World War II Memorial

by Shmuel Ross

The National World War II Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, May 29th, 2004. This was the first national memorial made to remember World War II, the 16 million Americans who served in the armed forces at that time, and the more than 400,000 soldiers who died in the war. About 200,000 people, including almost 100,000 veterans, attended the dedication.

The memorial is in the National Mall in Washington, D.C., between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. It was proposed seventeen years ago, and took two and a half years to build. It is the size of a football field, and contains arches, pillars, a wall of stars, fountains, a pool, and many inscriptions. These words are on a tablet at the entrance of the memorial:

"Here in the presence of Washington and Lincoln, one the Eighteenth-Century father and the other the Nineteenth-Century preserver of our nation, we honor those Twentieth-Century Americans who took up the struggle during the Second World War and made the sacrifices to perpetuate the gift our forefathers entrusted to us: a nation conceived in liberty and justice."