States who served in the Korean War.”33 In 1983, Claude Pepper introduced a different bill. Adding “Allied Forces,” this one read, “A joint resolution to authorize the erection of a memorial on public grounds in the District of Columbia, or its environs, in honor and commemoration of members of the Armed Forces of the United States and the Allied Forces who served in the Korean War.”34 Both bills died in committee. A 1985 version, which was approved, dropped the allied forces; the logic behind this deletion is not made explicit in the congressional record, but the debate about the 1985 bill is revealing. The war to be remembered was an American war fought by American troops, and the role of the United Nations got precious little mention. Korea, communism, the millions of Koreans killed, and the Cold War also received hardly a passing mention.
The terms of the discussion in Congress echo the sentiments expressed in newspapers. Over and over again, the memorial is described as long overdue. The reason for building a memorial is universally assumed: to recognize the sacrifices of those who served. The war itself is described only in the most generic terms, as a quest for freedom, and the numbers of Americans who served and died are repeatedly emphasized. The service and sacrifice of the American soldiers are the central concerns. Representative Stan Parris was a sponsor of the bill; his language reflects the tenor of sentiments expressed in Congress.35 In May 1985 he stated, “A great disservice has been done to a very large segment of our population—a group of 5.7 million American Citizens who served during the Korean War.” He continued, “54,236 Americans made the ultimate sacrifice for their country and the ideals of freedom . . . ideals which form the foundation upon which this nation rests.” To him it was “incredible to note that there is not a memorial in the nation’s capital.” He concluded, “[T]his brave group has been leapfrogged by time and it is up to those of us serving in Congress to rectify the situation.”36
The final legislation is fairly straightforward. Public Law 99–572 was signed by Ronald Reagan on October 28, 1986, and calls for a memorial “in honor and commemoration of members of the Armed Forces of the United States who served in the Korean War.” It guarantees space on the Mall and puts the American Battle Monuments Commission in charge of overseeing the building of the memorial. It calls for the establishment of an all-veteran Korean War Memorial Advisory Board (KWMAB) to do two things. First, it was to select the design—subject, as is the case with all memorials built on federal lands in Washington, to the approval of American Battle Monuments Commission, the Commission of Fine Arts, and the National Capital Planning Commission. Second, it was to oversee fundraising for the memorial, or, in the language of the bill—“encourage private donations for the memorial.”37
The precedent had been set in this period for memorials on the National Mall to be built with private donations, when the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund rejected federal funds for their memorial for explicit political reasons.38 And though advocates for the Korean War Veterans Memorial did not seem to share this political position, they were required to raise the money to pay for their memorial from private sources. The Ninety-Ninth Congress also approved the building of a memorial for black Revolutionary War veterans and for women who have served in the U.S. military. These memorials also were required to be paid for with nonfederal monies.
In the end, the Korean War Veterans Memorial cost more than $18 million.39 Hyundai Motors of America gave the largest corporate donation, $1.2 million. Samsung Information Systems and a handful of other Korean corporations also gave generously, but most of the donations came from individuals. A Dear Abby letter in 1988 raised more than $400,000; a congressionally approved Korean War Memorial coin raised over $8 million; and the Korean War Veterans Association worked tirelessly to raise funds for the memorial. The pages of its aptly named newsletter, The Graybeards, were preoccupied with fundraising for the memorial from January 1986 through the dedication in 1995.40 Even as they expressed frustration about the pace of progress and the ever-increasing costs, the Graybeards editors pushed constantly for donations. In fact, they dedicated much more space to fundraising than to other issues related to the memorial, most notably the design. They spent precious little ink on the details of the design. The only design-related issue that came up with any regularity was concern about fair representation across military branches. Mostly what the editors and letter writers expressed over and over again was the desire to see the memorial completed on the Mall. And as successful as they were as fundraisers for the memorial, their power to influence the design of the memorial, had they been interested, seems likely to have been quite limited. In 1991 when they pushed for more progress and more accountability in the memorial process, the memorial board chair publicly berated them, and their representative on the advisory board resigned from the organization with an angry letter.41
Congress’s stipulation that veterans select the design was crucial to the memorial process and perhaps more consequential for the memorial than the stipulation that private monies be used. A jury of well-known architects, landscape architects, artists, and critics had selected the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; the fact that the VVM board did not include any veterans had been the subject of some controversy. This likely inspired the desire for an all-veteran board. Certainly, in its own unscientific way, the survey conducted at the dedication of the VVM made clear the desire for an all-veteran jury. And those who responded got their wish.
Given that 5.7 million people served in the Korean War–era military, President Reagan had a good pool from which to form his committee. Reagan had disliked Maya Lin’s design for the Vietnam Memorial from the start. His secretary of the interior, James Watt, had threatened to delay groundbreaking for the memorial unless modifications were made to her design. The Frederick Hart sculpture of three Vietnam War era soldiers was a last-minute, controversial addition because Reagan and Watt insisted on the addition of heroic figures. In selecting veterans to serve on this board, Reagan had a chance to set the record straight on the Mall. Not surprisingly, the veterans he chose were not the kind of veterans who made up the membership of the Korean War Veterans Association (KWVA) but the highest ranking and highest achieving Korean War veterans. He appointed eleven men and one woman, including one African American and one Latino, four colonels and three generals, five CEOs (most notably, the CEO of Occidental International Corporation, a petroleum company with more than $22 billion in annual profits), and representatives of selected veterans organizations, including the KWVA.42 The board chair was General Richard Stilwell, a four-star general and the son of a four-star general who had earned his nickname, “Vinegar Joe,” through toughness and acidity.43 These folks were charged with building the memorial, but, like all memorials on the Mall, it would need the approval of the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission.
In response to the McMillan Plan for the Mall, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts was established in 1910 by an act of Congress. The commission is charged with “giving expert advice to the President, Congress and the heads of departments and agencies of the Federal and District of Columbia governments on matters of design and aesthetics, as they affect the Federal interest and preserve the dignity of the nation’s capital.”44 The commission is composed of “well qualified judges of the fine arts” who are appointed by the president to a term of four years. Recent chairs of the commission include William Walton and J. Carter Brown, who served from 1971 to 2002. Brown, from the socially important—and once slave-trading—family that endowed Brown University, was among the most prominent forces in the American art world in the second half of the twentieth century. He served as the director of the National Gallery for twenty-three years, during which time he tripled its endowment and added the modern I. M. Pei addition. He also led the Commission of Fine Arts for more than thirty years, serving under seven presidents. Described as “America’s unofficial culture minister,” he had a great deal of influence in Washington. Brown was one of the strongest advocates for Maya Lin’s VVM design and, as such, had pushed for a particular, modern commemorative aesthetic on the Mall.
Also building on the logic of the McMillan Plan, the National Capital Park Commission was established by an act of Congress in 1924. In 1926, it was reestablished as the National Capital Park and Planning Commission, and Congress gave it comprehensive planning responsibilities
