The Vietnam War

It passed by as if a dream. My mind was in a haze. Almost like I was there in a time before my parents were even born. Vietnam: they were once an enemy and a battleground. 

I don’t think I can even pretend to know the horrors of the war as I walk down city streets, as I come back to air conditioned rooms with showers and beds, and as I go shopping and sit in nice restaurants. Even when I’m sitting in a hot place, I have a full filtered bottle of water and the trusty fan that I bartered for in China. I am as comfortable as I can be in a foreign land. 

Those moments in the museum though, and sitting with the veterans were transporting. I found my mind in another time and place, imagining scenarios that I could only picture because of the thousands of pictures lining the walls. It was a new perspective. I saw the war from Vietnam’s side, and I also felt closer to a war than I ever have before. 

The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) was opened after the Vietnam war and was extremely biased against America. Since relationships between The US and Vietnam improved, the museum has become a little less gruesomely biased, but it still is hard to walk through as an American. 

I looked at exhibits displaying anti-war propaganda, a requiem for photographers killed in the field, the lead up of tensions where they used our constitution against us, and pictures upon pictures of war crimes and Agent Orange victims. Each exhibit seemed to get harder and harder, and I found myself walking through each room growing increasingly numb but still horrified. 

I know both sides were often in the wrong, but it’s hard to see a war from the opposite side and not feel guilty, like you are all to blame. We left the museum quietly, weaving through the American tanks and war machinery in the courtyard on our way out to the street. 

The museum wasn’t easy, but it was only the precursor to the difficulty that I would encounter at the Vietnam Friendship Village the next week in Hanoi. The Friendship Village provides a home and education to many victims of Agent Orange. Most of these people are second or third-generation victims from parents or grandparents that were exposed to the chemical during the wartime. These individuals were born with severe disabilities and often physical deformities that may leave them deaf, unable to speak, with special needs, or with any other number of problems. 

We were not able to do a whole lot to help these individuals but we were blessed to have an opportunity to visit their classrooms and visit with them. Many of them have become wonderful artisans as they are taught craft skills like embroidery and sewing. I hugged many of these kids who were probably older than me but seemed like they were still in elementary school, and we exchanged smiles and laughed. 

One young girl was working in the craft room and motioned for me to join her, so I helped her wad up toilet paper and wrap fabric around it and tie it up to create small buds that would move down the assembly line and be made into flowers. She was incredible with this skill and laughed at us and shook her head as we joked around and tried. She gave one of the boys a thumb down many times and would smile and bury her head in my shoulder when he did something dumb. 

The time with the kids passed too quickly. We moved into a room where we met with some of the veterans who came to the Friendship Village for a month each year for treatment and therapy. There was an obvious language barrier, but with a translator, we were able to exchange greetings and hear stories. 

I glanced around the circle at the faces of each of these old men whose faces were worn by time and toil. Many seemed tired, but when looking into their eyes, I could see the life still sparkling in them. There was a joy in their eyes to see us there and to have this opportunity to create a friendship between two differing nations, but there was also pain. We were a forced remembrance of a difficult past experience, and might have caused painful memories to resurface with our questions and American presence. 

I tried to imagine how each man would have looked nearly 50 years ago as a soldier. It wasn’t hard to de-age each face and picture who they once were before the years took their youth. They were once teachers and farmers before they were soldiers, and they went back to those jobs after war ended. I realized they were normal people just like me, even if they were once “the enemy.” If I lived 50 years ago, I might have met them on the other side of a war, but I’m just now seeing them in a room and had a few brief moments where our lives collided. 

The Friendship Village held the faces of the museum pictures and brought the atrocities to life in real, live human beings. The experiences connected in my mind and melded into one memory of a war I never lived through, but experienced in my mind. I can’t pretend to really grasp the real life horrors faced by Vietnam war soldiers, but I think I understand the war better now and can empathize with both sides. 

I think back to the Independence Day fireworks that we stood watching over the river our first night in Vietnam. I think about my own firework displays back home that the family puts on each Fourth of July. I think about freedom for both Vietnam and America and wonder how two vastly different government structures and societal systems can celebrate in the same way, but I understand that there is something special about these countries celebrating what they have fought for. There is controversy surrounding both sides, but now is a time to live in harmony within one’s own country and with the others around it. 

So maybe it was a dream of passing faces and photographs. It was an experience worth remembering and reflecting on even if the details blur together in pain filled eyes hiding behind gentle smiles. 

Talk to you soon! Second Vietnam post and more pictures coming.