Vietnam’s Legacy

Vietnam’s legacy began with a draft card. It arrived in my dad’s mail box in 1967, and by 1968 he found himself in the countryside and cities of Vietnam. He was part of the US Army Corp of Engineers. Like so many young American men before him, he didn’t want to go, didn’t want to kill people, didn’t want to die. He was barely out of high school when his country handed him a rifle and demanded these things of him. Perhaps as his own form of protest, my dad took a Nikon camera with him and determinedly captured his tour of duty on film.

A Picture Paints a Thousand Words

I know of my dad’s experience in Vietnam and the war through these pictures. They taught me who my dad was as a person and what kind of character he had. He persevered through a great deal. I was able to look through a window in time at the man I’d always known and see him in a new light.

These pictures were a link that allowed him to talk with me about the war years later. When I was 17, I numbered and labeled them as he told me what and where they were.

Some of his pictures are humorous, my favorite being the double exposure of him robbing himself at gunpoint.

Some are the unvarnished horrors of war. He recorded everything he could because I think he knew it was the only way he could communicate about this war. Especially the atrocities. Those were the pictures he couldn’t talk about. He simply looked at the floor and shook his head. I knew to quietly tuck those away and recognize them as his way of speaking when words wouldn’t suffice. I also recognized his regret and sadness, perhaps because he had something to do with them.

Answers to Questions

My dad made it back from Vietnam in one piece and lived for another 20 years. He died from cancer a year after we went through those pictures. Since then, I have often wondered many things about my dad’s experience in Vietnam.

One thought came back again and again: how did he feel about Vietnamese people after the war? Did he hate them? If he was surrounded by Vietnamese and had negative, traumatizing experiences from some of them, did it effect how he thought about all of them? What was it like for my dad when my mom brought East Asian decor into our home in 1972?

A few years ago I got the answer to these questions from my mom. She told me the story behind a porcelain, Asian doll she’s had for years. My dad sent it from Vietnam along with a letter asking if she wanted to adopt a little Vietnamese girl in an orphanage he had found in My Tho.

Is this why a photo of an orphanage could be found among the pictures he took? It seemed an oddly disjointed photo in his documentation of war.

Compassion Amidst War

I was stunned. Why hadn’t my mom told me this before? Why did I not have a sister? Because it was a sad and horrifying story of war. When my dad’s platoon came back from a reconnaissance mission, the orphanage was burned to the ground. The Vietcong had set it on fire with the nuns and children inside, killing all, including my would-be sister.

It was devastating to hear this, which is why my mom hadn’t told me before. I mourned the loss of a sister I never knew, who died before I was born. It crushed me to know people could be so cruel to each other. But. Underlying all the sadness and hurt was the reassuring knowledge that love still existed. My dad’s compassion survived all the carnage that is war. He didn’t hate these people. He wanted to make one his daughter. In his own way, I believe he was trying to bring healing, forgiveness, and restitution for himself and others.

Vietnam left a legacy that is riddled with sadness and atrocities. I grieve for the scars its war left on my dad and everyone else who was forced to endure it. But the microcosm of my dad’s story in the larger picture of this war has left me with the knowledge that love and compassion endures. Call me naive if you want, but I believe it is vastly stronger than all of War’s evils and always will endure. And that’s a legacy that is larger than all war, even Vietnam’s.

-I dedicate this writing to my dad’s and sister’s memory and to all those who were affected by the Vietnam War. May there be healing and peace where there once was none.