by James During

Historians, philosophers, museum curators, and the designers of memorials have identified and grappled with the important and inseparable relationship between memory and space, especially with regard to the commemoration of war. Commemoration acts as a complex series of spaces and rituals for the purposes of psychological and national healing, the construction of narratives, and the construction or reconstruction of individual and collective identities. For Edward Linenthal, writing about the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the organization and rhetoric of interpretive space in the presentation of memorials plays an extremely important role in the effectiveness of the commemorative experience. The spatial contexts where commemorative forms and rituals are held play a crucial part as interpretive landscapes for observers to navigate as individuals and collectives. These contexts can profoundly affect the textuality of a commemorative form as it is situated within the narratives of its surrounding space, therefore contributing to the interpretations of meaning assigned to the commemorative experience.[i] This paper will consider the spatial elements of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (VVM) before turning to a consideration of the Moving Wall memorial, a travelling replica of the VVM that has toured the United States since 1984. While the Moving Wall was conceived as an attempt to bring the experience of the VVM to those in American communities who could not make the trip to Washington, the spatial dissonance of the temporary monument and its detachment from the interpretive spatial context raises questions about cultural reproduction of site specific forms and the effects of dynamic commemorative spaces. I argue that that the Moving Wall was an important therapeutic tool for both those who built it and those who went to see it, but also that the spatial disconnect from the context of the original memorial, along with its temporary nature, created complications in the commemorative process.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Washington Mall has proven to be one of the most impactful and controversial war memorials in the United States. For visitors, it facilitates a number of important commemorative rituals while immersing them in an interpretive space tied to the cohesive national narratives of the Mall grounds. Essentially, as the memorial is read and the commemorative experience is assigned meaning, visitors are inseparable from the surrounding space which influences individual and collective interpretations.[ii] In tandem, as individuals engage the VVM they influence how others read the memorial as they actively manipulate the interpretive landscape through their interaction.

As argued by philosopher Charles Griswold in 1986, the spatial context of the VVM on the Washington Mall relative to the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial is profoundly informative to a visitor’s interpretation of the memorial wall.[iii] As part of the wall’s design and its positioning on the Mall, visitors are drawn to see the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial as they read the names of those killed or missing in action from 1959 to 1975, suggesting that they situate the Vietnam War and the memorial in a larger narrative of American history. Likewise, as visitors see their reflections in the black granite of the wall, they also see the reflection of the surrounding Mall grounds, its many monuments, and its historical and cultural meta-narratives. Griswold also notes how the focus on individuals and the human cost of the conflict on the American side invites or even demands that visitors leave their politics at home.[iv] Griswold’s observation situates the VVM within the popular discourse of commemorative healing that was prevalent in the post-Vietnam era, where the political and moral issues associated with the war were pushed aside in favour of a focus on the psychological recovery of the nation. What is left for visitors is a quasi-psychological framework of commemorative healing placed within the contextual meta-narratives of the Mall, where visitors can then negotiate or ignore the greater moral and political questions of the war while they interpret meaning for the war, its place in American history, and the state and nature of post-Vietnam America.

In November 1982, Vietnam veteran John Devitt of San Jose, California, visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Prior to seeing the memorial wall, Devitt held what were common criticisms and reservations about the memorial’s design, but declared how profoundly his view was altered upon actually experiencing and engaging it. Many years later he stated in an interview that, ''I'd read about it…. It's a gravestone. That's the way I felt about it before I walked up to it. It was black, it was in the ground, it wasn't designed by a Vietnam vet. Symbolically, I didn't like it…. But when I walked up to it, all that disappeared; it seemed irrelevant. The impact was incredible.”[v] Inspired by his experience, Devitt set out to share that experience with communities throughout the United States who could not afford the trip to Washington. Upon returning to California, Devitt and San Jose’s Vietnam Combat Veterans Ltd. began what became a two year and $28000 project to create a half-size replica of the VVM that they titled “the Moving Wall.”[vi]

The construction of the Moving Wall became a significant social therapeutic exercise for Devitt and his fellow veteran volunteers. The process had given the replica’s builders the chance to air and confront shared emotional trauma while directing their energy into a project they felt was ultimately constructive. On two occasions, Devitt explained the difficulty of applying the names of the deceased to the wall’s panels, stating that “it was pretty hard dealing with on a daily level…. It didn’t seem like we were ever going to finish. There were times when I wanted to just get in my truck and leave…. I never left. I just said, ‘Let’s go for it.’”[vii]

By October 1984, the Moving Wall began touring and has since gone through a number of renovations with two more replicas added later in the decade. Visitors and sponsors all over the country spoke about the replica’s profound emotional impact and its ability to heal the wounds left by the Vietnam War for those who could not experience the original in Washington. For some, recreating the various commemorative rituals associated with the original was a powerful experience. One news article noted how in many cases, visitors “leave a little bit of themselves, or their pain, or the war behind. ‘I kept thinking that if I rubbed hard enough, your name would disappear off of that wall, and that you would come back to me,’ wrote a mother from the Midwest to a son she lost in 1969.”[viii] A Florida veteran echoed this sentiment some years later, stating that “this really is a wall of healing – people will leave a lot of grief and pain behind here…. I want people to come here and see the names of [over 58000] brothers and sisters we lost over there.”[ix] The notion of healing and the leaving behind of pain were prevalent ideas in the discourse surrounding the memory and commemoration of the Vietnam War, and just like the VVM, the Moving Wall was framed in this manner. But for some, there was something implicitly lacking in the experience of the Moving Wall. This sense of lacking, in many cases linked to the issue of authenticity, drew a variety of comparisons to, and vows to see, the original memorial.[x]

There has been some recognition of the spatial complexities of the travelling replica in the press. Commentary ranges from the view of spatial context being a non-issue to the perception of a sort of cheapness, a lacking of the original’s ominous and grandiose nature. One contributor to the New York Times, referencing the original’s place on the Washington Mall, suggests that “virtually everyone who has seen the [VVM] testifies that the emotional power of the stark black wall… is enormous. That is no less so in a bustling city park within earshot of a spirited soccer match and a home game of the [local] baseball team than in the austere grove of the Mall in the nation’s capital under the somber eyes of Abraham Lincoln.”[xi] In this case the commemorative form is separated from its designed spatial context, the reproduction of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial stands for itself to be interpreted in its own terms. However, this new interpretive landscape, like any other temporary spatial context for the Moving Wall, is not recognized as itself a force that can profoundly affect the commemorative experience. One critic of the Moving Wall articulates this concern during its stay in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1999:

I know they’re here, written on a portable black wall. These are the same names. The same haunting names. Here, of course, the din of traffic is inescapable. Just beyond the wall, the cars and a steady flow of big trucks out of Port Everglades corrupt any notion of serenity. Nor can some temporary setting in a semi-industrial section of Fort Lauderdale envelop visitors the way that sloping decent into melancholy does on a grassy reach of the Washington Mall. A jumble of camouflage netting offers a backdrop for the replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall that has been erected by the [Veterans of Foreign Wars] Post 1966, amid self-service gas stations, warehouses, an all-night diner and other unpretty addresses along State Road 84. And this version, a travelling exhibit called the Vietnam Moving Wall is only a half-scale model of aluminum panels just six feet at the apex, without the overwhelming effect of those daunting slabs of polished granite.[xii]

Here the differences in size, form, and materials are joined by a recognition of the spatial dissonance that can be interpreted in the Moving Wall’s placing during any given tour stop. The “serenity” of the Washington Mall and the “melancholy” of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial are lost in the Moving Wall’s reproduction of its cultural image. The free-standing, short, thin painted aluminium panels that make up the Moving Wall pale in comparison to the black granite of the original wall as it descends with the visitor into the earth of a cut out hill side. For this critic, the commemorative process is distorted, limited in its ability to convey the power of the original to visitors.

Another concern expressed in press coverage of the Moving Wall was the issue of the temporary nature of the mobile memorial as a commemorative form. Historian James Young suggests that “a monument necessarily transforms an otherwise benign site into part of its content,” creating cohesion or tension depending on the level of perceived incongruity between the monument and the surrounding spatial context.[xiii] In the case of the Moving Wall, its mobile and temporary nature invites a number of tensions and incongruities to surface as it occupies and temporarily transforms a given space, only to depart and create a void in the transformed space it leaves behind. One commenter at a display of the Moving Wall in Ventura, California, in 1985 stated that, “this thing does a lot of healing…. But the bad thing about it is when you take it down and watch it go away. It’s like putting one of your friends in a body bag, and knowing that part of you walked away.”[xiv]

This void left in the spaces previously occupied by the Moving Wall attests to its transformative effects. As it occupies space in a given location, it both transforms and is transformed by its new temporary spatial context. Part of the fallout of the effects on the memorial itself is the objects and memorabilia left at the wall by visitors. A ritual carried over from the original, Devitt collects these objects and stores them in a warehouse in San Jose.[xv] As for the effects the memorial has on the spaces it occupies, historian Patrick Hagopian notes efforts by local organizations to fill perceived voids left behind by the Moving Wall. He catalogues some of the commemorative structures and markers placed in the same spaces as the Moving Wall and states that such “material afterimages of the memorial’s presence evoke the resonance of acts of remembering, echoing through the years.”[xvi]

One such commemorative structure that has filled the void left by the Moving Wall is the Wall South memorial in Pensacola, Florida. After the Moving Wall’s 1987 stop in Pensacola, a group of local Vietnam veterans formed the Wall South Foundation and proposed to erect their own half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, suggesting that it would be placed in the same spot formerly occupied by the Moving Wall, but much more accurate to the original.[xvii] Inspired by the efforts of the Vietnam Combat Veterans Ltd. and impressed with the Moving Wall’s popularity and impact, the Wall South Foundation and the Vietnam Veterans of Northwest Florida made it their mission to raise the necessary funds to make the Wall South a reality. One leading advocate was veteran Lenny Collins, who stated that “Vietnam vets are the ones who brought the Moving Wall here… and after we saw the reactions and the way that everybody was moved and everybody pulled together for the vigil… it just mushroomed.”[xviii] While this vigor and enthusiasm speaks to the positive effects the Moving Wall had in this community, Collins also reveals the effect of the memorial’s departure. He noted that “It felt like they took something away when it left,” suggesting the sort of void described above. This “something” that had been taken away with the Moving Wall had disrupted the commemorative process for the Veterans of the Wall South Foundation, inspiring them to fill that void with their own, more authentic replica. In 1992, the Wall South was completed in the Moving Wall’s former space, and the area subsequently became the Pensacola Veterans Memorial Park, now also home to memorials for the two World Wars and the Korean War.

The Moving Wall as a travelling memorial, and as a replica of one of the most impactful and divisive memorials in the United States, acts as an anomaly in our established understanding of commemoration, memorials, and the deep connection between memory and space. While the Moving Wall undoubtedly operated within the same discourses and politics that have dominated the memory of the Vietnam War in the United States since 1975, it signifies an explicit social therapeutic act by a group of veterans inspired by the experience of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial – bringing their own memories and politics to a commemorative form that consistently exists in transitional space. Displays of the replica operated on reciprocal transformations of meaning in the interpretative landscapes that acted on, and were acted upon by the Moving Wall, presented to the public to be engaged and negotiated on individual and collective levels. In some cases, when its temporary nature created a void in the commemorative process, individuals and collectives took it upon themselves to address and rectify that void with their own reproductions of the memorial wall. This interplay between the reproduction of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as a cultural image and the dynamic sites of memory created the Moving Wall illuminates a rare phenomenon in American commemorative culture, and presents the opportunity to deepen our understanding on the intersection of memory, commemoration, space, and place-making.

References

i. Edward T. Linenthal, “The Boundaries of Memory: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,” American Quarterly 46:3 (September 1994), 406-433.

ii. Robin Wagner-Pacifici and Barry Schwartz, “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a Difficult Past,” American Journal of Sociology 97:2 (September 1991), 376; Kristin Ann Hass, Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 1-3, 6; Kim S. Theriault, “Re-membering Vietnam: War, Trauma, and ‘Scarring Over’ at ‘the Wall,’” Journal of American Culture 26:4 (December 2003), 421, 429-30.

iii. Charles L. Griswold, “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington Mall: Philosophical Thoughts on Political Iconography,” Critical Inquiry 12:4 (June 1986), 690.

iv. Griswold, “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington Mall,” 709.

v. Wayne King, “Our Towns; Vietnam Veteran Moves the Wall Across the Land,” New York Times, August 22, 1989 (online).

vi. “Vietnam Memorial Takes to the Road,” New York Times, December 1, 1985 (online); Paid for in part through public donations and a San Jose City Council endorsement: Michael Oricchio, “Walls and Bridges: The Moving Wall, a Portable Replica of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, is one Veteran’s Tribute to the Sacrifices Made by His Fellow Comrades,” San Jose Mercury News, July 16, 1990, 9B.

vii. Oricchio, “Walls and Bridges,” San Jose Mercury News, July 16, 1990, 9B; King, “Our Towns,” New York Times August 22, 1989 (online).

viii. Michelle Guido, “The Things They Left Behind With Each Visit, the Vietnam Vet who Trucks His Memorial Wall across the Land Collects a Message, and a Memory He Can’t Forget,” San Jose Mercury News, December 9, 1990, 1A.

ix. Qouted in: Adam Ramirez, “Veterans Rally Around Replica of Vietnam Wall,” The Miami Herald, April 29, 1999, 7B.

x. Neil Chethick and Karen Klinger, “Wall of Tears: Veterans Get a Special Chance to Say Goodbye,” San Jose Mercury News, April 7, 1987, 1B.

xi. King, “Our Towns,” New York Times, August 22, 1989 (online).

xii. Emphasis added; Fred Grimm, “Black Wall of Eternity,” The Miami Herald, May 2, 1999, 1BR.

xiii. James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 7.

xiv. “Vietnam Memorial Takes to the Road,” New York Times, December 1, 1985 (online).

xv. Guido, “The Things They Left Behind With Each Visit,” San Jose Mercury News, December 9, 1990, 1A.

xvi. Patrick Hagopian, The Vietnam War and American Memory: Veterans, Memorials, and the Politics of Healing (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009), 392.

xvii. “Group Seeks Money to Build Memorial,” The Miami Herald, January 6, 1990, 2B; “Vets Plan ‘Wall South’ in Florida: Memorial Would Honor War Dead,” The Miami Herald, September 16, 1990, 1B.

xviii. “Veterans Seeking to Build Replica of Famed Memorial,” The Miami Herald, May 5, 1988, 2D.

Bilbiography

Bibliography:

Primary Sources

The Miami Herald

New York Times

San Jose Mercury News

Secondary Sources

Theriault, Kim S. “Re-membering Vietnam: War, Trauma, and ‘Scarring Over’ at ‘the Wall.’”

Journal of American Culture 26:4 (December 2003), 421-431.

Linenthal, Edward T. “The Boundaries of Memory: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.” American Quarterly 46:3 (September 1994), 406-433.

Wagner-Pacifici, Robin and Barry Schwartz. “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a Difficult Past.” American Journal of Sociology 97:2 (September 991), 376-420.

Hass, Kristin Ann. Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

Griswold, Charles L. “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington Mall: Philosophical Thoughts on Political Iconography.” Critical Inquiry 12:4 (June 1986), 688-719.

Young, James E. The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

Hagopian, Partrick. The Vietnam War and American Memory: Veterans, Memorials, and the Politics of Healing. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009.