Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from

radiotopia my name is Jody African

This day November 12th 1982, a multi-day ceremony is taking place in Washington, D.C. to dedicate

the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

and those Americans who died in the war in Vietnam.

The central feature of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial,

the element that was opened at that ceremony in 1982 is the memorial wall.

Two enormous black granite slabs set into the ground sitting in a sort of V formation

engraved with the names of those who died in the war.

The wall initially listed 57,939 names in the decades since another 500 or so have been added

to that list, as have some other elements to the memorial space.

This is a site that has seen some controversy and some attempts to address that controversy

over the years and I guess address some of the bigger questions about how we memorialize our war dead.

So here to talk about the Vietnam Memorial and those larger questions is as always

Nicole Hemmer of Columbia. Hello Nicky. Hey Jody. You been? You seen it in person? I have. I think I saw it for the

first time in 2006 when I was living in Washington for a few months and I knew the

controversy and so I didn't expect much from the memorial and I was actually pretty

moved by it.

Yeah, I mean I grew up, I went to high school in DC and I went down to play sports in, like along the mall a lot, and so I walked past it a lot, and so, you know, I've been to it a bunch.

And I kind of feel like it was the first piece of architecture that

really moved me I mean it is incredibly moving and I remember also hearing I

think maybe after the fact that its design was controversial and not really

...