I just read the March 2005 issue of Armchair General, and have a few comments on the "More D.C. Destinations" article in Dispatches. The World War II Memorial is a component of the National Mall and Memorial Parks, a unit of the National Park Service. It’s official name is "World War II Memorial", without the "National" in front of it. The "National" was used for fund-raising purposes only, to bring attention to the fact that this would be a true national memorial.

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It’s physical location is on the National Mall (not Capitol Mall), and is indeed the most visited memorial in the park, although most visitors visit multiple memorials. What is unique about this war memorial compared with the others on the National Mall, is that it is not just dedicated to those who served in uniform during that war, but the estimated 16 million who served on the home front as well. A computer database is steadily growing that will eventually contain the names of all 32 million uniformed and non-uniformed "veterans" of the war. Information on adding someone to this database may be obtained at 1-800-639-4992.

Lastly, the memorial can be visited 24 hours a day as mentioned in the article, along with a couple of other memorials you omitted . . . the Korean War Memorial and D.C. World War (One) Memorial. For those who struggle with why the WWII Memorial came after the Viet Nam and Korean Memorials, it is due to the fact that these memorials are all privately conceived and built (the Federal Government doesn’t build memorials), and requires a private group to initiate the idea; Congress merely approves the use of federal land for the memorial site.

Mark Ragan, Park Ranger
I&RP Division, MallOps
USNPS-NACC

Mark,

Thanks for taking the time to give our readers some extra detail about visiting Washington D.C. We couldn’t have gotten it from a better source!

Brian King
Website Editor
Armchair General

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