the 7 icon landmarks on the National Mall in Washington D.C. The Memorial was paid for by a number of private donations and a design contest that was won by architect Maya Yin Ling who was a college student at the time. I was finally dedicated by President Ronald Reagan to all of those who have fallen in the Vietnam War in 1982. The picture on the left shows the black granite monument at night looking from the apex of the wall toward the Washington Monument. All of the names of the 58,159 soldiers who died in the Vietnam War are represented in chronological order on the wall.
After the design was presented to the public it was met with a fair amount of controversy, most saying that it didnt celebrate the soldiers who gave their lifes. Instead it only fed the fire more that the War was a black mark on American history. In response the memorial heads decided to erect a statue of three soldiers, shown in the picture below. This new statue was a comprimse to help lift that black mark of the entire Vietnam experience and was unvieled two years later in 1984. Represented is a Hispanic American (Left) White American (Center) and Black American (Right). The statue and the wall interact with each other as the 3 soldiers are looking down at the wallen and their fallen military brothers. The memorial is open 24 hours a day an sees millions of tourists each year. Because many of the family and friends of those who died during the Vietnam war are still alive the millions of visitors leave pieces daily to remeber those lost, some of those pieces can be seen at an exhibit in the Smithsonian.

Source: http://thewall-usa.com/information.asp