Kansas Vietnam Memorial Causes Wall Between Veterans

In Kansas, Proposed Monument to a Wartime Friendship Tests the Bond

By MONICA DAVEY
Published: August 2, 2009
WICHITA, Kan. — This city’s small population of Vietnamese-Americans imagined a new monument in Veterans Memorial Park, a peaceful slope along the Arkansas River blooming with monuments to soldiers gone.

They pictured an American service member, in bronze, his arm resting protectively around the shoulder of a South Vietnamese comrade — an appreciation, they said, of the Americans’ alliance in a war that shaped their lives.

But in an effort to remember an old friendship, the bond seemed to come apart a little.

To the surprise of the Vietnamese here, some American veterans objected to the plan. And after long, tense talks, a compromise emerged last month at City Hall: the monument will sit just outside the John S. Stevens Veterans Memorial Park (named for a former local official and veteran), set apart from the rest of the memorials by a landscaped, six-foot earthen berm, with no sidewalk between.
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Proposed Monument to a Wartime Friendship Tests the Bond