Asian Invasion of the 80's: Vietnam War Memorial Controversy

Ariel View of Vietnam Veterans Memorial

On May 6, 1981 a board of architects and sculptors chose the winner of the design competition for the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial. Out of 1,421 design entries the board unanimously chose the winner, Maya Ying Lin a Chinese American architecture student at Yale University. The design stood out from many of the traditional war memorials that featured statues of veteran soldiers during the war. Lin’s design however was large “V” shaped wall that went down into the earth like an indent, and increased in height as the two sides join together. The black reflective wall houses the names of the fallen U.S. service members that died during the Vietnam War. For Lin, the creator, this design symbolized a wound, the Vietnam War, and the healing process and scar that are formed after. Unfortunately many veterans and the rest of the public didn’t take it that way and a great amount of controversy hovered over the design. Many veterans protested against the design stating that it was a “black gash of shame” and some even went so far to harass Lin with racial slurs.

However what really created so much controversy was not really the design but the creator, as seen by the many inappropriate comments and reactions from Vietnam veterans. I’m sure if that if a Caucasian girl presented the same design there would not be a controversy. The true and unfortunate is that Maya Ying Lin is Asian and she has presented a design for the veterans of the Vietnam War. These veterans have been trained during the war that these Vietnam “gooks” were inferior and deserved to die. Because how could you kill many other humans if you still see them as human. This slaughtering had to be justified and it was through the great amount of propaganda that was funneled into the average G.I’s mind.

So of course it is not surprising that these veterans reacted this way when an Asian American presents a design for their memorial. We really can’t blame them though, after years and years of brainwashing by the war effort and American propaganda it only seems reasonable that those beliefs stuck, especially with the war just ending. Even today this aftereffect can be seen with the end of the Iraqi war and the controversy with the Muslim mosque near ground zero. Like Maya Ying Lin the group of Muslims that were hoping to build the mosque aren’t even the same ethnic tribe as the Muslims that crashed the planes into the towers on 9/11. However like ignorant America that isn’t taken into notice because all muslims like Asians are grouped together.

Even though ethnicity shouldn’t matter, the fact that Asians, Muslims, or any other non-white Americans are “some ethnicity”-American, the fact that they are still American is not taken into notice. For they are simply still not totally accepted as Americans in this nation. Despite it all the ground for the Vietnam Memorial was finally broken on March 26, 1982. However the complete memorial was not completely like the original design. The once simplistic design that Lin had intended for was altered and so as a result of the controversy a statue called “The Three Soldiers”. However despite it all it is in the design’s symbolic sentimental value that Lin has created that makes the Vietnam memorial the most visited public monument in the country.