A Memorial That Doesn't Measure Up (WaPo, Marc Fisher)

A Memorial That Doesn't Measure Up

By Marc Fisher
Tuesday, May 4, 2004; Page B01


The great war memorials pack an emotional wallop and tell a story for the ages. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a cry of tragedy and darkness, but also a complicated tale of American diversity, democracy and dissent. Gettysburg is a solemnity even a century and a half later; it powerfully tells an eternal story of unity and purpose amid violent division.

The National World War II Memorial has the emotional impact of a slab of granite. If it tells any story at all, it is so broad as to be indecipherable. Nowhere does it honor the great war's transformational role in our history: There is no hint of how Americans of different regions, ethnicities and classes came together to fight evil and save freedom. There is barely any gesture toward the home front, the stirring story of sacrifice for the boys abroad.

read on...http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64436-2004May3.html

northzax: I hate this absurd white elephant. honestly, the only thing I think of when I see it (and since I live close by and play kickball and softball on the Mall, I've seen it go up) is nothing. It's empty, and almost a desecration of the Mall, imho.

The committee (of course, only a committee could come up with this monstrosity!) chose a man well known for his work on mausoleums and cemeteries in general. That's what it loos like to me: a mausoleum in the middle-Mussolini style!

with the John F. KennedyBenito Mussolini Center for the Performing Arts. Washington apparently likes fascist architecture. I don't. The new WWII memorial is just dreadful. If taste ruled the game, which it doesn't, they'd bulldoze it, hire an architect, and start over.

The construction site has been a scar on the mall forever. I'm sorry to hear that it sucks, but I'll withhold judgement until I see it myself.

But I think it was because I had such high expectations. I was thoroughly impressed by the FDR memorial because it tells a story. It tells the life of a man in an honest and humbling way - reminding us of total greatness from a body of weakness - reminding us of sacrifice for service. The Jefferson Memorial is a temple to ideals and the desire to strive towards what's right. The Lincoln Memorial solemnly reminds us that courage and fortitude are necessary in trying times.

The WWII Memorial lacks the storybook feeling and leaves little impact. We haven't seen it on every evening news cast - or in every 4th grade history textbook. It lacks familiarity and yearns for recognition in a canyon where the walls around it are more beautiful than the pit within it.

The one simply amazing thing was seeing veterans with groups of people around them as they told stories and answered questions. Those were incredible moments for the veterans, their families, and those priveleged enough to get to listen to them. It's the human side of the war that is missing. It honors states and territory contributions but doesn't personalize the war like the Korean Vets Memorial or the Vietnam Vets Memorial.

That being said - I think it was an absolutely imperative undertaking and I'm pleased that it is finished. From what I understand the veterans really enjoy their visits there and appreciate what has been done for them. I think that was the ultimate goal, a tribute and hearty thank you to an entire generation and nation.

I lost an uncle in WW2 I never met. My parents both served in the armed forces. Another uncle was disabled. Almost everyone in my parents generation was in that war.

So when I went to the memorial and passed the state memorial, I remembered all those relatives. Then the 4000 stars that represent the 400,000 US soldiers that died for that war. That was really breathe taking. Then the fountains were beautiful. As I stood looking at the 4000 stars, you can see the water coming from the Lincoln memorial right into the WW2 memorials via waterfalls that then shoot up into the air in the large fountain.

To me it was moving. A whole generation that went to war and then came back and built a country. They started on a new course and their children brought in equal rights for minorities and women. It's been quit a big achievement the last 60 years.

"A whole generation that went to war and then came back and built a country. They started on a new course and their children brought in equal rights for minorities and women. It's been quit a big achievement the last 60 years."

Great post! :thumbsup:

which is why it is a shame that we have built such a crappy 'monument' in their honor.

you understand that this is the only monument on the Mall, indeed in DC, that is to Victory? it's a triumphal arch, we may as well have thrown the Arc d'Triomph over Pennsylvania Avenue.

There is no context in this monument to victory. there is no history there, there is no soul. Go to WWII, then go to Vietman, that stark, black scar on the landscape, as Vietnam was a scar on our history. Go to Korea, a momument to the multinational effort to save South Korea. Go to the WWI memorial, as neglected now as that generation was. Go to WWII and the only sadness you feel is that the vistas from Lincoln to Washington are gone forever. Go stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memoria, on the very stone from which MLK spoke to hundreds of thousands, and Marian Anderson sang to Eleanor Roosevelt, and imagine those crowds, gathered in the most sacred space in DC (arlington is in Virginia) and now realize that is all history. there will never be another march centered on Lincoln.

was it worth it?

Governments sure like to give thanks to those that served in wars and died. Too bad they aren't interested in peace as much. No profits I guess.

are peace memorials? they are monumnets that inspire intense sadness for the waste of human life.

by the way, the gov't is planning to build a peace park at Haines Point south of the Mall imminently.

I think we should all be thinking about
peace. There is too much death and suffering
in the world. This is one memorial I would
not mind visiting.

they are the future. They are the whole point of everything. And they are the ones that get hurt the worse.