Monuments and Memory-Making immerses students in the conversations and controversies that emerged as the nation grappled with how best to memorialize what was at the time the longest military conflict in US history. As students engage in the historical process of memory-making, they will work to reconcile the varied and often contradictory voices that rose up after the fall of Saigon. Students will tackle questions such as How do we create a national memory of the past? How do we reckon with a war that was widely understood as a defeat for the United States? How do we remember the dead while honoring the living? How do we reunite a fractured nation? How do public opinion and public consciousness shape our understanding of the past, and whose voices are privileged over others? Working with primary and secondary sources, students will take command of the subject matter as they immerse themselves in their individual roles as historical actors in the debate of how best to remember and honor American participation and sacrifice in the Vietnam War.

In the decades after World War II, tens of thousands of soldiers and civilian contractors across Asia and the Pacific found work through the U.S. military. Recently liberated from colonial rule, these workers were drawn to the opportunities the military offered and became active participants of the U.S. empire, most centrally during the U.S. war in Vietnam. Simeon Man uncovers the little-known histories of Filipinos, South Koreans, and Asian Americans who fought in Vietnam, revealing how U.S. empire was sustained through overlapping projects of colonialism and race making. Through their military deployments, Man argues, these soldiers took part in the making of a new Pacific world-a decolonizing Pacific-in which the imperatives of U.S. empire collided with insurgent calls for decolonization, producing often surprising political alliances, imperial tactics of suppression, and new visions of radical democracy.

Doug Dickey was an unlikely Marine hero. He was a gentle soul who sang in the school's chorus and struggled to make it through boot camp. However, in the terrible seconds that passed after a grenade landed in the middle of his platoon's command element, Doug chose to sacrifice his life to save his comrades. For this Final Valiant Act, Doug received the Medal of Honor. Doug grew up on a farm in Ohio and enlisted in the Marine Corps with four of his friends from high school. Arriving in Vietnam, he was assigned to "Blackjack" Westerman's 1st Battalion, 4th Marines - one of the few Marine units to make amphibious assaults during the Vietnam War. As part of 2nd Platoon, Company C, Doug took part in Operation Deckhouse VI, to rout the Viet Cong from Quang Ngai; and Operation Beacon Hill, which culminated in the desperate battle on March 26, 1967. That afternoon, the platoon became engaged with a much larger NVA unit just south of the DMZ. In the midst of that fierce battle, with casualties mounting rapidly, an enemy grenade landed in the middle of the platoon's command group. Doug dove on the grenade - saving his friends and comrades. Second Platoon was ultimately victorious, but at a high cost: more than 40 men had gone into battle that day; only 12 walked out the next morning. Doug's comrades in 2nd Platoon never forgot him. Easter Sunday 1967 was seared into their memories. In 1997, they began holding yearly reunions. They decided to honor Doug by holding their first reunion in his hometown. Harold and Leona Dickey were finally able to meet the men their son had saved 30 years earlier. A Final Valiant Act is the result of over 14 years of research - drawing on Doug's letters home, and more than 50 interviews. The personal stories are woven into a meticulously researched battle history, sourced from dozens of declassified combat reports - yielding the most detailed account of Operation Beacon Hill yet written.