The Vietnam War Memorial was created to honor the courageous US armed forces members, who died or went missing while fighting in the Vietnam War. It is located on the northwest corner of the Nation Mall. The Vietnam War began on November 1st, 1955, and ended on April 30th, 1975. It lasted for 19 years, 5 months, 4 weeks, and 1 day. In the late 1970s, an organization called Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Inc. arose to help raise money for a memorial to help people to remember the lost soldiers. Congress decided on an area to put the structure, and the corporation started a nationwide competition on designs for the project. There were over 1,400 submissions, but the judges narrowed it down until they picked a Yale architecture student named
