DEATH, WAR, AND PUBLIC MEMORY: IWO JIMA, VIETNAM, AND THE WILD WEST

Abstract

While war memorials are one of the most public ways a nation tells stories about its past, its ideology, and its hopes for the future, they are seldom read with the attentiveness with which we read text. This paper looks at American war monuments – especially Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial of 1981-82 – and investigates the role of private memory, public memory, popular culture, photojournalism, and aesthetic power in the creation of and public response to these vehicles of grief, mourning, reconciliation, and (sometimes) action.