The memorial's genius lies in its simplicity. Two walls of black Indian granite, each composed of 72 panels polished to a mirror finish, meet at an angle of 125 degrees and 12 minutes. One wall points toward the Washington Monument, the other toward the Lincoln Memorial, anchoring the names of the dead between two pillars of American history. The walls taper from just inches at their extremities to over ten feet at the central apex, and as visitors walk the memorial's path, they descend below ground level before rising again. Lin described this as symbolic of "a wound that is closed and healing," drawing on the Land art movement of the 1960s. The 144 panels were quarried from Bangalore, India, and their reflective surface serves a startling purpose: visitors see their own faces mingled with the names of the fallen, collapsing the distance between the living and the dead.

When the memorial was dedicated in 1982, it bore 57,939 names. That number has grown over the decades as additional casualties were verified. The names are listed not alphabetically but chronologically, beginning at the wall's apex on panel 1E with the date July 8, 1959, running to the end of the eastern wall, then continuing from the end of the western wall back to the apex, ending in 1975. This arrangement means the first and last casualties of the war meet at the memorial's center, closing a circle of sacrifice. Eight of those names belong to women, all nurses: Eleanor Grace Alexander, Pamela Dorothy Donovan, Carol Ann Drazba, Annie Ruth Graham, Elizabeth Ann Jones, Mary Therese Klinker, Sharon Ann Lane, and Hedwig Diane Orlowski. The names are carved in Optima typeface, designed by Hermann Zapf, each letter a permanent claim against forgetting.

From the very beginning, visitors started leaving things at the wall. One story holds that the tradition started during construction, when a veteran threw his brother's posthumously awarded Purple Heart into the wet concrete of the foundation. Several thousand objects are left each year: letters, photographs, combat boots, dog tags, bottles of whiskey, childhood toys. The largest item ever left was a sliding glass storm door painted with a scene from Vietnam and the names of American POWs and MIAs, incorporating a full-size replica of a "tiger cage" prison cell. National Park Service employees collect everything except fresh flowers and unaltered American flags. The items are cataloged and stored at the NPS Museum Resource Center. From 1992 to 2003, selected objects were exhibited at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History under the title "Personal Legacy: The Healing of a Nation." Among them was the Medal of Honor belonging to Charles Liteky, who renounced it in 1986 by leaving the medal at the wall in an envelope addressed to President Ronald Reagan.

The memorial exists because of a wounded Vietnam veteran named Jan Scruggs and a movie. After watching The Deer Hunter in 1979, four years after the fall of Saigon, Scruggs was moved to act. He incorporated the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund as a nonprofit, joined by a cadre of fellow veterans, including West Point graduate John P. Wheeler III. Congress authorized a two-acre site beside the Lincoln Memorial on July 1, 1980. But the design competition's outcome split the veteran community. Ross Perot and James Webb withdrew their support. The political opposition was fierce enough that Interior Secretary James Watt withheld the building permit. A compromise was reached: the bronze sculpture Three Servicemen, depicting three soldiers of different ethnicities gazing solemnly toward the wall, was added in 1984. The Vietnam Women's Memorial, designed by Glenna Goodacre and showing three uniformed women tending a wounded soldier, followed in 1993. In the years since, Scruggs reflected on the transformation: "It has become something of a shrine."

Not everyone can make it to Washington, so the wall has gone to them. In 1984, veteran John Devitt used his own money to build a half-size replica called The Moving Wall, which first went on display in Tyler, Texas. By 2006, it had made over 1,000 hometown visits, drawing between 5,000 and 50,000 visitors at each stop. As the replica moves between towns on interstate highways, it is often escorted by state troopers and thousands of motorcyclists, many of them Patriot Guard Riders who consider the escort a "special mission." Even in towns where no stop is planned, veterans organizations gather citizens on highway overpasses to wave flags and salute as it passes. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund later launched The Wall That Heals, a three-quarter-scale traveling replica that converts its tractor-trailer into a mobile education center. Permanent replicas now stand in communities from Pensacola, Florida, to Perryville, Missouri, where a full-sized, character-by-character replication ensures that every name can be found and touched, far from the National Mall.