The National World War II Memorial will be opened to the public later this month, more than a month before hundreds of thousands are expected to converge on the Mall during Memorial Day weekend for its official dedication.
The early opening will allow aging veterans who don’t want to wait for the official opening to visit the 7.4-acre site at the center of the Mall. It also will be a precursor to the largest gathering of World War II veterans since the war ended.
“There’s been very little attention paid to it up to now,” Mike Wallace, co-anchor of the CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a World War II veteran, said in a telephone interview. “Our attention is bound to be elsewhere, isn’t it, at the moment, when you think about it.”
The May 29 dedication “is just a day or two before we are supposed to be handing over authority to the Iraqis,” said Mr. Wallace, who served on a Navy submarine from 1943 to 1946.
The $170 million memorial has been built entirely with private funds in less than three years. Visitors will enter the bronze-and-granite memorial plaza through a 43-foot arch. In the center of the plaza stands a rainbow pool with fountains, and the plaza is ringed by 26 granite pillars. A wall with 4,000 sculpted, gold-plated stars will commemorate the 400,000 American soldiers who died in the war.
“The sweep of the memorial will take your breath away,” Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming who has supported the efforts to build the memorial, said in a telephone interview. “That’s going to stun the American people and the people of the world. It’s an absolutely inspirational thing, pure power.”
Mr. Simpson was a 10-year-old Boy Scout in 1942, when his Scout master took a group of Scouts to an internment camp for Japanese Americans in Mr. Simpson’s hometown of Cody, Wyo. It was there that he met Norman Y. Minetta, now the U.S. secretary of transportation, who had been detained with his family.
Mr. Simpson went on to serve with the Army’s 12th Armored Infantry Battalion from 1955 to 1956 during NATO’s occupation of Germany.
The formal dedication will be part of a four-day World War II reunion organized by the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. A five-block area between Third and Seventh streets NW will be transformed into an outdoor event with presentations, concerts and interactive displays.
Veterans are looking forward to the memorial’s opening with some impatience.
“I think it’s 60 years too late. It’s about time that the memorial came into being while all the vets are still alive. We’re all in our 80s now,” said John Dolibois, the only surviving interrogator from the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals. “It’s high time and I think it’s a great honor that finally those who fought in WWII be recognized.”
“There are less and less of us. Every month somebody dies off,” he said.
Memorial organizers said they wanted to open the memorial as soon as possible to accommodate aging veterans. The youngest are thought to be 76 years old, and an average of 1,056 World War II veterans die each day, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
“To keep the memorial closed for another six weeks might deprive some folks of ever seeing it,” said James Deutsch, the Smithsonian’s curator for the reunion celebration. “There is a sense of urgency for members of this generation. It’s been a long time coming to get a memorial for the WWII generation.”
Mr. Deutsch said he talks to veterans daily.
“They are ready and eager to come. Many of them recognize this as the last time that veterans of WWII will gather in these kinds of numbers, and they want to make this a momentous and memorable occasion,” he said.
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