Our World Tuesday: National Museum of the Marine Corps

We stopped at the National Museum of the Marine Corps and Heritage Center in Quantico, Virginia, on Sunday as we made our way from Connecticut to North Carolina.  The museum has been on my bucket list for as long as I've been traveling between these two places I call home.  The building towers over I-95, and I wondered what it was like from the inside out.

It's meant to take the shape of that famous Joe Rosenberg photo of the six marines raising the US flag over Iwo Jima.  I don't quite get that when I look at this structure.  I see an image of strength that won't be contained, of big dreams combined with might. (Maybe that is the same thing as the flag raising over Iwo.)

From July 29, 2012

Here's a view from the inside.  This is a big place seeking to make a big statement.  After the big statement in the main hall, here, the galleries and exhibits dig deep into this country's military engagements over the centuries by contextualizing them.  The museum tells America's story from the perspective of the marine.  It's brilliant, as I told my daugther who does not love these trips down military history lane, because it's our story.  If we don't "like" military stuff, whatever that means, we have a responsibility to ourselves to know the story.   

From July 29, 2012

From the grandeur of the main hall, we moved into World War II and bloodied up men, sandbags, and tanks.  The displays were complemented by oral histories, video, and sound tracks.   We walked out of there knowing more and feeling more.

From July 29, 2012

The display below is part of the Pearl Harbor Day exhibition.  The broken tea cup caught my daughter's eye as we listened to the news on the radio and old newsreel clips glowed behind the wallpaper of this parlor occupied by two women whose loved one was a marine.  Before we got here, though, we watched and heard the story of how Japan was expanding its empire in the East.  The attack on Pearl Harbor was a preemptive strike to protect Japan's access to its resources on various island in the orient. 

From July 29, 2012

We visited many other displays, including the climate-controlled exhibit of Korea with its dead marines in the snow.  Out we came to the main hall, where this display stopped us in our tracks. 

I asked my daughter what struck her the most.  She named Stephen Dupont's exhibit of photographic portraits of the men in one platoon serving in Afghanistan.  Dupont, a marine, was embedded with a weapons platoon in Afghanistan in 2009.  Accompanying each photo was that marine's hand-written statement of why he joined.  "So many said they joined because they thought there was nothing else for them," my daughter remarked.  It was their only chance at life, and something like a dream. 

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From July 29, 2012

Our World Tuesday