History of vietnam veterans memorial

Vietnam veteran Jan Scruggs is the founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The year was 1979, and the Vietnam war had finished for four years.

However, there had been no public sentiment for planning a Memorial. Unlike the “Great Generation” of WWII soldiers, those of the Vietnam conflict were left without any form of memorialization. Vietnam veterans “came home to changing ideas about patriotism and heroism; they returned to a society riven by the civil rights movement, Watergate and the assassinations of the men who had inspired many of them to fight.” As a result, there was no consensus, or agreement, on what the war meant to Americans and the soldiers that fought in it.

There was no public space in which people could mourn: “this lack of community not only made [the public, civilians and veterans] deeply crave a remembrance of the experience of Americans in Vietnam, but also made the work of remembering especially difficult.” Howev