Christmas 1970 – In Moscow and Hanoi

“This is my song, O God of all the nations,

a song of peace for lands a-far and mine.

This is my home, the country where my heart is;

here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;

but other hearts in other lands are beating,

with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.”

(Text: Lloyd Stone   Music: Jean Sibelius)

At a time when there is much concern and debate about Russia’s role in the world and about the United States ending our almost fifty year ‘war’ with Cuba, this trip I made in 1970 reminds me how, in Rick Steves’ phrase, travel as a “political act” can help us shed the hubris of American exceptionalism, and see and feel events from other peoples’ points of view.

In Fall 1970, my then wife, Trudi, and I were asked by the Committee of  Liaison with Servicemen Detained in North Vietnam (COL) to travel to Hanoi at Christmas time to carry mail between their families and American POWs. Our travel companion was Ann Bennett, a leader in Church Women United. The itinerary would take us from New York to Moscow, to Vientiane Laos, and from there to Hanoi. The COL was organized by Cora Weiss and other U.S. peace movement leaders to perform a humanitarian service that the Red Cross might have performed, except that our government refused to recognize the Hanoi government.  Gathered with our families on Thanksgiving, Trudi’s parents and mine expressed fears about us visiting Hanoi and fears about possible government prosecution when we returned. In part because other small COL delegations had preceded us in making this trip and because by this time a majority of Americans opposed the war, we felt confident, not fearful about going.

On our first night in Moscow, we enjoyed festival like live music and cuisine at Aragvi, a very popular Georgian restaurant. During the day, we had meetings with representatives of the government-sponsored Soviet Peace Committee, and we became aware that other Russians apparently at all times were “keeping tabs on us.” On our second night, we went to the yellow parliament building inside the Kremlin’s walls to attend a fabulous Bolshoi ballet performance of Don Quixote. Even in this brief visit and despite the thick fog effects of Cold War conflicts, it was possible to experience Russian popular pride and love for their country, a country that suffered a staggering 11,000,000 soldiers and estimated 20,000, 000 civilians killed in World War II, as well as 75% of Russian industry destroyed. The next day, we rose early in the morning for the 4,200 mile flight from Moscow to Vientiane; and there, pretty exhausted, we boarded a second smaller plane for the hour long flight to Hanoi.

We were greeted at the Hanoi airport by representatives of the Vietnam Peace Committee, a semi-official government organization and partner with COL in the mail exchange. We stayed at the Hoa Binh (Peace) Hotel. Our hosts asked us about traditional American customs for celebrating Christmas. When we returned from a day trip on Christmas Eve, we discovered that hotel staff had decorated the dining room with pine branches, lighted candles, and a small pine tree. For dinner the waiters proudly brought out a roasted turkey, with its head still on and a carrot curl in its beak. After showing us the Christmas bird, they returned it to the kitchen from where it soon reemerged chopped up in a familiar Vietnamese-style stir fry.

Our hosts took us to see some of the devastation caused by B-52 bombing and to meet several badly burned and broken civilian victims. We visited a museum where we saw displays of anti-personnel bombs and bomblets, tens of thousands of tons of which were dropped by our country on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Having seeded the earth with these weapons, unexploded anti-personnel bombs would continue to kill and maim civilians, especially children, long after the war was over.

During unscheduled time one afternoon, Trudi and I walked freely in the center of Hanoi around the Lake of the Returning Sword and visited the One-Pole Pagoda. We were struck by how friendly Vietnamese seemed, even when they learned we were Americans. We were told that this partly reflected  Vietnamese Buddhist culture, but also Ho Chi Minh’s teachings. During decades of foreign occupation by the French and Japanese, Ho Chi Minh urged Vietnamese to resist, including by violence, but Ho also taught when foreigners don’t pose any threat, hatred and vengeance are ineffectual and wasteful attitudes. While this does seem to have been Ho’s philosophy, it is a matter of record that American prisoners of war at times suffered harsh treatment and that some prisoners, including John McCain, were tortured. In 1995, Senator McCain joined with Senator Kerry, who had testified against the war in 1971, to support President Clinton’s decision to normalize relations with Vietnam.

One of the high points of our visit to Hanoi was an hour-long meeting with Pham Van Dong, a close associate and friend of Ho Chi Minh. Having grown up in Quang Ngai Province, which became part of South Vietnam after the country was divided, Dong joined the resistance as a young man and was jailed by the French for seven years. Following Vietnamese defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Ho Chi Minh named Dong Prime Minister. After the American war ended, Dong served as Prime Minister of united, independent Vietnam from 1976 to 1987. Interviewing Pham Van Dong provided Ann, Trudi and me personal experience of Vietnamese determination and confidence that they would succeed finally in freeing Vietnam from control by any foreign power, including the United States.  This reinforced our views that the American war in Vietnam was not only morally wrong, but utterly unwinnable.

On our fourth day in Hanoi we were taken to meet a few of the American POWs. Our main purpose was to bring loving greetings from their families, to let the men know that people back home were praying for them, and that we were working to end the war, so that they could come home. Illogically, the Nixon Administration often spoke as if the U.S. was continuing the war to bring home American prisoners. Appreciating the sensitivity of our meeting, including possible propaganda value to North Vietnam, our government’s opposition to our mission, the intense U.S. media focus on POW/MIAs, and the likelihood our meeting would be monitored, we didn’t ask the men how they were being treated, but instead simply asked each man to tell us how he was captured.

One of the prisoners we met was a fighter bomber pilot who had flown several missions from an aircraft carrier in the China Sea. He told us that he had never been in Vietnam and never met a Vietnamese before his plane was shot down and he was captured. “Until my plane was hit and I parachuted down,” he told us, “the war wasn’t real; it was more like a very dangerous arcade video game.” He told us that he broke his ankle when he landed in a field. Local villagers surrounded him and began to argue loudly about what to do with him. After several minutes, they roughly bandaged his ankle with cloth strips and carried him some distance through fields and then down into a deep bunker. He told us, “Very soon after we were underground, there were thunder-like booms and the earth shook violently. I knew that these were bombs being dropped by our B-52s.” He confessed convincingly, “You know, until that day, I never experienced a B-52 raid from the ground. I wouldn’t want—and I wouldn’t want anyone else—to experience that ever again.” 

     Our route home to New York took us to Bangkok, then across the Pacific with a brief stopover in Seattle, where as soon as we landed, immigration authorities and armed police boarded the plane and ordered us to come with them and to bring the bag containing the hundreds of letters we were carrying for families of the POWs. We were led into a small room where the authorities threatened us with legal penalties and demanded that we give them the mail. I realized then why small, sixty-six year old Ann Bennett had insisted that she carry the bag.  Ann held it tightly against her chest and said, “We are carrying this mail for American servicemen who are prisoners of war and we promised them that we would send it to their families. You will have to beat me to take this bag of mail.” The authorities recognized they had met their match. They let us go; we re-boarded our plane and continued our flight home. On our arrival at Kennedy Airport, leaders of the Committee of Liaison greeted us and we held a press conference. The very next day, the letters were placed in new envelopes with stamps and mailed to all the prisoners’ families as promised. 

It was good, even as we continued to protest and resist the American war, to have had this experience of acting in solidarity with the American men and families of the men who were fighting it.

*    *    *

“Whatever may be noble and heroic in war is found in us, and 

whatever is evil and horrific in war is also found in us.” 

“All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, 

the second time in memory.”

From Nothing Ever Dies by Viet Thanh Nguyen,

Author of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Sympathizer

Order Ron Young’s memoir, Crossing Boundaries in the Americas, Vietnam and the Middle East. $25, plus $3 postage.