MESSAGES FROM LONG TAN, VIETNAM

Abstract

This article explores the changing ways in which Australians and Vietnamese remember and memorialize their involvement in the Vietnam War and how these processes intersect with notions of reconciliation and historical justice in postwar contexts. It uses the Battle of Long Tan of August 1966 as an entrée into these considerations and questions whether heritage-making and memorialization processes can facilitate the achievement of reconciliation between parties formerly in conflict. Not surprisingly, the Australian and Vietnamese veterans of the battle and the two states, the Commonwealth of Australia and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, have different motivations for wanting to remember Long Tan. On the Australian side, a sense that reconciliation and atonement are needed is often reflected in official government and veterans' statements about the war and Australia–Vietnam relations, in the memorialization process at Long Tan and in the involvement of Australian veterans groups in local economic development and community building in Vietnam. On the Vietnamese side, where the Vietnam War played out as a civil as well as an international war, efforts by those who actively supported the former Republic of Vietnam based in Saigon and among the overseas Vietnamese (Viet kieu) to memorialize their engagement in the conflict have been frustrated. The usefulness of the notion of seeking historical justice is therefore questioned in post–civil war situations where people are locked into fixed histories and are unprepared or unable to revisit and retell personal and collective memories and histories.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This article is an outcome of the project “Australian Heritage Abroad: Managing Australia's Extraterritorial War Heritage,” that is being undertaken by the authors together with Professor Joan Beaumont (Australian National University) and Dr. Bart Ziino (Deakin University) under an Australia Research Council Discovery Grant. We are grateful for the assistance provided by our three research assistants: Vilia Dukas, Glenda Lynch, and Dr. Nguyen Thanh Binh. We thank, too, the officers at the Australian Embassy in Hanoi and consulate in Ho Chi Minh City and the Dong Nai Museum in Bien Hoa, and especially “Breaker” Cusack, who guided us at Long Tan, introduced us to former soldiers, both Australian and Vietnamese, and gave us an insight into the difficult memories veterans have to bear.

Notes

^1. Graeme “Breaker” Cusack, personal communication, 18 March 2013.

^2. Anzac Day Commemoration Committee n.d.; Taylor 2001, 132.

^3. Anderson 2012.

^4. Bräuchler 2012, 153.

^5. Winter and Sivan, eds. 1999.

^6. Rousso 1991.

^7. Beaumont 2012.

^8. Logan and Nguyen 2012.

^12. Hansard 1994, 784.

^9. Hansard 1989, 53, but cf. Burstall's own account (1990, 134–37).

^10. Interview with Tran Quang Toai, former director, Dong Nai Museum, Bien Hoa, 12 October 2011.

^11. Hansard 1989, 53.

^13. Long Tan Cross Inventory Sheet (Bien Ban Giao Nhan), dated 20 May 1988, Dong Nai Museum, Bien Hoa. See also Nguyen 2002, 183.

^14. Interview, Dong Nai Museum, Bien Hoa, 12 October 2011.

^15. Hansard 1989, 53.

^16. The authors discovered this version of the cross during fieldwork in Vung Tau in January 2011. It had not been known to the Australian authorities.

^17. Pearson 2005; Sabben 2013.

^18. McNeill 1993, 218.

^19. Sabben 2013.

^20. Ibid.

^21. Pearson 2005.

^22. Sabben 2013.

^23. Ibid.

^24. Burgess 2001; Long Dat District People's Committee 2002.

^25. Sabben 2013.

^26. Graeme “Breaker” Cusack, personal communication, 8 March 2013.

^27. The AVVRG was first named the Australian Vietnam Veterans Reconstruction Group.

^28. AVVRG 2010.

^29. Interview with Kevin Erwin, Brisbane, 2 February 2012.

^30. Long Tan File, AVVRG Archive.

^31. Anzac Day Commemoration Committee n.d.

^32. Kelly 2005.

^33. Interview with Kevin Erwin, Brisbane, 2 February 2012.

^34. Anzac Day Commemoration Committee n.d.

^36. Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) (Hanoi) 2002.

^35. Ryan 2002.

^37. Quoted in Benvenuti and Jones 2010, 57.

^38. Fraser and Simons 2010, 420.

^39. Hawke 1994, 223.

^40. Tweddell 2006.

^41. Hansard 1996, 172.

^42. Ibid.

^43. Ibid.

^44. See Davison 2006; Logan 2007.

^45. Logan 2007.

^46. Logan and Nguyen 2012.

^47. This is a nonliteral rendering of the longer ways the Vietnamese commonly to refer to the war: “Cuoc chien tranh chong My cuu nuoc” [the war against Americans to salvage the country]; “Cuoc chien chong quan xam luoc My” [the war against the invading American army]; or “Cuoc khang chien chong My xam luo giai phong dat nuoc” [the resistance against American invasion to liberate the country]. Nguyen Thanh Binh, personal communication, 23 November 2012.

^48. Shenon 1995.

^49. Logan and Nguyen 2012, 45.

^50. Ibid., 52.

^51. Ho 1995, 280.

^52. Nguyen 2002, 183.

^53. McNeill 1993, 367–68.

^54. Logan and Nguyen 2012, 55; see also, Malarney 2001.

^55. Sabben 2013.

^56. Shenon 1995.

^57. Nguyen 2012, 462; Scurfield 2006, 111. See Schwenkel 2006, 21.

^58. Viet Nam News, 2010.

^59. Le 2009.

^60. Berg and Schaefer 2009, 1.

^61. Freeman 2011, 96. In cases where a society moves from authoritarianism to democracy after a conflict, international lawyers use the term “transitional justice” rather than the more general “historical justice.”

^62. 1992 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (as amended 25 December 2001). National Assembly, Hanoi.

^63. The loan has not been entirely smooth from the Australian end, with the AVVRG voicing opposition on the grounds that it had potential to undermine the good works being done by the organization in Vietnam, including efforts to preserve the replica cross that is the focus of memorial activities at the Long Tan battle site itself. See Witcomb 2013.

^64. Graeme “Breaker” Cusack, personal communication, 8 March 2013.

^65. Bui 2002, 5.

^66. Ibid., 143–44.

^67. Ibid., 143.

^68. Le 2009; Logan 2010.

^69. Kelly 2005; interview with Kevin Erwin, Brisbane, 3 February 2012.

^70. Ibid.

^71. Graeme “Breaker” Cusack, personal communication, 18 January 2011.

^72. See NVVM website: www.vietnamvetsmuseum.org/.

^73. Ong and Meyer 2004, 14.