I wish to acknowledge the assistance of the Smithsonian Institution and the College of William and Mary's Commonwealth Center for the Study of American Culture in providing fellowship support for the article's research.

1. Elizabeth Kutsche of Richland, Michigan, to Vietnam Veterans Memorial Competition, March 2, 1981 (Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund [henceforth, WMF] Collection, Library of Congress, Box 64).

2. Kennedy, John F., “America's Stake in Vietnam, the Cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia,” delivered at a conference sponsored by the American Friends of Vietnam, 06 1, 1956, Vital Speeches of the Day 22, no. 17 (06 15, 1956): 618Google Scholar; Herring, George C., America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986), 43Google Scholar; Hess, Gary R., “Commitment in the Age of Counter-insurgency: Kennedy's Vietnam Options and Decisions, 1961–1963,” in Shadow in the White House: Presidents and the Vietnam War, 1945–1975, ed. Anderson, David L. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993)Google Scholar; and Klein, Christina, “Family Ties and Political Obligation: Middlebrow Culture and Cold War Commitment to Asia,” in Cold War Constructions: The Political Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1945–1966, ed. Appy, Christian (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

3. Why Vietnam? (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Directorate for Armed Forces Information and Education, 1965)Google Scholar, and The Green Berets (Dir. John Wayne, Warner Brothers, 1968); see Cawley, Leo, “The War About the War: Vietnam Films and American Myth,” in From Hanoi to Hollywood: The Vietnam War in American Film, ed. Dittmar, Linda and Michaud, Gene (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 74Google Scholar.

4. McConachie, Bruce A., “The ‘Oriental’ Musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein and the U.S. War in Southeast Asia,” Theatre Journal 46 (1994): 391CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Klein, “Family Ties.”

5 . For published examples of relevant combat art, see Daggett, Noel, This Won't Hurt a Bit and Gifts for the Children of An Phong Orphanage, and Apollo Dorian, Vietnamese Girls with Gifts from Coast Guardsman, in Combat Art of the Vietnam War, ed. Anzenberger, Joseph F. Jr (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1986), 84, 85, 97Google Scholar; and Young, Cliff, The “Other” War, in Raymond, Henri, Vietnam Combat Art (New York: Cavanagh and Cavanagh, 1968), unpaginatedGoogle Scholar.

6. The National Archives and the photographic collections of the U.S. Army contain numerous examples of such official photographs. Published photographs of medical personnel include the following: A U.S. Army doctor wearing an expression of deep concern and resignation comforts a girl fatally wounded by a grenade tossed into a marketplace (presumably not by an American) (Pabel, Hilmar, Rimsting/Chiemsee, published in The Vietnam Experience: Images of War, ed. Fisher, Julene [Boston: Boston Publishing, 1986], 52Google Scholar). A military doctor attracts an audience as he pulls the tooth of a Mekong Delta villager in July 1970. The doctor is shown in profile, his patient from the rear, so that the frame is filled with the faces and bodies of the onlookers (Bernard Moran, PHC L., Navy, U.S., published in Mills, Nick, and the editors of the Boston Publishing Company, The Vietnam Experience: Combat Photographer [Boston: Boston Publishing, 1966], 83Google Scholar). A photograph of an American soldier inoculating a Vietnamese woman as part of a “civic action” program is published in Westmoreland, William's A Soldier Reports (New York: Da Capo, 1989), photograph section between pages 326 and 327Google Scholar. In another shot, a sympathetic interaction between an American and a Vietnamese child, an infantry officer hands out treats to children in Lai Khe, north of Saigon (Sp4 George J. Denoncourt II, U.S. Army, published in Mills, , Combat Photographer, 82Google Scholar).

7. Tour 365, Spring-Summer 1968, 16, 32–33.

8. In January 1967, Ramparts magazine published a report titled “The Children of Vietnam” that “did much to set off national discussion of how U.S. tactics in the war were causing unnecessary civilian casualties” (Hodgson, Godfrey, America in Our Time [New York: Vintage, 1978], 344Google Scholar).

9. The chants clearly affected President Johnson himself (see Chafe, William H., The Unfinished Journey, 3rd ed. [New York: Oxford University Press, 1995], 339Google Scholar).

10. Poster produced by the antiwar organization, Women Strike for Peace, in the Collection of the National Museum of American History, Division of Political History, Smithsonian Institution.

11. Numerous posters featuring dead and injured Vietnamese children have been collected by the curators of archives of antiwar posters: the AOUON (“All of Us or None”) archive in Berkeley, California; the Center for Political Graphics, Los Angeles; the Division of Political History, National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.; and a collection curated by David Kunzle of the University of California, Los Angeles, Posters of Protest: A Graphic Dossier of U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam, now deposited at the Center for the Study of Political Graphics. A poster from the AOUON archive is a photomontage depicting an aircraft releasing its bombs, which explode on the Vietnamese children below.

12. For example, a poster in the collection of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics captioned “This is the enemy” depicts a distressed Vietnamese woman holding an injured child. See also David Kunzle, Posters of Protest: A Graphic Dossier of U.S. Vietnam War Crimes, catalog of the exhibition at the Wight Art Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles, 1991; Lippard, Lucy, A Different War: Vietnam in Art (Bellingham, Wa.: Whatcom Museum and the Real Comet, 1990)Google Scholar; and Berger, Maurice, Representing Vietnam, 1965–1973: The Antiwar Movement in America, catalog of an exhibition at the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery in 1988 (New York: Hunter College Office of Publications, n.d. [1988])Google Scholar.

13. Ron Haeberle's photographs of the atrocity shocked millions of U.S. citizens when they appeared in an article, “Massacre at Mylai,” Life, 12 5, 1969, 36–45Google Scholar.

14. As Myra MacPherson wrote, My Lai “became the massacre that will be forever synonymous with the Vietnam War,” an “international metaphor for all that was wrong” there (Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation [New York: New American Library, 1984], 582, 587Google Scholar).

15. The interview between CBS News's Mike Wallace and the Vietnam veteran was published in both the Washington Post and the New York Times on 11 25, 1969Google Scholar (see Hersh, Seymour, My Lai 4 [New York: Vintage, 1970], 201Google Scholar).

16. For references to the most frequently reproduced photographs, see Goldberg, Vicki, The Power of Photography: How Photographs Changed Our Lives (New York: Abbeville, 1991), ch. 9Google Scholar; Wagner-Pacifici, Robin and Schwartz, Barry, “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a Difficult Past,” American Journal of Sociology 97 (09 1991): 376–420, 388–89 fn. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Isaacs, Arnold, Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its Ghosts, and Its Legacy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 80Google Scholar. I treat the insistent reproduction of a number of photographs in an article titled “Vietnam War Photography as the Locus for Memories of the War” in the journal Cultural Values (forthcoming).

17. Schulzinger, Robert D., A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941–1975 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 321–22Google Scholar.

18. Russell E. Dougherty, Air Force Association, to Jan Scruggs, June 5, 1984, VVMF Collection, Library of Congress, Box 35.

19. Joe Wright, President of the National War Dogs Memorial Project, Inc., quoted in Russakoff, Dale, “Monumental Obsessions,” Washington Post, 02 23, 1989, A17Google Scholar; cf. Dunkel, Tom, “Semper Fido,” Washington Post, 11 14, 1993, F1, F4–F5Google Scholar; and White, Joe, “Scout Dog Heroes in Viet Nam, Dog World, 12 1987, 14Google Scholar. Joe White has broadened his effort by attempting to find another site, such as the Arlington Cemetery, where the dog would “stand guard over the soldiers sleeping their eternal sleep” (interview with the author, December 29, 1994; and circular letter from Joseph J. White to “Friends of the K-9 Memorial Project,” April 2, 1996, in the possession of the author).

20. Juan Hipolito, American GI Forum, Department of California, to Robert Doubek, WMF Project Director, October 25, 1982, in the VVMF Collection, Library of Congress, Box 35.

21. Statement by Jan Scruggs, President, VVMF, May 8, 1984.

22. Robert A. Carter, Executive Vice President, VVMF, to Juan Hipolito, November 5, 1982; Robert A. Carter to Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, October 26, 1982; and Delfino Huerta and Brenda Lee Huerta, Texas Army National Guard, to Robert Carter, VVMF, November 9, 1982, VVMF Collection, Library of Congress, Box 35.

23. Shirley Jones, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Jan Scruggs, n.d. The letter indicates that the writer had attended the dedication of the Hart statue a few days before writing and was concerned about the absence of an American Indian. Henry Woon and Norman Mineta complained about the absence of Asian Americans (Henry Woon, of Oakland, California, to the VVMF, November 10, 1982; and Norman Mineta, July 13, 1984, to Jan Scruggs, VVMF, July 13, 1984, VVMF Collection, Library of Congress, Box 35; and Charlotte Kugler to President Reagan, November 16, 1984, ID 283813, White House correspondence, Reagan Library, Simi Valley, California).

24. Jan C. Scruggs to Norman Mineta, August 3, 1984, VVMF Collection, Library of Congress, Box 35.

25. The relevant memorials are Jasper d'Ambrosi's sculpture of a wounded infantryman and two comrades, in Phoenix, Arizona; The Brothers, in Marin County, California, which depicts a black infantryman helping a white who has lost his leg in battle; the New Castle County, Wilmington, Delaware, sculpture by Charles Parks, of a black soldier carrying the lifeless body of his white comrade; the New Orleans, Louisiana, sculpture of three infantrymen carrying a fourth to safety, designed by Vietnam veteran Milton Pound and sculpted by William Ludwig; a silhouette of a wounded infantryman held by two others, in Augusta, Maine; an engraved soldier praying over a field of headstones of fallen friends, in Glen Falls, New York; a statue of two infantrymen carrying the limp body of a third, in Raleigh, North Carolina; Hill 881, in San Antonio, a battle scene in which several troops defend an injured comrade; and a statue of a GI holding up the lifeless body of a comrade, with the single word “Why?” inscribed on the pedestal, in Auburn, California.

26. For further discussion of post-Vietnam War uses of the metaphor of healing, see Beattie, Keith, The Scar That Binds: American Culture and the Vietnam War (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 11–57Google Scholar.

27. An exception is the North Carolina Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a three-figure grouping of statuary alongside the state capitol in Raleigh. In this sculpture, designed by Abbe Godwin and dedicated on May 23, 1987, the injured figure is an African American.

28. See Appy, Christian, Working-class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 11–12Google Scholar; Baskir, Lawrence M. and Strauss, William A., Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, the War and the Vietnam Generation (New York: Vintage, 1978), 6–10Google Scholar; and Terry, Wallace, Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans, 2nd ed. (New York: Ballantine, 1992), xvi–xviiGoogle Scholar.

29. Interview with John Mullen, a member of the Rensselaer County Vietnam Memorial Committee, Inc., May 8, 1995.

30. Sun, Lena H., “Vietnam Generation Honors its Own…,” Washington Post, 11 6, 1986, A6Google Scholar. The purpose of a planned memorial to be constructed in Memphis, Tennessee, was said to be “To produce a Vietnam War Memorial that will say more about brotherhood and race relations than war.” The most significant characteristic of the Vietnam War was considered to be “the frequency with which soldiers, regardless of race or class, risked their lives to save their comrades” (Project on the Vietnam Generation, Report on the Survey of State and Local Vietnam Veterans Memorials Nationwide [Fairfax, Va.: Indochina Institute, George Mason University, 1986], 93Google Scholar).

31. David Glassberg, personal communication, October 28, 1994; cf. Glassberg, , Sense of History: The Place of the Past in American Life (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

32. Westheider, James E., Fighting on Two Fronts: African Americans and the Vietnam War (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 113–15Google Scholar.

33. Westheider, , Fighting on Two Fronts, 32–33, 146–49Google Scholar.

34. Regarding class differences, see Fallows, James, “What Did You Do in the Class War, Daddy?” in Home, A. D., ed., The Wounded Generation: America After Vietnam (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1981), 15–29Google Scholar; Buckley, Chris, “Viet Guilt,” Esquir 09 1983, 68–72Google Scholar; Appy, , Working-class WarGoogle Scholar; and Baskir, Lawrence M. and Strauss, William A., Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, the War and the Vietnam Generation (New York: Vintage, 1978)Google Scholar.

35. The memorials' references to race and to black veterans may not, however, have been produced from the perspective that African Americans wish to remember, in so far as the composition of the memorial commissions and memorial funds are concerned. Although I met dozens of people associated with the construction of memorials during my research trips, they were invariably white Americans. The one African American I met who worked with the VVMF is Wayne Smith, who worked as Director of Development for the VVMF in the period around the tenth anniversary commemorative events in 1992; Brigadier General George Price has been a staunch supporter of various memorials.

Some caution should be used in generalizing from the memorial commission and memorial fund members whom I met, since I traveled only to ten memorial sites and did not meet all the members of the memorial commissions and memorial funds in every location. My impression, nevertheless, is that minority membership of memorial commissions and memorial funds is small. African-American veterans have, on the other hand, shown support for memorials that they did not have a hand in designing. See, for example, West, Rich, “The Fire This Time” (VVA Veteran 15, no. 2 [02 1995], 19)Google Scholar, which describes devoted attention of members of the VVA chapter in South Central Los Angeles to the half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

36. Cf. Keith Beattie's reading of the evocation of a transcendent unity that overcomes racial and class differences in the film Grand Canyon (1992) (Beattie, , The Scar that Binds: American Culture and the Vietnam War [New York: New York University Press, 1998], 148–49Google Scholar).

37. The classic statement of the notion of healing as national reconciliation is Scruggs, Jan C. and Swerdlow, Joel L., To Heal a Nation: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial (New York: Harper and Row, 1985)Google Scholar. Vietnam veterans memorials in Philadelphia, New York City, and St. Paul, Minnesota, borrowed the terminology of healing and reconciliation (see Hagopian, Patrick, The Social Memory of the Vietnam War [Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1994], 338 fn. 85Google Scholar).

Among the skeptics are the Vietnam veteran poet W. D. Ehrhart and the author Harry Maurer (see Isaacs, , Vietnam Shadows, 28Google Scholar; and Maurer, Harry, Strange Ground: An Oral History of Americans in Vietnam, 1945–1975 [New York: Avon, 1989], 17Google Scholar).

38. See, for example, the accounts by nurses in Walker, Keith, A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of Twenty-six American Women Who Served in Vietnam (New York: Ballantine, 1985)Google Scholar; Marshall, Kathryn, In the Combat Zone: Vivid Personal Recollections of the Vietnam War from the Women Who Served There (New York: Penguin, 1987)Google Scholar; and Van Devanter, Lynda, with Morgan, Christopher, Home Before Morning: The True Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam (New York: Warner, 1984)Google Scholar.

39. Celebration of Patriotism and Courage: Dedication of the Vietnam Women's Memorial, November 10–12, 1993 (Washington, D.C.: Vietnam Women's Memorial Project, 1993), 12Google Scholar. For a thorough treatment of the early design history and debates surrounding the Vietnam Women's Memorial, see Karal Ann Marling and Wettenhall, John, “The Sexual Politics of Memory: The Vietnam Women's Memorial Project and ‘the Wall’,” Prospects 14 (1989): 341–72Google Scholar.

40. The Vietnam Women's Memorial Project endorsed the Women in Military Service Memorial (letter from Diane Carlson, Donna-Marie Boulay, and Stephen B. Young, to Malcolm Wallop, subcommittee chair, reprinted in “Hearing of the Subcommittee on Public Lands, Reserved Water and Resource Conservation of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,” October 29, 1985 [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986], 290). The Women in Military Service for America Memorial won the sponsorship of four U.S. presidents, nine secretaries of defense, and the unanimous support of both houses of Congress (America's Best Kept Military Secret: Its Servicewomen, pamphlet by Women in Military Service for America Memorial, n.d.).

41. Diane Carlson Evans, statement at the Washington Project for the Arts panel discussion on “Commemorative Public Sculpture: The Politics of Memory,” p. 10. See also the testimony of women veterans in the television documentary Not on the Frontline (Producer, Janet Nearhood; Nebraska ETV Network, 1991).

42. Al Jenkins to Jan Scruggs, May 16, 1984.

43. Van Devanter, Lynda, Home Before Morning, 259, 312–13Google Scholar.

44. Invisible Veterans: A Legacy of Healing and Hope (Minneapolis: Vietnam Women's Memorial Project, n.d. [1986]), 4Google Scholar.

45. Diane Carlson Evans, President, Vietnam Nurses Memorial Project, to Jan Scruggs, VVMF, July 3, 1984, VVMF Collection, Library of Congress, Box 35. Evans's letter mentions earlier communications: a poem she sent to Scruggs, titled “Thanks Nurse,” about her thoughts on the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in November 1982, later published in Van Devanter, Lynda and Furey, Joan A., Visions of War, Dreams of Peace: Writings of Women in the Vietnam War (New York: Warner, 1991), 146–50Google Scholar; and a letter sent to the memorial fund by U.S. Representative Steve Gunderson in June 1984, supporting the addition of Rodger Brodin's statue “The Nurse” to the national memorial.

46. Cheryl Nicol, a supporter and regional organizer of the Vietnam Women's Memorial Project, interview with the author, June 27, 1991; Glenna Goodacre, interview with the author, July 16, 1992; and Diane Hellinger, Executive Director of the Vietnam Women's Memorial Project, interviews with the author, July 26, 1991; June 6, 1995. The transformation in the design is clearly evident by comparing the original boards submitted to the Vietnam Women's Memorial Project design competition with the statue, as realized, and by comparing the original maquette with later versions. The original design boards are documented in the collection of the Commission of Fine Arts, in Washington, D.C. The drawings and maquettes of the original and final designs were present in Glenna Goodacre's studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico, during the author's visit in July 1992.

47. Howard, Melanie, “Vietnam Memorial to Women Gets the Nod,” Washington Times, 09 20, 1991, B6Google Scholar.

48. Other symbolic markers of American losses are combat boots, and upturned rifles with fixed bayonets embedded in the ground. These three elements were used together in Vietnam as memorial markers for the dead in services honoring them. The use of the helmet in this memorial harks back to the rejected Rodger Brodin design of a solitary nurse, who was standing gazing at the helmet she held.

49. In demonstration of the importance of Christ-like sacrifice in post-Vietnam War sculpture, Vietnam veteran Michael Page's sculpture, Pieta, echoes Christ's bodily comportment in Michelangelo's Florence Pieta (see Lippard, Lucy, A Different War: Vietnam in Art [Seattle: Real Comet, 1990], 75Google Scholar).

50. One of these showed an adult accompanying a child; only one design showed a Vietnamese adult, with no children present, being helped by an American, but this Vietnamese figure is submerged in water and is visible only as a pair of hands. Slides of the designs have been collected by the Prints and Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, and copies of the entries referred to here are also in the collection of the author; unfortunately, the texts accompanying the designs are not all legible because the original 30 by 40-inch presentation panels are not accessible to researchers and are greatly reduced in scale in the 35-mm transparencies used to document the submissions. It is therefore difficult to glean the intention underlying the submissions. The author's attempts to gather further information from the registered competition entrants have been largely unavailing.

51. Daniel E. Lamber, State Adjutant, American Legion, Department of Maine, to Jan Scruggs, March 23, 1982, VVMF Collection, Library of Congress, Box 4.

52. Notes of the meeting of the Design Parameters Subcommittee of the Kentucky VVMF, December 15, 1984. The records were made available to the author by committee member William Black from his personal collection in Paducah, Kentucky.

53. Letter and photograph from Bill Henry, Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 279, to the author, February 27, 1996.

54. Bill Henry, Secretary of Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 279, and Chairman of the Vietnam Peace Memorial Restoration Committee, interview with the author, June 4, 1996. The memorial was created by James Keith of Omaha, Nebraska.

55. The photograph by John Olson appears on the paperback editions of two oral histories of women in Vietnam: Walker, , Piece of My HeartGoogle Scholar, and Marshall, , Combat ZoneGoogle Scholar. The memorial sculpture was designed and created by Teena Watson-Stern and Don Haugen; the architect was Zachary Henderson.

56. Roswell Vietnam War Memorial Committee, Inc., The Faces of War, brochure marking the memorial's dedication on 05 29, 1995Google Scholar, sent to the author by the City of Roswell, Georgia, Legal Department.

57. Two memorials in the environs of Washington, D.C., emphasize the non-combat roles of American personnel through sculptural depictions of American adults with children: the Seabees (Construction Battalions) memorial on Arlington Bridge, connecting Washington with Virginia, and a memorial in the grounds of the Red Cross headquarters in Washington.

58. Bratt, Heidi Mae, “Vietnam Vets Honored,” Detroit News, 09 10, 1991, 3BGoogle Scholar.

59. Fred Sepelak, interview with the author, September 21, 1994.

60. Interview with the author, September 21, 1994. Fred Sepelak wrote that his primary motivation in building the memorial was to “relieve a terrible guilt complex I developed” and to remind visitors of the “terrible tragedy” that affected individuals, friends and families in both countries (letter to the author, September 26, 1994). The 1971 photograph by Nick Ut of a young Vietnamese victim of a napalm attack by a South Vietnamese aircraft is one of the most well known and frequently reproduced documentary photographs of the war.

61. The Vietnam veterans memorial in Westchester County, New York, may predate the California memorial. Johns Hopkins University student Rebecca Shapiro drew my attention to this memorial in 1992. The memorial was dedicated in 1986 or 1987, according to Adele Dowling, Westchester County Parks Department (author's interview, May 9, 1995).

62. “Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission Announces a Competition for the State of California,” document in the archives of the CVVMC, Veterans Affairs Building, Sacramento. Linda McClenahan, the Commission Chair, used the initial suggestion that a child be incorporated in the design in order to reinforce her claim that a nurse should be included in the design: “We've talked about remembering the children of Vietnam along with the infantryman, and I'm pleased to be a part of the first memorial to do so. But I strongly feel that we would be wrong to not carry that remembrance one step further to include the women who've been behind the men since 1775” (Linda McClenahan to Donald Drumheller, July 27, 1984).

63. Letter from James C. Daniels, Executive Director, Veterans Assistance Center, Berkeley, Ca., to CVVMC, August 27, 1984, in the archives of the California Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission [hereafter, CVVMC], California Department of Veterans Affairs, Sacramento.

64. Pasquet, Trinda, “Vietnam Veterans Lambast Proposed Memorial,” Sacramento Union, 02 13, 1985, C1Google Scholar.

65. Leo K. Thorsness to Hon. Richard E. Floyd, September 28, 1984. The letter to Sen. Jim Ellis sent on August 26, 1984, was similar in content.

Speaking of the New York City memorial, Jim Noonan echoes Thorsness: “A monument is nothing more than bricks and mortar, it's nothing more than a symbol. But it is very important for those guys who between 1965 and 1973 came home and experienced disparaging remarks, perhaps we were spit on, perhaps we were called ‘baby-killers.’

In my experience in Vietnam, I never saw anybody shoot a kid indiscriminately, or any of that kind of stuff. If anything, quite the opposite. We'd go out to the orphanages all the time. Because the kids were a source of sanity” (Al Santoli, , To Bear Any Burden: The Vietnam War and Its Aftermath in the Words of Americans and Southeast Asians [New York: Ballantine, 1985], 320Google Scholar).

66. The discussion of the successive designs of the California memorial is based on the architects' drawings in the archives of the CVVMC, California Department of Veterans Affairs, Sacramento, and on the drawings in the architect Michael Larson's office in San Francisco.

67. For a sentimentalized image of Vietnamese children, see Capt. John T. Dyer Jr.'s pen-and-ink drawing, Saigon Street Scene, in Raymond, , Vietnam Combat ArtGoogle Scholar.

68. Robert D. Salgado, “California Vietnam Veterans Memorial,” descriptive essay with information on the derivation of the photographs on which many of the sculptural elements were based, October 24, 1989 (archives of the CVVMC).

Michael Kelley, a Sacramento veteran who assisted the CVVMC, has informed me that the photograph of the nurse and child appearing on the covers of A Piece of My Heart and In the Combat Zone was considered for inclusion in the California memorial. This image was also submitted as part of his third-placed design for the California memorial's design contest.

69. Of course, even infants could be booby-trapped.

70. This calls to mind the often-quoted statistic that the average age of service personnel in Vietnam was nineteen. The statistic has become an article of faith among those who point to the hardships that U.S. service personnel faced in Vietnam. Veterans who downplay the distinctiveness of the Vietnam War in comparison with other U.S. wars have recently disputed this statistic, however. See Vietnam War Fact Sheet, n.d., compiled by Gary Rousch of the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association, which claims that the average age of infantrymen in Vietnam was twenty-two (in the collection of the author). The same claim is made by Burkett, B. G. and Whitley, Glenna in Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History (Dallas: Verity, 1998), 47Google Scholar.

71. The letter is intended to be legible to visitors. Its text is reproduced in the commemorative dedication booklet (California Vietnam Veterans Memorial [Sacramento: California Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission], 12Google Scholar), in the archives of the memorial commission at the State Department of Veterans Affairs.

72. For an astute discussion of an earlier contest over the limits of commemorative representation, see Savage, Kirk, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Bogart, Michele, “The Rise and Demise of Civic Virtue,” in Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context, and Controversy, ed. Senie, Harriet F. and Webster, Sally (New York: HarperCollins, 1992)Google Scholar.

73. Sciolina, Elaine, “From Napalm's Horror to Forgiveness for Vietnam,” International Herald Tribune, 11 13, 1996, 2Google Scholar.

74. Ibid. Kim Phuc's importance for concerned Americans registers in the recent publication of a book about her life, and in the attention she has received in the media over the years (see Chong, Denise, The Girl in the Picture: The Remarkable Story of Vietnam's Most Famous Casualty [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999])Google Scholar. Once an icon of anti-imperialism, her role has shifted. She left her home in Cuba in 1992 and now lives in Canada, often speaking of reconciliation and forgiveness in media interviews.