Vietnam War

Vietnam War. . , Arlington During the Conflict , Fifteen years after the U.S. ended its official military involvement in Korea, Arlington continued its association with the nation's military and intelligence operations. In place of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, Arlington Hall became the headquarters of the U.S. Army Security Agency. From the late 1950s through the early 1960s, Arlington Hall temporarily housed the Armed Services Technical information Agency that provided classified research to defense contractors. When the Soviet Union announced the launch of Sputnik, President Dwight D. Eisenhower founded the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) to conduct scientific and technological research projects beyond the immediate scope of the military's purview. ARPA, renamed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1972, opened its offices in Arlington, first at the Pentagon and later in Rosslyn. One of the projects developed by the agency at its Arlington location between 1970 and 1975 was ARPANET, the foundational technology and precursor to the Internet. The Pentagon continued to maintain a sizeable presence in the County during this time, employing between 20,000 and 35,000 civilian and military personnel., Arlington's rapid growth continued alongside the defense industry, with the census reporting 163,401 residents in 1960 and 174,284 in 1970. Providing adequate housing and transportation infrastructure to accommodate this increasing population continued to be a challenge. In 1968, Arlington citizens voted overwhelmingly in favor of the construction of the Metrorail plan first envisioned in the late 1950s. The contentious agreement to build Interstate 66 culminated in 1977 when the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, approved the limited-access highway with a Metrorail median in Arlington.America Reacts , Tensions in Vietnam drew the U.S. into the Second Indochina War (1955-1975) between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and South Vietnam, backed by the U.S. and other anti-communist nations. As the conflict intensified, the U.S. increased its military presence in South Vietnam from a few thousand service members in 1959 to more than 500,000 by the time combat operations ceased in 1973. In total, more than 3.4 million U.S. troops eventually served in Southeast Asia during the conflict, of which 2.7 million served specifically in Vietnam., The U.S. drafted more than 2.2 million men for military service in Vietnam through national conscription. The Pentagon stood as the physical representation of the military, which faced unprecedented criticism about the draft and the extended military presence in Vietnam. Protesters staged sit-ins, teach-ins, and marches all over the nation, including Arlington. On October 21, 1967, Arlington made national news when approximately 50,000 assembled for the largest anti-war rally in the nation's history and marched from the National Mall to the Pentagon. Authorities prepared by installing additional security fences around the Pentagon's perimeter and stationing hundreds of military police, U.S. Marshals, and local law enforcement personnel along the route and at the site. Protesters made speeches and sang songs throughout the day and into the evening; some demonstrators even attempted to enter the Pentagon. Law enforcement disbanded the protest early morning on October 22, 1967, and arrested 683 people., Stories of Some Who Served , The U.S. suffered more than 58,000 fatalities by the time it exited the conflict in 1973. Much of the fighting involved air strikes and ground combat where servicemen fought in dangerous tropical terrain, a breeding ground for malaria, jungle rot, and dysentery., Private First Class Nicholas Krimont, a class senator and National Merit Scholar at Washington-Lee High School (renamed Washington-Liberty in 2019) was killed by hostile fire only a few weeks after arriving in Quang Ngai, Vietnam, on April 12, 1967, while serving as an Infantry Indirect Fire Crewman for the U.S. Army., Lance Corporal Raymond Parker Jones, a 20-year-old Marine machine gunner, was killed by a rocket in Quang Nam, Vietnam, on January 5, 1969. He and his wife Goldie Mae were both born in Southampton County, VA, and had married in Arlington less than two years earlier in 1967., Sergeant Steven Kramer died in January 1970 in California from malaria that he contracted while serving in the light weapons infantry in Vietnam. Kramer was 21 when he died and a recent graduate of Bishop O'Connell High School, where he was remembered as an artist., Second Lieutenant John William "Jack" Kennedy was a solo pilot on a reconnaissance mission over the Quang Tin region on August 16, 1971, when he lost radio contact with the 20th Tactical Air Support Squadron. After seven days of search operations, Kennedy was listed as missing in action. The U.S. Air Force located and repatriated his remains in 1992 and determined that he had been shot down by ground fire. Kennedy was one of the youngest forward air controllers killed in Vietnam and was promoted posthumously to Captain., [Captions:] , Hurt Cleaners (former Clarendon Citizens Hall) at Wilson Boulevard and Fairfax Drive, 1970s), Clarendon Trust Company at Wilson and Washington boulevards, 1960s, Metrorail construction along Wilson Boulevard, 1970s. The Rees Building (on the left) at 3131 Wilson Boulevard is in the background., One of the earliest Vietnamese establishments in Arlington's Little Saigon in Clarendon, an area that developed after Vietnamese refugees began immigrating to the County in the 1970s. Little Saigon dissipated in the 1990s due to increasing rents once the Metrorail was completed., Conceptual plan from the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor General Land Use Plan, 1972, Crystal Plaza construction in Crystal City, ca. 1967, Rendering of the London House in Rosslyn, 1965, Pentagon City looking east, 1969, U.S. Information Agency pro-war advertisement, 1965, Anti-war protesters confront military police at the Pentagon on October 21, 1967., Committee to Help Unsell the War anti-war advertisement, 1965, Private First Class Nicholas Krimont, Washington-Lee High School Yearbook, 1959, Sergeant Steven Kramer