[yonif]

[Modernman]

Going to see it this weekend. From what I saw as they were building it, they did a great job.

[SquirrelKing]

Can't wait to see it.

[pt17]

Long overdue. My father, who went through the entire Pacific theatre, would be proud of it were he with us.

[pete anderson]

This one is for you Dad. Thanks.

[BushisTheMan]

I hate to be a bummer, but how long before the Dems and their ilk or the Religion of Peace deface it?

[GreenLanternCorps]

Given how bad some recent monuments have been, I expected this one to be horrible. But from the photos above, I seem to be wrong.

It's beautiful. Kudos to all involved.

[annyokie]

It is beautiful!

[dfwgator]

Tom Hanks may be a typical Hollywood liberal but he deserves kudos for help bringing this to fruition.

[prairiebreeze]

Sometimes I think of what those times must have been like for the families and those left at home. No internet or tv, they listened to radio broadcast, read the papers and watched newsreels for information on what was happening. Waiting. Waiting for precious letters to arrive, and writing them too.

Maybe working for the war effort here at home. Factory jobs. Rationing, gas and sugar and other things. Rubber drives, paper drives. And a whole lot of patriotism, though perhaps not without hearing at least occasional opposition to the war.

Those who came home and those who didn't. I guess that's pretty much the same as today and every war, except perhaps for the numbers of casualties. Wondering, worrying and praying. That hasn't changed either.

I hope their media was more reliable and less biased than ours is today. The memorial looks beautiful. I hope I get the opportunity to visit it.

Prairie

[Hanging Chad]

I still don't understand why they decided not to include
the Merchant Marines in the memorial, other than that, it looks great.

[SAMWolf]

Bump

[McGavin999]

It sure looks better then it did in the drawings.

[sphinx]

It looks nice enough but it still adds more clutter to the Mall. I say that as one who has disliked every new intrusion on the Mall since the Vietnam Memorial. The new Museum of the American Indian is even worse; it blocks sight lines, the color of the facing stone is disruptive, and it looks generally out of place.

It's time to leave the Mall alone. There are other worthy options for new museums and memorials. The Anacostia Riverfront is being redeveloped; South Capitol Street could be turned into another grand approach avenue; the ridge overlooking the river from Anacostia could be exploited, especially since the St. Elizabeth's site needs to be recycled; North Capitol Street, which was ruined by turning it into a commuter sewer, could be reclaimed; the Stadium-Armory complex could be turned into a splendid Eastern Gateway, large enough to house quite an attractive riverfront museum/memorial complex of its own. Looking ahead a hundred years, D.C. needs to intelligently disperse some of the tourist attractions rather than just mindlessly packing more and more onto an already congested Mall.

One good thing about the new memorials, however, is that they're generally quite bikeable thanks to modern design for wheelchair access. The FDR memorial, right off the Tidal Basin, is especially nice to peddle through about 6 in the morning when no one is there. The Mall makes a great jogging/biking course in the early morning hours before the tourists arrive; you go past all the great old memorials but right through the new ones.