Saw the Vietnam memorial wall in Hilo today. I've seen the original and the replica before and just thought it was a wall with names on it. I took a short tour this time and was enlightened to what the wall means.
The wall designed by a 21 year old college student in a contest with 1,400 entries. Veterans hated the design of the wall which was plain, below ground level like a ditch, and black - the color of sorrow. It didn't show any grandness or heroism that monuments usually do. Maya Ying Lin, who was Chinese and born in Ohio, received a lot of hate mail for her race and age, and that the wall represented communism.
The reason the Wall won was because of the care and symbology she graced it with. The wall represented a wound, as if a giant knife cut a wound into America, splitting it apart, with both ends extending into the ground. The black granite, a fairly rare material, represents the color of the earth and is long lasting. The wall was polished so a person can see their reflection in it to connect the living and the lost. One end of the wall points to the Washington monument with the other pointed to the Lincoln memorial showing it's place in history.
The names, no ranks listed, are listed in chronological order not from end to end, but from the center. This is to show that everyone was the same regardless of rank, race, or time they died. The first panel in the center represents all of the service members who died in the first 5 years of the war. The 2nd represents the next 5 months. The 3rd panel represents deaths in the next 5 days, to include those soldiers in the La Drang battle. The chronological order allows those who died together to be listed together. it also tells the story of the war like a diary.
Learn more about it
https://www.vvmf.org/About-The-Wall/history-of-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial/
