Carol and I spent three weeks visiting
Vietnam, traveling the length of the country from south to north. We enjoyed an
early morning breakfast on a small boat in Can Tho’s Floating Market in the Mekong
Delta, met old and new friends, visited the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh
City, and traveled north by train with stops in Quang Ngai and the My Lai
Memorial, Hoi An, Hue and the Peace Bridge in the former DMZ. We stayed in Hanoi’s
old quarter near Hoan Kiem Lake, met leaders of Vietnam friendship
organizations, visited the Women’s Museum and Temple of Literature, watched a
performance by the famed “Water Puppets,” and delighted in an overnight boat
trip into hauntingly beautiful Halong Bay. This was my fifth visit to Vietnam.
In July 1970, I led a delegation of
student and religious leaders to South Vietnam, investigating repression. Our
government finally had been forced to acknowledge 50,000 political prisoners
being held by the US-backed Saigon regime. During Christmas week that year, I
was one of a three-person Committee of Liaison delegation who carried mail between their families
and American POWs in Hanoi. In August 1974, I traveled with an AFSC delegation
to visit the Quaker Rehabilitation Center in Quang Ngai, drove from Hanoi south
to the DMZ to visit an underground hospital following-up delivery of Quaker
medical aid, and took part in discussions that led to Lady Borton going to live
in Hanoi.
In 1995, I attended the Fiftieth
Anniversary Celebration of the Vietnam-USA Friendship Society in Hanoi with
three other middle-aged anti-war activists and octogenarian former OSS
(predecessor organization of the CIA) officers who had served with Ho Chi
Minh’s Vietnamese forces fighting the Japanese occupation during the closing
months of World War II. The American officers supported Ho’s appeal to
President Truman urging US support and recognition for Vietnam’s independence.
Truman never replied. Instead, the US financed the French military campaign to
recolonize Vietnam.
This current trip with Carol was my
first visit that focused on seeing and enjoying the beauty of Vietnam, as well
as connecting and reconnecting with Vietnamese friends. Inevitably, given our personal connections with
the US war in Vietnam, my reflections are not just about the present, but
involve the past, present and future.
On our next to the last day in Ho Chi
Minh City, we met Madame Ton Nu Thi Ninh, a leading intellectual, born in Hue,
educated in Vietnam and France, who served as Vietnam’s Ambassador to the
European Union. Currently in retirement, she chairs the HCM City Peace and
Development Foundation, headed nationally by Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, famous for
representing the NLF/PRG delegation in the Paris Peace Talks.
Leaning forward intently in a way that
underlined the importance of what she wanted us to understand Madame Ninh said,
“Even more terrible than all the bombing and killing was the way America
imposed a destructive division on our country and on Vietnamese people.” On one
level, geopolitically, Ninh was speaking about the temporary North/South
division embodied in the 1954 Geneva Accords, followed by the US-installed Diem
regime in Saigon which blocked holding the Accords-mandated elections in 1956
to reunite the country. But she was also speaking about the deeper, divisive
political and cultural effects of America imposing its anti-Communist credo on
Vietnam.
Given Ho Chi Minh’s success at
blending nationalist and communist ideologies in the struggle against French
colonialism and Japanese occupation, if elections had been held in1956 the
results would almost certainly have been a united, independent Vietnam with Ho
as President. Instead, America poured money, arms and eventually half a million
soldiers into the country generating horrendous violence and division,
including divisions within Vietnamese families.
While Madame Ninh supported the side of the National Liberation Front,
her brother became a Captain in the American-backed ARVN military. After the
war ended, these divisions made the process of reeducation and reconciliation
much more difficult and painful. While
serving in the postwar Vietnamese government, possibly motivated in part by her
own family situation, Madame Ninh publicly challenged the severity and length
of the compulsory reeducation program. Her work for national reconciliation has
included visits to the US where she tried, often without success, to address
embittered Vietnamese who fled the country after the war.
Vietnam was not the only country in
which America’s “good vs. evil” anti-Communist credo distorted realities with
disastrous consequences. The unresolved division since the 1950s from the war in Korea poses dangerous threats today. During the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, struggles for
democracy and social justice in many African and Latin American countries were
more destructive and deadly as a result of American anti-Communist
interventions. Our policies today run similar risks relying on
“counter-terrorism” and “anti-radical Islam” as rigid policy guidelines. We
should have learned from Vietnam how these simplistic, fear-driven frameworks
frequently reveal more about our own ignorance and biases than they help us
respond wisely to realities in any other country.
Meeting with Madame Ninh and Ngo Thi
Phuong Thien, daughter of Ngo Ba Thanh, prominent attorney and Third Force (not
NLF) anti-regime, anti-war activist in Saigon during the war, combined with our
visit to the Vietnam Women’s Museum in Hanoi, reminded us of the major roles of
women with different political views in the Vietnamese struggle for
independence. Some believe Ho Chi Minh’s early advocacy for the role of women
was inspired in part by his living briefly in New York and Boston, where he
witnessed activities of the Women’s Suffrage Movement.
On April 30 1975,,the war
in Vietnam ended, but not for everyone - not for Vietnamese refugees, not for
American, Vietnamese and other veterans, not for families of the “missing in
action” from either side, not for political prisoners, and not for future
victims of unexploded ordinance or the harmful, multigenerational effects from
Agent Orange.
In Ho Chi Minh City we met Cao Nguyen
Loi, a former political prisoner whom I had met in July 1970. Loi had been held in the infamous Tiger Cages
on Con Son Island and had provided a detailed map for finding them to a
Congressional delegation who took a photograph that was published in Life
Magazine. Loi, a successful businessman after the war, and three other former
prisoners hosted Carol and I for dinner, presented us with flowers, and thanked
us for our work opposing the war. Loi also arranged for us to meet other former
prisoners in Quang Ngai and Danang as we traveled north.
In Quang Tri Province, one of the most
heavily bombed and sprayed areas of Vietnam, Carol and I toured the Mine Action
Center of Project Renew which does community education, especially with
children and carries out mine clearing operations. Since the war ended, in Vietnam alone (not counting
Laos or Cambodia), there have been more than 100,000 casualties, including
40,000 deaths from Unexploded Ordinance (UXO). The Vietnamese Red Cross
estimates that as many as 4 million Vietnamese may have suffered harmful
effects from Agent Orange. A big political issue this year, particularly given
President Trump’s priorities, is whether the US will continue to provide some
funding for cleaning up highly toxic areas and for assistance to Vietnamese
with disabilities most likely resulting from Agent Orange.
After a century of colonization and
occupation, in 1975 Vietnam became independent - free from foreign control.
However, as with all countries, large and small, Vietnam’s development is
partly dependent on foreign trade and investment. This involves priorities and
issues of potential benefits versus harmful effects, i.e., who benefits and who
gets hurt, as a result of particular trade and investment decisions, including
issues related to the effects of enormous investments coming from China and
South Korea. Vietnam’s English language newspaper reveals that while there are
few public protests and no organized opposition party, there are diverse,
contesting views on development and human rights issues that play out on the
local, provincial and national level.
Some people may have believed that
when “national liberation” was accomplished, everything about Vietnam would
change. Of course, that didn’t happen.
There have been many changes, mostly positive but many challenges remain
and there are some Vietnamese qualities from before the war that continue to
shape lives and society today.
In July 1970, on my first visit to
Vietnam, I met Huynh Tan Mam, who then was President of the Saigon Students
Union. Mam invited our delegation of students and religious leaders to join
Vietnamese in a march to protest the American War. The march was attacked and broken up by
military police firing “Made in the USA” teargas grenades. Mam was arrested and
imprisoned several times by the US-backed regime.
After the war, Mam became a medical
doctor, worked with the Vietnam Red Cross and the Association of Poor Patients
in Ho Chi Minh City, served as Editor of Thanh Nien newspaper and, motivated by
having two autistic sons, organized, raised private funds from Vietnamese
friends, and opened two schools for autistic children. On our last day in
Vietnam, Mam took me to visit one of the schools.
Whether he was working as a young
leader in the national liberation movement or as a private citizen, Mam has
been compassionate and critical, consistent and persistent in working for a
better Vietnam and world. I feel privileged and inspired knowing him, and very fortunate
to have had this opportunity of revisiting Vietnam.
