The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a United States national monument in Washington, D.C.
The names of better men than I are written here.
“The Wall” honors service members of the U.S. Armed Forces who died in service in Vietnam and South East Asia, and service members who are unaccounted for in the Vietnam War.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is composed of three parts, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, The Three Soldiers, and the Vietnam Women’s Memorial.
The wall of names, the main part of the memorial, was completed first, and is the best-known part of the memorial. It receives about three million visitors every year. It is located in Constitution Gardens, next to the National Mall, just northeast of the Lincoln Memorial.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. was designed by 21 year old Maya Lin, a Chinese American undergraduate student in architecture at Yale University. In 1981, her design was chosen as the best of 1,421 entries submitted in a national competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Her parents emigrated from China to the United States, her father in 1948, and her mother in 1949.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall was first opened to the public on November 11, 1982, and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is made of two long black granite walls, polished to a glossy finish, and etched with the names of U.S. service members. The names fill 140 panels of polished black granite in horizontal rows of regular typeface and spacing. The black granite itself was quarried in Bangalore, India.
Originally, “The Wall” numbered 57,939 names when it was dedicated in 1982. Since then, other names have been added. As of May 2018, 58,320 names, including eight women, are named on the wall.
The number of names on the wall is not the same as the official number of U.S. Vietnam War deaths, which is 58,220 as of May 2018. Some names are omitted at the request of families.
The names on the wall are listed in chronological order, by year, not in alphabetical order, so there are directories on podiums located at both ends of the monument where visitors may locate specific names.
The Three Soldiers memorial was created in 1984 by artist Frederick Hart. It is a bronze statue located a short distance from the wall that depicts three soldiers, one European American, one African American, and one Hispanic American. The statue of the Three Soldiers shows them looking – reverently, in solemn tribute – to the wall, where the names of their fallen comrades are written in stone.
The Vietnam Women’s Memorial, created by Glenna Goodacre in 1993, honors the 265,000 American women who served in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam Women’s Memorial depicts three women military nurses with a wounded soldier.
The Vietnam Women’s Memorial is part of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and is located north of the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall, a short distance south of “The Wall.”