Remembering the Vietnam War

 

I can’t cover a trip to Vietnam without mentioning the war.

Roland served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, but he never made it to Vietnam. His name was on the list, but then President Nixon announced his Vietnamization plan to increase the withdrawal of American troops. So this was Roland’s first trip to Vietnam as well as mine, and it started in Saigon.

Technically, I suppose, it started in Ho Chi Minh City, but many residents still call it Saigon.

Saigon was the location of the American headquarters during the war. There are few of those sites left there, but the photo at the top of this page is the CIA building. The modern building in the background is a more recent addition, but the roof of the CIA building was the location for a famous photograph taken while the Americans and their supporters were fleeing the city. That photo shows a helicopter evacuating Americans and Vietnamese residents who had worked for the Americans.

The main war-related location we visited in Saigon is Reunification Palace, which is not specifically tied to the Americans. It used to be the equivalent of the White House, with both the president’s living quarters and many rooms where affairs of state took place, and is now a museum. They call it Reunification Palace because it is where the then president of South Vietnam resigned and turned the country over to the communists, thereby reunifying the North and the South into one country. That’s the second photo.

By the way, our Vietnamese guide called Vietnam a communist country with a capitalist economy. It seems to be on good relations with the U.S. and welcomes American tourists. Roland likes to say that Ho Chi Minh would be rolling in his mausoleum if he saw the robust commercialism.

After leaving Saigon, we took a long bus ride to our boat. On the way we stopped at the Cu Chi Tunnels, which were part of the vast tunnel system used by the Viet Cong to hide from the Americans. Some of our group went down in one entrance and came up at another, but neither of us went into the tunnels—Roland because he is too big and me because I’m slightly claustrophobic. The next photo shows a guard at the park showing off a hidden entrance.

We ended our trip in Hanoi, where our hotel overlooked the lake (on the left in the photo) where John McCain landed after he evacuated from his airplane. He was captured and taken to what American prisoners-of-war sarcastically called “the Hanoi Hilton.”

Although we visited the Hanoi Hilton, which is a museum now, it had a much longer and earlier history as a prison where the French held and tortured Vietnamese rebels, and that is the period the museum concentrates on. In that sense, the visit there was something of a letdown. The next photos show one of the doors, which may be the only thing that is the same as in the Vietnam War period, and an undated arial photograph of the grounds.

Our tour director grew up near the Hanoi Hilton. When she was younger, she was told that Americans called it the Hanoi Hilton because they were treated as well as if they were at a real Hilton Hotel, and it was said without irony. When she would mention it while giving tours to Americans, the women would giggle behind their hands, and she didn’t understand why. Years later, when she visited the U.S. for the first time, she went to an exhibit on the Vietnam War at the Smithsonian and got an entirely different perspective. She did some further digging and now appears to believe something closer to the American view.

One of the major tragedies of the Vietnam War was the use and effects of Agent Orange. The Americans sprayed the chemical to kill the undergrowth that the Viet Cong hid in, but it had very serious health consequences for both Americans and Vietnamese who were exposed to it and genetic effects for their descendants. Our last stop in Hanoi was at Dai Viet Fine Arts, which is a government-sponsored company that employes people who are disable by the effects of Agent Orange. The people who work there make and sell a number of articles, including pictures embroidered with lotus silk, which uses threads from the stalks of lotus flowers. The last photo shows the picture we purchased for ourselves.

This is the final post about our trip to Southeast Asia. There is a lot more to say, but I think it’s time to get back to talking about reading and writing, which is supposed to be the primary focus of this blog. So look for a change of subject next week.