America's Gift: An Aspirational Way of Thinking About Freedom
War is full of unintended consequences; here's one I never expected
One thing I was not expecting when I returned to Vietnam in 2015 was that I would have such a good time.
The trip was slated for research: “Following in my Father’s Footsteps 40 Years Later.” My goal was to retrace his activities at the end of Black April, that darkest month in South Vietnam’s history.
To my surprise, my first emotion upon arising on April 25, 2015, was elation—the Saigon sunshine and morning air bathed me in a feeling of homecoming. And the trip just got better from there.
In much the same way, I expected my return to D.C.’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial last week (November 11, 2024) to be somber.
In August 2014, I’d given up halfway through the length of the Wall. I’d looked at the final stretch of names on black marble and did not have the heart to continue.
I promised myself then that I would come back when I had completed the book-length project I’d embarked upon.
As I was planning my trip to speak at the Vietnam Women’s Memorial, it dawned on me that now was my chance to finish the journey. I expected to need a lot of tissues.
But again, to my surprise, as I reached the nadir of the monument, I was filled not with the ache of loss and despondency but with the beauty of the day and all the ways people had gathered to commemorate what had happened—not to cover it up or deny all the myriad wrongs that had been done, but to stand shoulder-to-shoulder draped in the truth of what had transpired—and also to remain upright in the acknowledgment of it.
Though I’d steeled myself to continue the walk no matter what, I could not help but stop and speak to a couple of National Park volunteers stationed there.
Encouraged by their open smiles, I stopped and asked if they were from Vietnam.
They said yes, they were born there in the 1980s and moved to the U.S. in the early ’90s.
The woman, Huong, said they volunteer at the memorial all the time. Though they were born after the war was over, they want to participate in sharing the understanding of all that happened because of the American War in Vietnam.
Then she said something that surprised me greatly; I’d never heard such a viewpoint before. She said:
When the Americans came to Vietnam after the Geneva Accords [in 1954, after the French were routed out as colonizers], it provided the Vietnamese people with a different, aspirational way of thinking about freedom. For once the Vietnamese people thought that free elections might be possible sometime in the future.
To be clear, elections are held in Vietnam but the process is very complicated and designed to support the one-party state which only recognizes the Vietnamese Communist Party.
Still, the idea that the American presence in Vietnam did have some good effect on future generations is heartening; despite the abominable losses (the Vietnamese people lost 2-3 million lives and the U.S. over 58,000 between 1959-1975), the human spirit remains indomitable.
In 1995, not long after Huong and her husband made their homes in the U.S., Michael Palin of Monty Python fame took an around-the-world trip (Full Circle Video: Episode 4, BBC Studios). It was at the beginning of Vietnam’s attempt to pull itself out of the post-war depression, through Đổi Mới or “new thinking.”
At the conclusion Vietnam segment, he reflects on how the people of Vietnam refuse to be kept down by mistakes and atrocities of the past. He yells to be heard over the sound of the traffic:
My impression is of a small crowded country riding on a high tide of energy and confidence. A country where there's no point in shouting stop—no one will hear you.
The strength of the voices and connections at the D.C. Veterans Day Commemoration, Huong’s bright countenance and the conviction of her statements at the Veterans Memorial Wall, and my own encouraged heart are proof to me that while we may not be able to control the vagaries of mankind’s plunge through time, we can participate—and celebrate—the way the darkest times are overcome.
Stories of Vietnam is a weekly newsletter featuring a wide variety of Vietnam stories. My interest in such stories springs from the fact that I spent most of my third-grade year “in-country” in 1974-75 and was evacuated out just a few weeks before the Fall of Saigon. (I wrote a book about it.)
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The 50th Anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War is April 30, 2025 and the era deserves to be remembered.