war memorial

Across the country, there are lots of places called “war memorial”. There are stadiums, parks, auditoriums, in Waikiki we even have a natatorium war memorial and nobody knows what the hell a ‘natatorium’ is. War memorials are pretty common, but rarely is it clear which war that’s being memorialized. And doesn’t that kind of defeat the point? Or maybe it’s just war in general? I can understand that I suppose; but if you create this specific thing in memory of a particular war, wouldn’t it make more sense to just let us know which war this was supposed to be memorializing? Like I remember war memorial stadium, even know how to get there, don’t remember which war that’s supposed to be for though. And then you just get lost in the mix of all the other war memorial stuff and we’re just left to make some wild assumptions. Oh, that park is in Oregon, must be about the Civil War. It just leads to confusion. Or maybe it should be more disappointing that we have so many good ones to choose from when guessing.