I'm calling this post French-American War, because of course, that's the perspective of the "Vietnam War" from the Vietnamese, and of all the museums and tours here. It is hard sometimes to see things from that point of view, because it is not flattering to the U.S. and those we fought with. I have to keep reminding myself that it isn't reasonable to expect them (the winners, the North Vietnamese) to portray their enemies' side of things; we don't do that either, no one does that. Our museums and tourist attractions for the wars we have been in don't have a "To Be Fair" section where we explain the ideology of those we fought against and why it might be understandable that they were put in the position they were in and learned to think and fear what they did.
It just seems to me that all this political violence nonsense is about governments and political figures taking issue with one another. Civilians just want to keep living in peace, soldiers are just trying to do their job and survive and protect their buddies -- no one doing the actual fighting has personal beef with anyone they're shooting at (aside from the fact the other side is also shooting at them). I think it would be pretty cool if we did have a "To Be Fair" element to all of our history lessons, though. Some do, to a certain extent, but we could all do more to understand the other side better (which would lead to being better understood ourselves, I'm sure).
I am certainly comfortable being critical of my own country and aspects of our foreign policy (I think it's an act of patriotism/national pride to hold your country to a high ethical standard), but it's interesting to notice how defensive I can be when I hear the U.S. and our armed forces criticized, or even demonized, by other countries. Much like how you are allowed to make fun of your own physical flaws, but if someone else does, they're way out of line:
Me: "Ha! Check out this nose zit - I'm hideous!"
Other person: "Yeah what's the deal, Rudolph? Christmas was over a month ago."
Me: "Hey, WHOA.... whoa -- don't be a dick."
So yeah -- that's kinda what it's like to hear other people talk shit about your home country. Like, look -- I know what our problems are and I'm doing my best to fix it, so just let me own it, and lay off. (Granted, a person's insecurity about a physical flaw rarely, if ever, results in violence and torture towards others so the metaphor isn't perfect as far as asking someone to "just lay off" goes, but I think you get the overall point.)
At the same time, looking at all this Vietnam War information through the eyes of the "enemy" has helped me feel more connected to them as well, on a human level. I just want to say to everyone, "I'm so sorry that we all got tangled up in this darkness and destruction together -- all you wanted was national autonomy, the right to run your country with the government you deemed fit. I wish we hadn't been so afraid to let you do that, but we were terrified that your people would lose their freedoms and fall into a communism-turned-fascism nightmare that started spreading throughout the world..." Maybe what we should have done is established some kind of secret coding system between the Vietnamese people and the USA that would have let them communicate "SOS!" to us if communism wasn't working out and they needed help to overthrow the government and establish a democracy / capitalism. Otherwise, let them have their communism if that's what they want, who cares? Oh well. What's done is done, and I'm just sorry anyone had to suffer the atrocities of that war the way they did.
I got a book from the library about the Vietnam War called Light at the End of the Tunnel, but I barely had a chance to start it. I wanted to provide an insightful summary of how we got involved in the war and what went wrong, but sadly, I'm not as informed as I hoped to be, and now I need to focus on other things. So I apologize for that. However, I did learn a lot from the War Remnants Museum and the Cu Chi Tunnels tour (both accessible from Ho Chi Minh City), as well as the war museum in Da Nang, so I'll use this post to summarize those experiences at least.
Da Nang Museum
The museum in Da Nang was not the best organized -- I didn't learn much, but there was a lot of stuff to look at (I guess that's mostly what museums are... just a collection of miscellaneous items from a similar place and time in history, with quick descriptions for some context). However, there were some highlights, and here they are.
Artillery (large-caliber guns... basically canons, I think?) and a helicopter taken from "the enemy" (i.e. the South Vietnamese/US forces)
- Commie Camaraderie -
Ah yes, I remember reading about this during the tours in Cambodia: after securing their victory at home, the North Vietnamese went next door to Cambodia and liberated them from the horror of the Khmer Rouge. If you're going to lose a war, you gotta be thankful to at least lose to a group of people who go on to end a catastrophic genocide in a neighboring country.
This is what I'm talking about when I refer to things being portrayed from the North Vietnamese perspective and feeling a little angry and defensive.
The caption is much blurrier than I thought it would be, but it says: "American soldiers eating and drinking calmly before Vietnamese bodies that killed by them" [sic] Hard to know sometimes how much we were portrayed as monsters as part of the war propaganda, and how much was born out of direct, terrible experience with our soldiers. All I know is that it seems each side was as brutal as they could be; we just had more "could be" as far as our strategies went, re: dropping bombs, the use of Agent Orange, etc.
A timeless message...
The War Remnants Museum
I saw this museum as part of a city tour, and they only gave us an hour to explore it, which was NOT enough time!! It was heartbreaking and beautiful and I could have easily spent another hour there.
A few U.S. Air Force jets captured by the N. Vietnamese (there were LOTS of these types of things in Da Nang)
A more historically-specific version of "With great power comes great responsibility"
Torture of North Vietnamese & Viet Cong at the Con Dao Island Prison
The tour guide said we would get a "different" perspective with this museum, which I thought meant that it would be from the perspective of the South Vietnamese. I held onto that assumption while looking at the torture info below, thinking that we/the Vietnamese on our side were the victims of such cruelty. My heart hurt for all of our soldiers who endured such unbelievable suffering, many of whom were drafted and never wanted any part in the war to begin with. But then I realized the North Vietnamese were the prisoners, and we were the perpetrators of this cruelty... and that's an equal but completely different kind of gut wrenching heartache.
Again -- torture is strategically pointless and morally bankrupt. There is no reason for it other than feeding and fueling the seeds of darkness and evil within us and I WANT IT TO STOP EVERYWHERE AND FOREVER.
Map of the island where these POWs were held
A form of torture I hadn't heard of before. I'm always weirdly impressed as well as utterly disgusted when I come across a creative method of torture. Why does the "evil genius" seem so much more ubiquitous than the "benevolent genius"?? Maybe benevolent genius is all around me and I'm just not in the habit of recognizing it as such....
I first heard of waterboarding in 2006 when the CIA "Torture Memos" were leaked and we learned that this technique was being used against members of Al Queda. The next time I heard about it being actively used wasn't until a few weeks ago, at the S-21 Khmer Rouge prison in Cambodia. But here it is again, in the photo below, surfacing as one of several torture techniques in the Vietnam War.
"Tiger Cages"... description below
The Photo Journalists
The most moving part of the museum was the exhibit about the photo journalists who covered the war, because the images they captured (several dying in the process) are stunning.
A quick introduction to the exhibit:
Insightful reflections regarding the "exploitation" of others' suffering as a photojournalist:
And more miscellaneous photo highlights from the museum:
Agent Orange
I almost forgot about the whole Agent Orange thing in the Vietnam War, but there's an entire exhibit at the War Remnants Museum dedicated to the impact it has had on the Vietnamese people. I'm not sure why, but I just feel like killing someone outright -- quickly and painlessly -- is the more merciful and ethical thing to do compared to torturing them or messing with their bodily autonomy and health through biochemical warfare, even though they may survive the latter situations. Obviously, doing none of those things would be ideal, but I guess my reasoning is that everyone HAS to die someday, but while we live, we shouldn't have to suffer so much at the hands of our human brothers and sisters.
Agent Orange is an herbicide, and its intended effect was to destroy crops and other vegetation, not to cause genetic mutations and health problems for the people exposed to it. However, its actual effects were of course not limited to its intended effects, and many of those exposed to Agent Orange -- on both sides of the war -- have developed a range of different diseases (here are the ones recognized by VA) and genetic mutations that can be passed on to offspring for four generations!! That was new (and shocking) information to me. Correct me if my math is wrong here, but that means that if someone was an 18-year-old soldier exposed to Agent Orange in 1968, and everyone in his family thereafter had babies around age 25, he could have a great-grandchild born in 2020 who could still be genetically impacted by Agent Orange:
1968: Soldier exposed to Agent Orange (1st generation)
1970: Soldier's son born (2nd generation)
1995: Soldier's grandson born (3rd generation)
2020: Soldier's great-grandson born (4th generation)
It just blows my mind that a baby born in 2020 would have to suffer consequences from the Vietnam War.
Reading that my country was accused (and arguably guilty) of genocide hit me like a punch in the gut.
Legal repercussions...
I felt pretty awkward taking a photo of these images; I don't want to gawk at others' misfortune. I just thought it was important to remind everyone of the severity of Agent Orange's impact on genes and the suffering that can be caused by its genetic mutations. It must be incredibly difficult and inconvenient trying to navigate a world that is built for a "standard" human body, but I imagine the worst part is the social isolation. Fortunately, the use of biochemical warfare is not one of those mistakes of military strategy that has been repeated recently (at least not to my knowledge), but a reminder of why we shouldn't ever use it again can't hurt anyhow.
Even our 44th President is still called to address the lingering impact of Agent Orange in Vietnam:
Viet Cong Cu Chi Tunnels
There's a rural farmland area to the northwest of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) called Cu Chi, which was an important place during the war because of its proximity to Saigon. 34,000 women and children died in Cu Chi during the war. Some of them -- maybe most of them -- also fought in the war (Ho Chi Minh was pretty big on getting everybody in on the war effort), but they were peaceful farmers to begin with. The orientation video said the Cu Chi people's motto was "gun in one hand, plow in the other," as they fought during the day, and farmed during the night. The Vietnamese have an admirable work ethic, you've got to give them that.
The Viet Cong had built a system of underground tunnels in Cu Chi long before the U.S. entered the war, and they used these tunnels as hideouts, bomb shelters, and as a means to transport ammunition, food, and other necessities throughout the area. Here's a summary from the History Channel website:
"In order to combat better-supplied American and South Vietnamese forces during the Vietnam War, Communist guerrilla troops known as Viet Cong (VC) dug tens of thousands of miles of tunnels, including an extensive network running underneath the Cu Chi district northwest of Saigon. Soldiers used these underground routes to house troops, transport communications and supplies, lay booby traps and mount surprise attacks, after which they could disappear underground to safety. To combat these guerrilla tactics, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces trained soldiers known as “tunnel rats” to navigate the tunnels in order to detect booby traps and enemy troop presence. Now part of a Vietnam War memorial park in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), the Cu Chi tunnels have become a popular tourist attraction."
A few fun facts ("fun" is probably a poor word choice) about the tunnels:
The tunnels were built at three different depths: 3 meters, 6 meters, and 10 meters below ground level.
There were fake entrances to the tunnels meant to trick the South Vietnamese and U.S. "tunnel rats," that were actually just tunnels leading to certain death, with complex booby traps or venomous snakes inside
Some entrances to the tunnels were actually submerged in water so one would have to duck under and swim to gain access
There has been a case of an American special forces base being accidentally built on top of a large piece of tunnel network
To make sure they didn't waste resources, American forces would use dogs to smell tunnel entrances they found, and they'd only send bombs inside if the dogs picked up the scent of Vietnamese
I am simultaneously really impressed and also very upset with these tunnels. Objectively, they're a brilliant war strategy. Subjectively, I hate thinking about anyone getting caught in one of those booby traps. More on those in just a minute.
The Cu Chi Tunnels tour was odd to experience as an American. For example, the orientation video portrayed us as an awful, destructive, irrational force. I kinda wanted to raise my hand and say "hey, I'm an American -- do you mind if we tone down the demonization a notch or two?" but at this point, it isn't my story to tell and I just had to deal with my perspective not really being relevant in the tour's narrative (quite humbling). Also, a big aspect of the tour is participating in the tunnel system and getting your photo taken, and this felt weird and unpatriotic, because it's basically playing at being Viet Cong and then smiling about it for a photo op. I just wonder how any of the Vietnam Veterans I know would react if they saw me in these photos ... maybe I'm overthinking it, but it really did feel a bit wrong, a bit like betrayal.
A different tourist (I didn't get in this one), demonstrating how brilliantly camouflaged the tunnel entrances were
Stepping down into a tunnel entrance...
...crouching into the tight, claustrophobic part of the tunnel entrance...
...and making my way through one of the tunnels to the other side.
The Booby Traps
These were brutal.
One type of booby trap the tour guide showed us was the "trap door" style: the VC would create a spinning wooden plank over a dug out pit, put some sort of spiky death trap in it, then camouflage it. A soldier would be walking along, completely oblivious, and then fall through the ground suddenly to his death. Can you even imagine?? And what if you were the soldier right behind him, who couldn't do anything to save him? And afterward, as you walk through the Vietnamese jungle, you're probably terrified you'll step into one yourself at any moment! It must have really slowed them down and kept their anxiety levels up constantly...
The "clipping armpit trap" is a variation on the same concept, just this time the victim would be trapped with spikes dug into his armpits, puncturing the axillary artery and causing a rapid bleed out.
Two more variations -- the "window trap" and the "rolling trap" -- I'm sure you get the idea. There are a lot of these, and they are all horrific.
The army uniforms of the Viet Cong (also worn by some of the tour staff)
The Day I Shot an AK-47
One odd thing about the Cu Chi Tunnels tour is that there is a shooting range at one end of it, where tourists can buy some ammo and try shooting an AK-47 or M-16. As we approached the shooting range, and I could hear the gunfire getting louder and louder, I started reacting pretty strongly to it. I got suddenly very irritable and angry and annoyed, like I was getting defensive for anyone around me who might have PTSD and be severely triggered by those noises. It was just so LOUD and so VIOLENT-sounding, and I just wanted them to knock it off! However, after taking about 5-10 minutes to the side and calming down a bit, I decided I actually wanted to try shooting a big gun myself. So I got five rounds for the AK-47 and, interestingly, after I shot those rounds, the sound of gunfire didn't bother me at all. I suppose it's just an example of being afraid of something you don't understand. Once I shot the gun -- and realized they were all tied down tightly and no homicidal maniac could just turn around and start shooting everyone -- it was far less anxiety-provoking.
(Hey, that reminds me -- we haven't had a mass shooting in the United States for a while now!! Way to go, guys! *HIGH FIVE*)
At the end of the tour, our guide said that the people of Cu Chi don't talk about the war anymore,
"only peace and happiness."