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May 9, 2000
SHORT MEMORIES OF A LONG WAR
The old cliche is that time heals all wounds, but I didn't expect that 25 years could erase the scars of war in an entire generation. That's what may have happened with the children of Vietnamese immigrants, who have grown up in a post-war era familiar only with the relative comforts of American affluence.
| My own memories of the end of the war are bound in baby-boomer images of early 1970s anti-war protests, the general hatred of young people towards president Richard Nixon, the ongoing Watergate scandal and a seemingly unbridgeable gap between generations. |
A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine, a high-school aged journalist named Kim Nguyen, was given an assignment for the 25th anniversary of the end of the Viet Nam War.
She was asked to contact a variety of Vietnamese, mostly the generation of Vietnamese born after 1975, to ask them about their reaction to the war and its repercussions. To her shock and dismay, not a single person replied to a short questionnaire she sent out. She decided that growing up within American traditions and pop culture, and growing up without a lot of open communication about the war from their parents' generation, has led to this lack of awareness of history.
Although her point is that young Vietnamese owe it to themselves to understand the events that led their families to the United States, Kim ultimately asserts that it shouldn't be the schools' responsibility to teach this history. She thinks the generation that was born in Viet Nam, and suffered the consequences of the war as well as the often perilous journey that brought them here, should pass on their experiences to their children. This would make the younger generation more aware of their historical roots, and help them appreciate Asia more as their "motherland" instead of simply fading into the American tapestry.
I applaud Kim's passion for her own history (she told me some harrowing stories about her family) even though she's a teenager who was raised in an America driven by MTV images and suburban prosperity. But I wasn't surprised at the non-response to her survey of contemporaries.
For one thing, the drama of the Viet Nam war truly was one that affected one generation, much like how the pre-baby boom generation was the one who lived through and was directly impacted by World War II. Without the vivid, first-hand memories of the war-torn country and the efforts to escape in the post-war flood of refugees, of course young people aren't going to connect with the events. All they know about it is what the media offered in the way of 25th-anniversary coverage.
And speaking of which, the "end" of the war is a pretty self-centered perspective on history: April 30, 1975 may mean the end of the war to Americans, and it surely has significance for the Communist Vietnamese because they won the war after so many years fighting various Western powers. But it probably didn't mean the end of strife, fear or hard times for millions of South Vietnamese for whom the date meant their lives were in that much more jeopardy.
My own memories of the end of the war are bound in baby-boomer images of early 1970s anti-war protests, the general hatred of young people towards president Richard Nixon, the ongoing Watergate scandal and a seemingly unbridgeable gap between generations, although I wasn't much of a rebellious teenager. I remember one field trip with my Boy Scout troop to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. (we lived in northern Virginia at the time) when our caravan got stuck in a traffic jam, caught between police in riot gear on one side and hundreds of scruffily-dressed young people wielding signs and throwing rocks at the police. The van I was riding in got hit by some rocks, and I remember being both thrilled to be in the midst of this, and bothered that the guys I agreed with were denting our van.
I also remember how, in 1973, a couple of years before I would have to sign up, the draft of young men into the United State military was abolished. I luckily didn't have to face the prospects of either going to a war I didn't believe in, or running away from the country I love.
And last, my specific memories of the end of the Viet Nam conflict are tied up in two opposing news images.
One, a returning POW grinning from ear to ear and readying an embrace as his wife and daughters race toward him on the airport tarmac, one daughter's long straight hair flying like a flag of freedom behind her.
And the second, a frightening and chaotic photograph of one of the final helicopters to depart Saigon as the Americans fled South Viet Nam, jammed with people and taking off from atop a building -- the U.S. Embassy, I think -- that was crawling with what looked like thousands of desperate Vietnamese who had befriended the Western forces and feared for their lives as the Viet Cong came to claim their country back. The retreating U.S. forces could only take a few of their supporters along; the rest had to endure the new regime or trust their fate with a huge flight of refugees.
That's the image that came to my mind when Kim Nguyen told me about her assignment. But then, her results got me thinking about my own roots.
Ultimately, Kim's search for reactions to the anniversary reminded me of Japanese people and their general lack of interest in talking abut the war from their perspective, and of the many Japanese Americans who for decades practically swept the events of the internment under a metaphorical bed rather than share their experiences with their children and their children. Many Jews who survived the Holocaust also prefer not to relive their memories.
Whether it's because of the utter horror of war and the memories associated with such cataclysmic events for those who live through them, or because of some need to protect the next generation from such awful events, this need to keep quiet is a disquieting side-effect of history.
The youngest generation is the one that should know the most about previous generations' greatest accomplishments ... and its greatest tragedies. How else is the world going to heal its wounds for the future?