War and Diaspora: The Memories of South Vietnamese Soldiers

Abstract

War veterans of the former Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF) form a significant component of the Vietnamese refugee and migrant community overseas and yet their experiences remain under-researched and under-explored, with their histories having been largely silenced in the wider historiography of the war and erased within the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. This article draws on oral history interviews in order to reclaim some of these forgotten histories. In all, the post-war experiences of veterans who reconstructed new lives in Australia form a marked contrast with those of veterans who stayed in Vietnam. Oral history provides a rich source of personal testimony, and this article examines the veterans' formulation of their wartime memories and experiences, and identifies strategies developed by the veterans to deal with war, trauma, loss and migration.

Keywords:

• Diasporic Memory
• Oral History
• Veteran Memories
• Wartime Memories
• Vietnamese Diaspora
• Vietnamese Refugees
• Vietnamese Veterans
• Republic Of Vietnam Armed Forces

Notes

[1] A total of sixteen oral history interviews of Vietnamese veterans and the relatives of veterans were conducted in Australia in 2010–2011 as part of the preliminary research for my Australian Research Council-funded research project on Vietnamese veterans in Australia. I would like to acknowledge the remarkable work of Boitran Huynh-Beattie, who was a dedicated research assistant and went to considerable trouble to contact Vietnamese veterans and conduct detailed oral history interviews in Vietnamese. Her unexpected death in January 2012 was a loss deeply regretted.

[2] These wars have also been referred to as the First and Second Indochina Wars, and the French War and the American War. Since Vietnam was in a nearly continuous state of war for thirty years, the Vietnam War is also referred to as taking the entire 1946–1975 period.

[3] The histories of RVNAF servicewomen feature in Nguyen (2009a, 2009b).

[4] ‘Viet Cong’ is a condensation of ‘Viet Nam Cong Sang’ (Vietnamese Communists).

[5] The term ‘nguy’ (renegade) was used by the post-war communist regime to refer to all those who were associated with the former South Vietnamese government. The label extended to their families as well. See, for example, Hong's narrative and her description of nguy families in post-war Vietnam in Nguyen (2005b).