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Salem’s new Vietnam War Memorial is a quiet and peaceful place of its own, even with surrounding downtown construction.
Secluded on the southwest corner of Willson Park, at Northeast Cottage and State Streets outside the Oregon State Capitol, the memorial’s tall black granite columns shield visitors from the street.
A statue of a young male soldier in front of an American flag welcomes visitors stepping into the site. A large tree stands in the middle of the memorial, its branches sheltering the 46 columns. Those who helped design the memorial call it the “embracing tree.”
On each granite column are the names of Oregonians who died serving in the Vietnam War. The names — more than 700 — are organized by their “home of record,” Steve Bates, president of the Vietnam Memorial Fund, said. The list starts with Albany and covers dozens of communities, from Oregon’s major cities to rural towns and coastal enclaves, ending with Yoncalla.
“We wanted it to be more personalized that way,” he said. “Showing the community they’re attached to gives it emotion.”
The memorial was finally revealed on Nov. 22 after years of planning and about eight months of construction.
In 2021, the Oregon legislature passed a bill establishing the memorial on Capitol grounds, which then-Gov. Kate Brown signed into law. After designing and raising funding for the memorial, the project broke ground in March.
Salem lost 39 people to the Vietnam War, which spanned from November 1955 to May 1975. According to symbols placed next to the soldiers’ names, five of the Salem soldiers’ bodies were not recovered.
Currently, around 2,700 Vietnam veterans live in Salem and 95,000 live in Oregon.
Each soldier’s rank is intentionally listed after their name, as a way to honor the families, Bates said.
The steering committee in charge of designing the memorial gathered most of the soldiers’ names and homes of record through data from the U.S. Department of Defense. But for 80 soldiers, the committee had to find a home of record through high school and family records.
“We want it to be special for Oregon,” Bates said. He explained that listing soldiers by their hometown was to convey how much each city lost due to the war.
Although he leads the memorial fund, Bates is not a veteran himself. During the Vietnam War, he signed up for the draft but was never called to serve.
“I got to live my American dream and 58,000 American boys went to die to let me live my dream,” he said. For him, his work on the memorial is about honoring those who died when he and so many others didn’t have to risk their lives.
Bates said that several legislators refer to the Vietnam memorial as “Oregon’s wall,” referencing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C.
An important difference, Bates said, is that Salem’s memorial is made of columns, creating the appearance of a broken wall rather than one intact, like Salem’s World War II memorial. The broken wall design was intended to reflect the lack of support for the Vietnam War within the U.S., according to Bates.
In the future, there will be a second statue and more benches for people to sit and observe the memorial. Salem Reporter previously reported that the second phase will honor the nurses who worked in the Vietnam War and four families who lost sons in the war.
The second phase will begin once the first phase is fully paid for, Bates said. The fund needs around $6,000 in donations to break even on phase one.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly listed the memorial’s location at Northeast Court and State Streets. The memorial is located at the intersection of Northeast Cottage and State Streets. Salem Reporter apologizes for the error.
Contact reporter Madeleine Moore: [email protected].
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Madeleine Moore is working as a reporter at Salem Reporter through the University of Oregon’s Charles Snowden internship program. She came to Salem after graduating from the University of Oregon in June 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.
