The National World War II Memorial, Washington, D.C., June 2004
The World War II Memorial squats on the Mall between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. From afar its purpose seems to be to mar the vista. From up close its purpose is less certain.
The Memorial was dedicated on May 29, 2004—something of a tardy homage to the combat veterans of the war, who were by then mostly near eighty or dead. On the other hand, no mere shrine to combat bravery seems to be intended. According to the Web site that all persons, places, and things nowadays must have, “The World War II Memorial honors the 16 million who served in the armed forces of the U.S., the more than 400,000 who died, and all who supported the war effort from home . . . a monument to the spirit, sacrifice, and commitment of the American people.” In other words, a monument to showing up.
The Memorial was designed by Friedrich St. Florian, who, just going by his name, sounds like a fellow that America has fought a couple of wars against, such as the French and Indian and World War II. Mr. St. Florian did his designing in the neoclassic idiom—if the classic orders of architecture are Dorky, Ironic, and Corny-inthian. A seven-and-a-half-acre plaza is sunk below the ground, though not nearly far enough.
A pair of ill-proportioned four-story-high open-roofed structures, which could be construed as chapels if separation of church and state allowed chapels on the Mall, bookend a fountain-filled oval fringed with fifty-six bell-less belfries—one for each state, territory, and miscellaneous American domain including the Virgin Islands, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the District of Columbia, and Guam. (What, no Canal Zone?) Ask not for whom the imaginary bell tolls.
I might be wrong about these being bell towers. Maybe “Croquet Wickets de Triomphe” is the effect being sought. The two chapels—perhaps they’re stone gazebos—have bronze sculptures where their domes would be if they had domes. The sculptures, I believe, depict bald eagles getting tangled in Christmas wreaths. The gazebos are labeled “Atlantic” and “Pacific,” causing anyone remotely close to the age of a World War II vet to automatically think “Tea Company.” The fountain pools, though lacking fish, are very fish pond–like, and these, combined with an artificial waterfall, produce a miniature golf course foreground for the Lincoln Memorial. A Vegas touch is also provided in a wall of gold stars equaling (by some mathematical ratio that isn’t self-evident) the number of U.S. war dead. Elsewhere are scattered incised quotations of a barely stirring nature:
Women who stepped up were measured as citizens of the nation, not as women. . . . This was a people’s war, and everyone was in it.
—Col. Oveta Culp Hobby
The American Battle Monuments Commission must have looked hard for that one. As to its being a “people’s war,” had previous wars been fought by furniture, toys, and pets?
The World War II Memorial is entered from the east, down steps to the sunken plaza. Flanking the steps are haut-relief bronze panels sculpted in a style that could be called “accused-of-being-socialist realism.” They depict scenes from the Atlantic theater, on the right, and the Pacific theater, on the left. The Pacific tableaux begin with alarmed people listening to the radio (news from Pearl Harbor, one supposes) and end with V-J Day celebrations in Times Square. The Atlantic tableaux begin with an attempt at a visualization of the Lend-Lease Program and end with our GIs shaking hands with Soviets, smiles all around.
This is not a fit monument to the American men who fought the war. But it isn’t meant for them, what with their being near eighty and dead and all. The Memorial is, rather, a sentimental gesture toward the whole “Greatest Generation,” about whom we are getting so sentimental now that we’ve put them in nursing homes.
This is a fit monument to the American men, women, and politicians who endured a global depression only partly of their own making, struggled to free mankind from totalitarian oppression by fascists and communists (once they’d gotten over admiring the efficiencies of the former and being allies with the latter), and rebuilt the postwar world—with seven-foot ceilings and cheap hollow doors. We call them the Greatest Generation, and we call them other things when we’re stuck behind them in the ten-items-or-less grocery store checkout lane while they debate with the clerk about expiration dates on discount coupons for oleomargarine. Their World War II Memorial doesn’t quite ruin the Mall.
I am reminded of the 1960s, when my own generation did a much more thoroughgoing job of ruining the Mall during various attempts to end war, expand cosmic consciousness, crush capitalist-pig imperialism, meet girls, and score pot. I can’t help wondering when we will get our monument.
Technically, I suppose, the Vietnam Memorial counts. Vietnam veterans were for the most part born in the same years as my friends and I. But those were the kids who when somebody yelled “Get a haircut!” got a haircut—or, anyway, the Army gave them one free. What about my part of my generation? What about the Veterans of Domestic Disorders? I know Vietnam was a tough and terrifying experience. But you should have seen the fights around the dinner table at my house. Dad went ballistic when he discovered that I’d joined a commune that was living in the basement rec room. And when the cops broke out the tear gas at the anti-war demonstrations, my friends and I had to tap reserves of strength and will that we didn’t know we possessed, to run away as fast as we did.
We cared. My generation of Americans was the first to really care about racism and sexism, not to mention the I Ching, plus, of course, the earth. “It’s important to preserve the earth’s resources,” I remember saying to Windflower, a pert blonde. “You and I will have to double up in the shower to get this tear gas off.” Also, we were committed. I recall several people whose families had them committed.
We changed the world. Life has never been the same since that “youthquake” of forty-some years ago. Think of all the things we wouldn’t have if not for the uninhibited freedom and creativity of the 1960s: Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream, Narcotics Anonymous twenty-four-hour help lines, Cher, the Volkswagon New Beatle, comedians who use the word “bullshit” on network TV (after ten PM), cats named Chairman Meow, retro 1960s clothing fashions, retro 1960s hairstyles, retro 1960s music fads, herpes.
As a generation, perhaps we weren’t the “greatest,” but we certainly were the greatest surprise, when we returned from college drenched in patchouli oil, spouting Karl Marx, and wearing clown pants and braids in our beards. Members of the Greatest Generation pride themselves on all the tribulations they survived, but many of them never got over that one. Mercifully, most members of my generation did. It’s been said that we never had to make sacrifices. Not true. Lots of us are awake by nine o’clock in the morning and have jobs.
We got married, had families, straightened out, got married again, had more families, straightened out (really). There can be no greater sacrifice than that a man lay down his lifestyle for others. And—“we are all one”—for himself, too, once he figures out that golf is more fun than hacky sack and decides he wants a Lexus. But that doesn’t mean I won’t pay fifty cents a cup extra to make sure that my coffee has been organically grown and ecologically harvested in a way that does not cause political or economic exploitation.
Speaking of sacrifices, the Veterans of Domestic Disorders Memorial should be engraved with names of those who perished in order that the world might be, you know, groovy. Several prominent rock musicians come to mind, although celebrity drug overdoses could send the wrong message to our own kids who are under the impression that, yes, Dad did have funny hair in the 1960s, but he spent the entire decade singing “Kumbaya” at folk Mass.
There were those poor students who died at Kent State, except I can’t remember their names. That’s a problem with engraving names on a 1960s monument. What with the ingestion of this and that and people giving themselves monikers like “Windflower,” it’s hard to remember anyone’s name from back then. But this is a detail. The important question is the concept and design of the memorial.
My wife, a member of Generation X (and I’m betting that their monument will consist of a Prada backpack with a Brady Bunch CD inside), thinks the 1960s memorial should be something that would allow members of my generation to contemplate the driving force behind the era. She suggests a mirror. I’d like it to be slightly concave to produce an image that is slimming. My uncle Mike (Marine Corps, Iwo) proposes a large ditch with a donkey in it, although he puts that in somewhat different words. But the donkey might be misconstrued—many Veterans of Domestic Disorders being, these days, Republicans. A competition should be opened, with invitations extended to the most talented architects and artists born from 1946 to 1964. (No burnouts who live in yurts or belong to crafts collectives, please.) I trust this competition will produce something with dignity, grandeur, and a place to stash a roach if the park police come nosing around.