Remnants of the American War in Vietnam: Guest Post by Gretchen Woelfle

War Memorial in the Vietnam Countryside

My friend and fellow children's book writer Gretchen Woelfle recently returned from an exciting 18 day trip in Vietnam, a combination of cycling and sight-seeing. Here is the last of three installments about her trip. (The first two posted April 4 and April 18.)
 
I arrived at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964, just in time for the Free Speech Movement and big rallies and protests against the Vietnam War.  In 1966 I moved to London for five years, where the war was not front-page news. We had anti-war marches though, filled with Brits and ex-pats, including some draft resister friends of mine. I still feel guilty about Vietnam and so, on my recent cycling trip, I sought out a few remnants of the war. (There are many museums I didn’t visit.) BTW, it’s called the American War over there.

Entrance to a tunnel at Cu Chi

Cu Chi Tunnels

Our group visited the Cu Chi tunnels not far from Saigon. This 250 kilometer (155 miles) network contained three different levels of tunnels that housed soldiers and materials, and contained meeting rooms and hospitals. Crawling through a few short stretches of the tunnels, now covered in concrete, lit with electricity, and housing a few bats, I couldn’t imagine how people lived there for years. American troops carpet-bombed the area and used grenades and other means to try to destroy the tunnels, without success. The Cu Chi tunnels remained in use until American troops left Vietnam. Part of the tunnel system penetrated directly beneath a U.S. Army base.

Inside a tunnel at Cu Chi

Giant Buddha at Long Son Pagoda in Nha Trang

Memorials

Cycling through the countryside we passed many military cemeteries and memorial monuments. Not all of them are anti-American. An historic Buddha at the Long Son Pagoda in Nha Trang, damaged in bombing raids in 1968, has been rebuilt, adding relief sculptures of seven Buddhist monks who immolated themselves in 1963, in opposition to South Vietnamese government persecution of Buddhists. A car owned by the monk, Thich Quang Duc, is on display at the Thien Mu Pagoda in Hue.  He drove the car to Saigon in June, 1963 before he set fire to himself. The photo, published worldwide, helped bring down the corrupt regime of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.

Remembering an Immolated monk at Long Son Pagoda

Video image of captured Americans at the Hanoi Hilton

The Hanoi Hilton

In Hanoi we visited the Hoa Lo Prison, now a museum. It was built by the French to imprison Vietnamese dissidents, and later dubbed the "Hanoi Hilton" by captured Americans. While much of the museum displays ill-treatment by the French, a couple of rooms are dedicated to the Americans. John McCain’s flight suit hangs there, along with various artifacts of the prisoners’ lives.  Photos and videos show “happy” GIs eating, playing chess, etc. The official line is that they were well-treated “and even had turkey for Christmas dinner.”  They weren’t, but neither were northern prisoners held in South Vietnamese prisons.

Captured USAF helicopter

It’s hard to gauge the legacy of the war. The horrific consequences of Agent Orange are still there. We visited arts and crafts workshops where some of its victims are employed. Every family has stories to tell.  Our cycling guide grew up in the Mekong Delta, which was heavily bombed by the Americans. During one raid, four of his family members were killed, and his mother moved the family to Saigon. Another guide is forbidden to hold a government job because his father had joined the South Vietnamese army. That restriction lasts for four generations. Another slap dealt by the government was the renaming of Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City. Imagine renaming Atlanta “General William T. Sherman” after the Civil War.

Poster of captured Americans

Yet Vietnam has a young population, with most of its people born since the war. As the years pass, and the free market economy continues to grow, people live in the present, not the past. The tourist dollars are welcome, and I was happy to add my pittance to their prosperity.

Itinerary

See http://www.exodustravels.com/usa/vietnam-holidays/cycling/cycling-vietnam/mov-94296 for a details of our itinerary.

Books about Vietnam

Pham, Andrew, Catfish and Mandala. NY, FSG: 1999. Vietnamese-American who fled as a child, returns to cycle through Vietnam in his 20s, with flashbacks to his history. Excellent book.

Dang, Thuy Tram, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: Diary.  NY, Harmony Books: 2007. Diary of young Viet Cong woman doctor killed by Americans in 1970. Powerful.

Dinh, Linh, Love Like Hate. NY, Seven Stories Press: 2010. Multi-generation family novel, from 1960s to the present.  Good look at life in postwar Saigon.