War crimes and Heroism in Vietnamese commemorations of the U.S. war: Observations in 1977 and 1992

Abstract

This is a personal narrative, not a researched report. I visited war memorials on two trips to Vietnam, separated by fifteen years of history and living. Without having conducted interviews or sought information in documents about the purposes and uses of the memorials, I recount here my observations—as an American whose life was permanently shaped by my involvement in the antiwar movement. I hope that by reflecting on what I saw I may contribute to understanding, but these observations are only fragments of a story that is larger and deeper than I have been able to address. As I neither speak nor read Vietnamese and was constrained by group dynamics on both visits, my observations were limited to what I could take in visually and through partial interpretation. I hope they are of use.

In 1977 my visit to Son My, the site of the “My Lai” massacre, was a pilgrimage of expiation, a duty twisted by pain and guilt that was the focus of a complicated journey to Vietnam by four Americans representing a coalition of peace organizations. To get to Hanoi we flew for twenty-four hours on an Aeroflot turboprop from Moscow with stops in Tashkent, Karachi, and Dacca. From Hanoi we flew to Danang, where the hangars still displayed stenciled U.S. signs, and U.S. planes and helicopters still sat on the tarmac. Then we drove in an air-conditioned Toyota van, first to the district headquarters at Son Tinh for an official briefing, then to the site where a hospital would be built with the funds we brought, and finally, to Son My.