Photos

At the Pacific end of the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC, each participating American Island State or Territory is commemorated with a column with a brass (or copper?) wreath.

I spent a mere half hour at this place and was immediately taken in. It is not easy to describe, hard to circumscribe the sheer gravitas of such a place. It's not just a collection of plaques and statues and stones. It is a symbol for all the strife and death and destruction and serves the visitor a reminder to us of all that the United States went through in the time between the Attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7th, 1941 and the end of the War on May 9, 1945 - Victory in Europe Day.

Some of the most impressive parts of this memorial site are the wall with a sea of brass stars, each of which commemorates one hundred war dead. You stand and ponder the sheer horror of the death and carnage that was witnessed by those who fought for us, including my father-in-law, who was taken prisoner-of-war at the Battle of the Bulge, I believe in December 1944 and experienced a real Stalag for several months until he escaped just a month before the end of the War...

I highly recommend that if you are staying in or around Washington with an opportunity to visit this place, located right between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washingon Monument, you come by and spend a little time. When given the choice of seeing the Capitol or the WW2 Monument, I chose this place and do not regret it one bit. My father-in-law is in his eighties and I wanted to share my pictures and impressions of this place with him.

This is just one of many pictures I took that evening. Here is another one and here, and last but not least, right here.

Photographically speaking it took very little preparation. We were at the monument just as night was falling. So the only extra tool I used was a flash. No filters. No cropping. Just straight point-and-shoot. No PP. Three territories. One Monument: The Washington Monument in the background.