On July 21, 1954, a hard line was impressed upon the world, but most notably upon the future soldiers of the American War in Vietnam—and, I guess, my family.
On this day, 69 years ago the Geneva Accords were signed, establishing an unprecedented political divide in a small Asian country unknown to most people in the West.
The line that was drawn “in the sand” was an international border between what was now to be referred to as North Vietnam and South Vietnam.
However, it was a contrived act based on the interests of statesmen with no foundation in Vietnamese culture. As historian Frances FitzGerald put it in her 1972 landmark book Fire in the Lake:
“. . . until the eighteenth century there was no such thing as southern Vietnam. The demilitarized zone at the 17th parallel, drawn by the members of the Geneva Conference in 1954, corresponded roughly to the line that for a millennium and a half had marked the border of Vietnam and the kingdom of Champa.”
This “small” event of creating two countries took place 20 years before we moved to Vietnam, before I was even born, and as the world was navigating the stultifying peace of the Cold War.
At that time my father was two years into his CIA career and, as seen from his passport stamps of July-November 1954, was traveling regularly to Europe:
to Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland),
to Denmark (Krusa), and
to France (Le Havre).
Though his passport was issued on June 4th prior to the signing of the Accords, it bore a stamp invalidating it for travel to any part of Viet-nam under communist control.
My mother at the time had not yet left school to pursue a career overseas in Germany where she would meet my father. She was still at Gonzaga University, attending dances and enjoying a lively social life.
I was shocked when I read, in a letter home (May 1954), that her friends were teasing her with the nickname “Chink.” However alarming that is, it seems it was an affectionate ribbing about the way she ate.
It’s definitely an interesting foreshadowing of our five years (1970-75) in Asia; my mother loved the culture and was constantly taking all seven of her children out on excursions. Note that she grew up in northern Idaho with little to no cultural diversity, so her affinity for things of the Far East while still a young woman is eerily prescient.
When I began writing about Vietnam in 2012 I struggled with how small my place is in the span of history. So many momentous events make up the Vietnam Era and I was just a girl at the end of the war. Over the years I gained courage through deep study and reflection and realizing, as I wrote in a 2015 essay:
We think of history as a panorama,
but it really always comes down to one scene at a time,
one interaction after another;
large events break down into line after line of dialogue between characters.
The Geneva Accords were signed nearly 70 years ago today. The sweep of a pen, the inking of signatures, these were simple actions but ones that bled into the future in unforeseen ways.
Making these connections between such events and family is not necessary—many people live quite happily without doing it. However, it seems to be in my nature to do so and I can only hope that the learning that comes from it might take some of the sting from an era that’s been so hard to come to terms with, one that threatens to slip into a forgotten, glossed over past.
“To accept one’s past—one’s history—is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it.
An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.” ~James Baldwin