Digging Up Vietnam

There is a cliche here built up by visitors who know something of Vietnam's recent past: the Vietnamese people are "forgiving" and are focused on the future. Well, that brings to mind another cliche: "Forgive but don't forget." Based on my experience with young people in Vietnam, it would seem forgiving has been made easier by the fact many have actually forgotten. Not to say they were there during the decades of war (the vast majority of them weren't) , but there is a clear disconnect. And whatever minority here is conjuring up the ghosts of history is being shunned and avoided like an old guy at a high school party.

Still worse, those with real interest find themselves at a dead end of propaganda and half-truths, rather than a welcoming dialogue. 

And that lack of dialogue does extend all across the seas to the Vietnamese communities abroad. People only know what they hear, and they only like to hear what they already know.

My journey to fill the gaps of the Vietnam story I heard began at the end of my university years after my trip to study in Hanoi. I took a history class taught by a Vietnamese professor with a degree from Soviet Russia. I had already taken a few classes on Vietnam back at UCLA, but the opportunity to hear it from the source was too tempting. Tempting and difficult, since his English had a mix of Russian and North Vietnamese. But I squandered it. My previous knowledge of Vietnam wasn't enough to make relevant arguments, and I was too distracted by living far from home for the first time to do the research. It's one of my big regrets.

To make up for that I tried to get my hands on all the books I could. Here's a list of the few I've finished and the bits of "puzzle pieces" I got from them. 

This wasn't the first book I read by a Vietnamese writer who witnessed the war. I read Bao Ninh's Sorrow of War while in Hanoi, and it left no lasting impressions. Truong Nhu Tang's book gets some criticism from people who expected details of the jungle fighting, life in tunnels, and contact with American troops. This book isn't written by a guerilla. Truong Nhu Tang was an intellectual and one of the founding members of the government entity that was the political end of the NLF. He was also the first of disillusioned high-ranking cadre to leave Vietnam along with the waves of boat people. 

I learned a few major bits of information about the NLF in this book. First, that they weren't really "communists." Truong himself openly revered Ho Chi Minh from the start, but saw himself and the PRG as more anti-Diem. There's even a vivid retelling of his group's first encounter with their northern "comrades", and the lop-sided debate that ensued, in which Truong's arguments trumped those of his Marxist peers. I discovered this alternative vision of the South that was buried under the black and white retellings of Americans versus Communist guerillas. 

And here now, I don't think that southern vision ever completely died.

Despite it being retold by a non-combatant, there are still descriptions of life in the jungle and air raids that will make any visit to Cu Chi Tunnels much better informed. 

This title is in every list of necessary reads for the period. I always knew this, but was a bit intimidated by its thickness. But it isn't a dry history piece. The reconstruction of 1950s and 1960s Vietnam read like a movie. The description of the Ap Bac battle still tingles my spine and Neil Sheehan's biographical bits on John Paul Vann make him one of the most endearing previously-unknown historical figures I've ever read about. 

The belief that South Vietnam's fate was determined in the Kennedy years with the "advisors" and under Diem is convincing. What's left is the question of whether that outcome would have lasted or would have even been better. This book, which I thought was full of statistics and the names of politicians, is actually loaded with riveting stories of human emotions.  You feel all the pain and disappointment and anger underlying those desperate times.

It is immensely relevant to me. It attempts to explain why my parents' world, a speck of color on a map,  appeared for a moment and was gone.

This is the book I'm working on now. I took my dad to see the Mel Gibson movie and he hated it. To him it's the part of his past he doesn't enjoy, told without mention of his people. That and he just doesn't like Mel Gibson.

As a history book, this only shows a tiny piece of the story. It's not meant for that. The book is one long and detailed retelling of the horrors of one battle, a military history. But if placed in the bigger picture, it does show the American view of itself and the Vietnamese,  as "Bright Shining Lie" does. It's interesting to read this book after "Bright Shining Lie", since the latter argues Moore's battle at Ia Drang was futile for changing the course of the war. Moore thought different.

Insightful or not, it's a captivating book that gives you that little bit of shock when you put it down and walk outside among the people. All the noise is drowned out a bit and you hear this little echo, like the sounds from the book are still going on. Everything briefly takes on a different meaning. The old street ceases to be just an old street choked with motorbikes. It has a story. And the old man in the alley is more than just an old man, he has a story. A really good one.