Thirty Years After Vietnam: Myths, Lessons and Closure

thank you very much for coming out at eight at eight o'clock at night on a Monday and I know it's uh it's a busy schedule there's a lot of things going on in the campus but I'm hoping to share with you what happened with my family and the South Vietnamese society with respect to the war in the aftermath because I think it's important there are still some lessons from that war that's being played out in Iraq today and you may say the war is not touching you yet but it's gonna touch you at the gas pump the war is gonna touch you someday because there's a thing called the draft that's being talked about again because we are being we're short we're short of men and women in the military but I wanted to show you with you a little story about why I wrote the book because people say why would you want to write a book thirty years after the Vietnam War there have been 3,500 books on the Vietnam War from fiction to biographies to memoirs to political analyses why a book now and I started writing this book a number of years ago I wanted to write a book about growing up in America with three sisters and a mother growing up in a house with full of Asian women I was gonna tell this book the joy let's club but somebody beat me to it and I think she became a best-selling author I wanted to write this book because of the lingering myths and we can spend all night talking about the myths of the Vietnam War so I'll just stick to the top three the myth from the media's perspective the myth from movies and in the last part the myth about the military particularly the South Vietnamese military and their role in the war because for many years we hear about the American servicemen and their experience in Vietnam for many years we hear about the Vietcong the you know the elusive North Vietnamese communists but for many years we ignored the South Vietnamese all together and why is that relevant now it is because the United States is helping an ally in Iraq but in Vietnam we weren't able to tell the difference between ally or enemy we could distinguish between friend or foe and the same things are happening in Iraq and why is that important because one day we're gonna go home the Americans in Iraq are gonna go home and when they went home from Vietnam South Vietnam was lost a few years later and 30 years later a lot of that blame reside with then reside on the shoulders of South Vietnamese people like my father who paid a big price during the war so let me start with the myth from the media and I'll start off right away with the portrayal of the 1968 Tet Offensive I'll just highlight two or three points from the war in 1968 there was a big turning point in the war called a Tet Offensive this is when the Communists suddenly attacked all over South Vietnam during a truce for the holidays the Vietnamese said the Lunar New Year and after a few weeks of battle the Americans and the South Vietnamese fought back and really defeated the Vietcong the insurgents now these wars gonna sound familiar to you the Viet congs were the insurgents like the way we're talking about the Iraqi insurgents today they were basically wiped out during the Tet Offensive but a few weeks later Walter Cronkite and this is before your generation back then the media wasn't as prolific as the media today there were only three networks there were no CNN no HBO no MSNBC three major networks and had great influence on the American society because the American media was covering the war for Americans back home and they were writing about Americans in Vietnam so everything was American centric and we didn't have a lot of report who understood the Vietnamese culture and didn't speak to Vietnamese language if that sounds familiar to do to you that's what's happening that Iraq we don't we don't know a lot about the Iraqi culture we don't know the Arabic language we don't have reporters our military personnel that know that so when I talk about the media in 1968 you had to you had three major networks ABC NBC and CBS which Walter Cronkite was the CBS Evening News a main staple from that generation Walter Cronkite saw the Tet Offensive and he declared the war unwinnable and at that moment at that moment the tide had been turned the Vietcong were pretty much wiped out but what happens you didn't have any other sources there were no other reporting on what the South Vietnamese military was doing and what the Americans were doing in Hawaii City the central part of Vietnam where the Communists killed 3,000 innocent civilians that was basically ignored altogether also in 1968 during the Tet Offensive there was a picture of a South Vietnamese general executing a Vietcong on the streets of Saigon are you familiar with that photo that photo arguably changed the outcome and the American support for the war but there was really no no captions that went along with that picture of why the general killed this Viet Cong officer on the street I can tell you that the world opinion turned against the South Vietnamese I can tell you that four years later the Americans still ostracized a general he almost didn't get to come the United States in 1975 when Saigon fell you flash forward to 2004 with the media now and some of the lessons when the US Marines went through Fallujah in the fall for the second time there was a young marine who shot an insurgent are you familiar with the story and an NBC crew captured it it was intense the military didn't want that to be shown because in the heat of combat that's what happened the young marine and we don't know whole story yet we just know that there was footage and the reporter captured this on tape but you know what in 2004 the United States I wouldn't say condoned it the United States gave that marine a break I think the military said this is this is war this is what people do under pressure there was a threat there so this young guy shot this insurgent and that was the end of the story over two weeks there was no judging and debating and and and the story basically disappeared if you look at the two situations they're almost the same with the exception the general was a high-ranking officer and should be held more accountable whereas the young marine was just a 19 year old American in the heat of battle but in the same light had that picture been shown and had the American public not understood the background that picture it could have changed the way we think about the war in Iraq so that's one of the media myth that I wanted to share with you especially those two the other one that I wanted to share with you is I met the general I met general wrong in America two years before he died and he was a big hero in the South Vietnamese military and I couldn't understand it so his whole career was spent fighting for South Vietnam in that one four hundredth of a second that picture changed not only his life but the fate of the South Vietnamese military and government and I met the photographer eddie adams he won a pulitzer prize he passed away last year I went to his house to interview him for this book I wanted to ask him what was the story behind the picture and even eddie adams who won the peels he was a renown photographer he could even talk anymore he had Lou Gehrig's disease and he had a voice box he told me that the general was a hero I've been telling people this but they don't want to listen that we judged the general without having a full understanding of the complexities of the war and off our allies and that's what happened with one of the myths of the Vietnam War the second one I want to touch upon is Miss Jane Fonda Miss Jane Fonda just wrote a book it's a best-seller I'm sure it's a great book she's being published by my publisher but I wanted to let you know when she visited Vietnam and I'm not gonna talk about her actions I just want to talk about the media portrayal of her visit to North Vietnam in 1972 when she sat in the anti-aircraft gun placement and many American veterans still no third to this day and they will do that until they go to their grave but when she visited North Vietnam the Americans were out of Vietnam already it was between the war was between the North Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese people like my father who was still fighting because the North Vietnamese kept attacking and so there was this big battle in early part of 72 called the Easter offensive in in this country nobody really talks about it was bigger than the a drank valley he was bigger than hamburger hill it was bigger than Khe Sanh it was bigger than any of the battles that the Americans have been involved in the North Vietnamese attacked with 120,000 troops in the spring of 72 was called the Easter offensive and only American advisors were left on the ground and the South Vietnamese withheld that attack only only to lose another publicity feat to Jane Fonda visiting and she had a right to visit she's an American citizen she was going in as a private citizen but the way that was portrayed as if the war was still going on and Americans were still involved in Vietnam when Jane's visit or any other major event in Unites States had nothing to do with the outcome of the war with the exception of the Paris peace accord and the release of the American prisoners and so when she visited that South Vietnam suffered another publicity blow when in fact it just withheld the biggest battle of the war and so I wanted it to share with you that because my father was directly involved with both those instances in 1968 when he was the South Vietnamese pilot flying constantly during the Tet Offensive for the South Vietnamese military and in 1972 when his squadron when he was a squadron commander his squadron lost 20 men within three days during the Easter offensive only to have everything turned back with another media portrayal the South Vietnamese as far as one more note on the media back then you didn't have freelance reporters you know you had embedded reporters in Vietnam but there weren't that many they were only from the wire services UPI AP and mainly the New York Times now you have people from small town newspaper you have Philadelphia newspaper Dallas you have foreign correspondents there everywhere and so however those early reported reported the war it had an effect because there were some people who took a side and you know what journalists are supposed to report the events and as early as 1960-61 the tie was already against south vietnam and so that's some of the myths of the media that i wanted to share with you i'm gonna go on to movies and how the lingering portrayal of the vietnam war specifically about Vietnamese and Asian Americans and Asians in general touched my life and what I saw there were a couple movies in the late 1970s in the 1980s about the war I'm not sure if many of you remember these movies but some of you may remember Apocalypse Now it's being shown in in many classes the movie platoon and Full Metal Jacket in Apocalypse Now there's a scene where Robert Duvall plays an American officer he basically shoves the South Vietnamese soldiers to the ground and just basically disses him off and when I see that movie when I saw that movie I said wow is this as the way the Americans thought of their allies well with allies like that no wonder the South Vietnam loss if you if you were being treated like that but there's only one movie the other movie I saw when I was at UCLA in 1985 was called The Killing Fields anybody remember the killing fields and now that movie was an honest portrayal of what happened to the Campbell people and the genocide that happened that the free world just basically did nothing about after the Vietnam War but in the movie there were Cambodians working in the fields doing hard labor and so as I was watching this movie in 1985 in Westwood California my father was being held in the prison camp in North Vietnam doing the same kind of labor that the Communists would print him through and so here we are as a society we go to Vietnam we try to help the South Vietnamese we decided it's not worth it anymore we come home we cut off our allied and we go home and we make movies and make fun of them and portray them in the negative light I couldn't understand that and there was another movie called Full Metal Jacket Full Metal Jacket was released in 1987 the year I graduate from college and enter the Marines as a second lieutenant in Full Metal Jacket there are very obscene language and foul language and obscene scenes about the way the US military saw the South Vietnamese they were calling them words that I won't repeat in this forum but they were basically saying we're fighting for the wrong side these guys are throwing their guns down and run any other way and they're portraying a South Vietnamese officer as a pimp offering prostitutes to the US Marines and this is the way I felt like my father and all of his colleagues for all those years that they believed in the United States this is this is what's being fed to the American public but their films they're entertaining until you show up like I did at Officer Candidate School and the first words out of the drill instructors mouth was Farm Fang phone what are you doing in my Marine Corps are you a Vietcong spy then I knew the effects of the movies on the American military and these were young men these weren't combat hardened and combat Marines that I was dealing with we're dealing with it was people who saw those movies there's a movie called sixteen Candles anybody remember sixteen Candles it's still pretty popular with college students there's a character in there call long Duk dong a Japanese foreign student they make fun of him he's a nerd and he dates a female weightlifter when you go into the military and you want to become a pilot you know pilots all have call signs people seen Top Gun in here yeah American pilots get cool too callsign they call them maverick right goose Superman stud do you know what my callsign was when I first got to my squadron the donger the donger yours truly I said no way and I fought that and in this squadron you don't fight off your nicknames because you don't pick them the guys pick them for you and a few guys thought it was funny I didn't think it was funny I said you can call me anything you want you can call me elephant stupid short but don't call me those names that reinforce the stereotype because I'm here like you I'm flying like you I'm doing my mission like you call me something else but I will not stand for that and they try to call me I said which from Mel Brooks is Blazing Saddles or Mongolian that name went away too but these were the things that people saw these movies and that's what he saw the South Vietnamese and all of a sudden 20 years later there's a million and a half of us here in the United States and in Orange County where I live there's 250,000 of us and really nobody really asks the questions about these misperceptions of the aftermath of the war why did the South Vietnamese lose what was the South Vietnamese military's role in the war and these questions need to be asked because that's what's happened in Iraq you're hearing some headlines now the Iraqis won't fight for their freedom Bill O'Reilly set this a year and a half ago the South Vietnamese wouldn't fight for their freedom that's why don't have it today will the Iraqis fight for theirs and as we get ready to turn over this war you you got to look beyond those misperceptions and the images you gotta look beyond the media you've got a dig deeper because the war is gonna touch you if it keeps going the war in Iraq because Vietnam is over I'm not trying to refight it or change the outcome I just want to share through the first third of my book my father's experience as an ally of the United States in how he was treated and what happened to him after the United States left because the Iraqis their Summum that believed in this country and if we went in there and took Baghdad and turned their country upside down don't you think we owe them something to fix it to leave it the way it was and then leave if it's the wrong thing to do that we got there in the first place so I've talked about the misconceptions misperceptions in the media in the movies I'll touch upon the military and that's why I decided to bright the book was when I heard Bill O'Reilly made those comments at first I couldn't answer him if he would have asked me on his show that night I couldn't have asked him why did width of South Vietnamese did the South Vietnamese fight for their freedom is that why they don't have it today and I think that was that's when I said wow somebody somebody thinks that happened maybe more people think that the South Vietnamese didn't fight maybe if we think the South Vietnamese was totally responsible for the failures in Vietnam we would absolve ourselves get rid of all of our guilt and bad feelings about the Vietnam War by just blaming and what are we gonna blame the Iraqis to did the Vietnamese invite the United States and the Vietnam did the Iraq you invite the United States into Iraq these are these are questions that I think need to be asked but more importantly the lessons of Vietnam that aren't being talked about which is the third part of this talk is how did the United States going to Vietnam and fight with an allied military there's hardly any books to talk about that that's what's happening I wrecked our military is fighting a war while training the Iraqis to take over and then the second lesson from that is what happened to the hand off what happened when the United States in the 1960s said we've had enough of Vietnam it's time to go home why didn't that work why didn't all those military planes and weapons and the aid help the South Vietnamese government last and it's it's part of the South Vietnamese fault too for being too dependent on the American aid and I think could be a downfall for the Iraqis too I think the biggest mistake that could make is to depend on the United States I mean it's because we're gonna leave and when we leave we're gonna take a lot of equipment we're gonna take a lot of support and we're gonna take a lot of money with this and then I hope they don't turn into the South Vietnamese military when a million of those men were marching to the prison camps after the fall of Saigon the other know about the military is two and a half years into the Iraq war the Army and the Marine Corps are way short on their recruiting goals if you look at the lessons of Vietnam as they applied to Iraq with regards to the anti-war movement and some people here are gonna they're gonna disagree with me but if you look at at the legacies of the anti-war movement what are they it was a major factor in the Vietnam War if you take away the draft Vietnam and Iraq people are being touched much besides the military family and their and the military itself in Vietnam it touched a lot of lives the draft divided the country and people at least were in tune with the Vietnam War pro or against I'll give you an example this weekend I was flipping through the TV station and there was a protest animal rights protest for the Chicago zoo there are some animals that were killed because of mistreatment 200 people showed up to protest on behalf of animals when was the last time you saw anybody march against the war in Iraq in numbers that since the beginning right two years ago not since the election was decided last November and it's not my place to say go protests are not protests but I'm just pointing you out if you took away the draft from the Vietnam War would the country be that divisive and if you put the draft back in place today would more people care about what's going on over there and so I'm not sure if it's coming back or not I just know that in two or three years they're gonna need more people and where where are we going to get them from because the friends I have over there it's not the Colonel's and the majors that are going in the front lines they're 19 a 22 year old men and some women in support that are doing the patrols they're young young Americans and and they're not signing up to fulfill the quota so where are they gonna get them and what's that gonna do the country when the Congress start talking about it I think we're gonna hear about Iraq more than the runaway bride or Michael Jackson so those that those who some of the lessons that I don't think are being talked about the handoff to the South Vietnamese why didn't the peace agreement that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger side with the North Vietnamese last two things because when South Vietnam collapse the dominoes didn't fall but a lot of people still paid a big price people like my father people like the boat people 300,000 of them died trying to leave Vietnam and we may say wow you know they're not Americans is not our fault anymore we're out but there's this thing called the Vietnam syndrome and that in 1991 when I was in the Gulf War when we came back after 41 days President Bush 41 said by god we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome well have we well the Vietnam syndrome was holding the United States back from entering a lot of wars because we would have afraid that every war would turn out like Vietnam long Quagmire's a lot of deaths and really the outcome no difference if you were to ask people hey if we did nothing in Vietnam would three million lives be spirit and sixty thousand American lives be spared we don't know we don't know and so with Iraq the withdrawals got to be done right that's why I didn't want to engage in the discussion about whether the war was right or wrong because it's already going all we can do is hope that the handoff is done correctly and that the lessons of handing the war off to the Vietnamese are being studied and talked about and secondly that we leave something in place because the war is some of the lessons of the wars anywhere are that Wars take a long time to unwind they're gonna outlast presidencies do get our last congressmen senators term they're gonna let people gonna feel the effect this war for 20 plus years in Iraq and in this country the kids who lost their fathers and their mothers 1,600 Americans have already died and so wars are very complicated is not just going and declared victory and even the Gulf War that I saw we went in in 41 days and we came home two weeks after the Gulf War ended in 1991 well when I knew that we didn't quite achieve complete victory was when two months later they said you're going back to the Persian Gulf so I got back on a carrier eleven months later twelve months later and went back to like golf again so this has been going on you just don't hear about it unless once again you're touched by the war or the military and you won't unless you have a family member your listing or if the draft touches you close you're my last note closure for me and the Vietnam War was a was doing this book I wanted to take responsibility for what happened to South Vietnam by learning about the South Vietnamese already knew what the Americans did because I studied it I read it in the classroom I hear people debate about it I didn't know what happened to South Vietnamese and as a former Marine I was ashamed when I heard the accusation by Bill O'Reilly when he said the South Vietnamese wouldn't fight why I didn't have the facts and I think when you want to come to closure or you have to deal with it within yourself what is it that's causing you what was it that was causing me to be angry about this statement what was the South Vietnamese role in the war and and why did they lose why did my family have become United States so through the book I found out blame was misdirected because it only won in pieces the politicians blame the military the military blame the media the media blame another group the anti-war movement was blamed well I say blame them all they were all involved in the quagmire just that one group and so if you're gonna learn all the lessons learn from all groups of why Vietnam was such a big tragedy that we still talk about it thirty years later the other thing about closure is it's a personal choice is is this the end of my discussion of the Vietnam War no but I can sleep at night knowing that I know what my father went through I know why the Communists kept him for 12 and a half years and why he was released I know that he was an honorable man like many South Vietnamese that he did his duty because he had to and that continual misrepresentation at the South Vietnamese will not help this country move forward and more importantly not discuss the lessons that could help our men and women in Iraq today I want to thank you for coming tonight I'm gonna close that and start taking questions through Richard thank you very much thank you for speaking I wanted to just ask I've heard you speak in the Vietnam class before and you brought up a lot of interesting points that you don't usually talk about I was wondering if you would just give us a quick the quick story of your father and your family coming over here and what happened to him and and why he was released and how that all happened and just kind of give the background of that well my father was a Vietnamese Air Force pilot he was he was one of the first 15 pilots from the South Vietnamese military to come the United States for training so he arrived here in 1957 so when people talk about the Vietnam War and the American involvement in Vietnam War you talk about the troops coming over in 65 in mass but actually the Vietnam conflict and the American involvement had already began as early the 1940s during World War two and so after 1954 when the country was divided the US military started training the South Vietnamese to fight this war against the insurgents so that they can hold up on their own my father did that for 21 years and in the end a week before the fall of Saigon he felt that the country was collapsing and he put my sisters my three sisters my mother and I on a plane and so on the dark night on April 23rd 1975 we were on a plane headed to an unknown destination unknown fate we just knew that we had to get out of Saigon and thank God that the United States took us in and so when I wrote about the book what I share with you in the first 30 minutes was really the first third of the book the book is about 1964 to 1975 when what happened to my father the second third of the book is about our transition to the United States our America my American Journey and how we overcame some of the early obstacles and my father's experience in the prison camp the Laster it's about my service in the Marine Corps and my reunion with my father in 1992 in the camps what the North Vietnamese did was to tell the South Vietnamese military after the fall of Saigon there's only one Vietnam just go to re-education for 30 days we're gonna tell you a few things and then you're gonna be free well thirty days turn into three years into nine years and 12 years and the camps were Soviet gulag Chinese labor camps that have been employed throughout the Soviet Union and in China in the most part of the 20th century to retool the mental and physical capacities of non-communists like my father and it was brutal he nearly died several times but it didn't break his spirit he knew that he believed in what he was doing and he was just big he was paying the price for losing Vietnam he could do it because our family was safe in the United States and so with that in back of this did help him to get through all those years many countries that have had an enemy and have finally won the war like Russia and the Germans keep oh we have kept an animosity towards those countries what is your interpretation why Vietnamese are now so friendly and really have forgotten it we know that of course half of the Vietnamese population didn't even live during the war but it's the other one perhaps because of a certain Buddhist philosophy or what are your interpretation of this friendliness which is quite different from most countries that have been have won a war I think there's two factors one is that the winners get the right history and act the way they do they don't have this sword chip like this out on their shoulders like the South Vietnamese or like some Americans in this country from that generation the the North Vietnamese won the war but they're friendly because they need to be because they need the United States because the Soviet Union the former Soviet Union fell apart in the 1980s and they needed another new partner and there's there was a rift with China who supported both countries supported Vietnam in major ways during the Vietnam War well after the fall of Saigon they couldn't continue to rely on the former Soviet Union or China so in the mid 80s they started going by and along came the United States looking for missing American in action and started the dialogue now the United States is the number one trade partner with Vietnam and so they answer your question one they act like that because they're the gracious winners toward Americans the United States they weren't gracious towards the South Vietnamese and - they needed us the American tourists and the American economy to help him rebuild after the war if you guys if you're not gonna ask Kuang question then I will you know one of the I think things I've learned from you and over the years is the spirit that you have about this country and the obvious question here here it is you graduate from from UCLA right the whole world is yours and what do you do you go into the Marine Corps at a time when you know the world was very different than it perhaps is today and so I'd like to know more about the values you have about this place and your journey and why you do the things you do well Richard one of the nice thing about writing a book a memoir 29 years after the end of Vietnam War is there's some clarity and you're thinking you can look back you know this book would have been different if I had written it 15 20 years ago and so in 1987 when I decided to join the Marine Corps as a 21 year old new citizen I wanted to pay back for my citizenship simple as that I looked at the Vietnam War and I saw I was still confused I didn't know all the factors I just knew that we were one of the few people that made it out and then all of a sudden we were given new citizenship education and basically allowed to pursue any opportunities that we wanted to and I really felt strongly for the country secondly I wanted to do what my father did was to become a pilot like him and when that opportunity arose I I jumped on it now looking back as an adult when I was write my book there were other reasons that I didn't know at the time I was I was doing it for my father and the and in the South Vietnamese military because I saw those movies and I didn't want I didn't want those perception I wanted to personally change through my service and make sure I got through and served honorably so that these misperceptions about the South Vietnamese South Vietnamese military would turn out to be false and so I took the extra step to do that I didn't know it then but that's why I did it and I did it because at that time my father was still in prison and and so I was hoping that the American do that that I would serve would would see me as opposite of what they saw in full-metal-jacket as opposite of what they saw in platoon as opposite of what they saw in Apocalypse Now I don't know you know I didn't take a poll but I think actions are louder than words and so when I completed my service I felt that everybody who knew me saw a different side to what was shown in the movies as far as the Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese military were concerned I wanted to ask one question to the audience to the men and women in the audience what happened to the to the United States government instituted a giraffe six months from now would some of you go down and voluntarily sign up or would you wait until you got your draft notice how many would go down and on their own how many people would burn it how many people would do anything until they were forced to do something which way go to Canada how would your life have been different how would you imagine your life would be if you stayed in Vietnam boy in 1995 I returned to Vietnam it was the day after I was discharged from the Marine Corps I landed in Ho Chi Minh City and it was this was three months before President Clinton normalized relations with Vietnam in July of 95 so I went back in April of 1995 and I saw a glimpse of what my life would have been like for example when I went into the streets of Saigon my birthplace I saw men my age were peddling DC clothes these wheels and when they had American passengers I can see they were working really hard including me because we you know I was bigger than most most of the Vietnamese on the streets so I stuck out like a sore thumb most Vietnamese expats that go back they can tell the Vietnamese local can tell so I saw the men that were my age pedaling in the street I saw young boys peddling and selling copies of American books like The Quiet American by Graham Greene and so I saw them I saw myself in them had I not left in 1975 I want to see my cousins and there were 12 of them in a two room apartment over to Saigon River a filth probably less than 300 square feet and they were sleeping right next to each other and so my our life would have been way different in the fact that my father was on the South Vietnamese military it was in the camp we weren't probably going to be allowed to go to school and to do things like the non South Vietnamese you seem to express that you feel like there's a sense of apathy among Americans about this war and I wonder do you think that that's because we've forgotten lessons of Vietnam or because it just because it hasn't touched us or because people have gotten so numb from it all or or why I think one because it's not touching a lot of people and the only people in my circles are the veterans who send the email from Iraq and complaining about their third tour in three years the same people are going back they're just coming back for six month and they're going back secondly I think the presidential debate last year between senator Kerry and President Bush the Swift Boat National Guard service that really muddled the water it really highlighted the Americans from that generation who grew up in the 60s and early 70s because it was about who went and who avoided who burned their draft card and who lost a buddy on the battlefield and it really it was about the society and the openness of our society and the debates within it but it really didn't have a lot to do with the war in Vietnam or the Vietnamese people were still dying afterward but nobody talked about it and so when you look at what's going on with Iraq today the wrong lessons are being the famed lessons are being recycled the arguments are the same ones from thirty years ago we were not we were wrong to go into Vietnam we were going to go that Iraq well those both of those events are I took place it's how we get out of them that that we have some hope for Iraq because too late for Vietnam one more you've drawn a lot of parallels between Iraq and Vietnam what differences do you see what difference is in Iraq in Vietnam one of the difference is the there's no the enemy is more elusive in Iraq I mean in Vietnam the soldiers in the gi said well we couldn't tell the villagers from the Vietcong well at least you know that the Soviet Union and the Chinese were giving the weapons because the Americans saw the planes the MIG fighters the other big difference is there's no South Vietnamese military in place you know the South Vietnamese military the Air Force at least was the fourth largest Air Force and so how far is the Iraqi military from becoming like the South Vietnamese military a long way and even with the large military the South Vietnamese had it didn't the country still collapsed and so there are other things that fail along the way but those are the two biggest I think it's it's hard to find the enemy in Iraq I mean right now they ask who who's behind the insurgency and to the military is in no way to take over the war so when people in the media or the government started talking about coming home within the next 18 months or 24 months that military it takes a long time to build military two years is not not enough time and so I think those two are the biggest difference I see we already talked about the lack of debate because there's no draft touching the lives as much as it did during the Vietnam War was wearing have you ever talked to Anthony Zinni or Norman Schwarzkopf about their experience with be an adviser to the South Vietnamese military great great question the portrayals of the South Vietnamese in Hollywood were mostly negative in the comments by Bill O'Reilly and even the late colonel Hackworth Colonel hackworth was America's most decorated soldier in Vietnam in Korea and he just passed away two weeks ago even he was very critical at the South Vietnamese but when you go back and when I went back and researched his book I went to the advisors and we have American advisors in Iraq now training the Iraqi military in Vietnam we had the big US military that fought the war basically on its own you had two South Vietnamese military with American advisers when you go back and you read general Schwarzkopf's memoir you go back and read generals innies memoirs there are chapters in those that highlight their strong feelings positive feelings about the South Vietnamese military but these things were never talked about because there during the minority the myth of the South Vietnamese being inept we're just so pervasive in the media and among the main u.s. military that people just kind of ignore and that's what I meant when I said earlier about closure for me I don't care what people say about my father in the South Vietnamese anymore because I know in my heart that what they did was their best the advisers were very critical with the South Vietnamese also and and so when you're an ally of the United States not only are you under the pressure of fighting your war you've got Big Brother the advisors over you but as my father relayed to me there is no other way American aid American Way just does that that's the way it goes I just hope we do it better than we did in Vietnam it is that your belief that had the media been more that the media was the big result why South Vietnam lost the war I mean that we pulled out when we could have stayed and won the war I am just wondering your the media I for many years I blamed the media but as I said all players took part in the failure including the South Vietnamese the media of the 1960 is not the media today the media that went to Vietnam were very selected and prominent journalists and I'll tell you two name's Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam one was with the United Press International the other one was with the New York Times and so as early as 1961 at 62 there were things being written about the South Vietnamese government that were negative already and so there were no other voices I think the media if they they saw it they should write it for the American people but there were no other voices to write about the Vietnamese military or the Vietnamese people from the South I think was just limited now I think you have more more stories from Iraq that's they're showing the Iraqis on TV they're showing the insurgent with the hoods on their on their heads before the execution they're showing more views of the war whereas in Vietnam the journalist and the military didn't speak Vietnamese and they were there for many many years and so the biggest I'll tell you the biggest thing that happened to me what the American media was what I call a very famous and I won't say his name this book is the classic textbooks on the Vietnam War when I called this journalist from the Vietnam era my name is Quan Pham and my middle name is Tuan he thought I was Fong and who was the Vietnamese communist spy that was attached to the American media he worked for Time magazine so what I call this American journalist up just a year and a half ago that do research he thought I was this person and so mr. Fox wingman had duped the entire American media in Saigon during most of war he was a Vietcong Colonel and so this is what happens when you have journalists who rely on third party information from non-english speakers is you're getting the wrong source and I think a good example of that is the noose weak retraction of the story today of what happened with the story of US prison guards flushing the Koran down the toilet I mean you're seeing accountability today I think that's a big improvement from for many years ago you also saw Dan Rather and 60 minutes being held responsible for airing the George Bush National Guard paper and then in the military they're being held responsible sooner to Abu gorab it didn't take him many years like the me light massacre I mean they were as soon as those pictures came out they were arrested one more three more this might be a little simplistic understanding of the media but I know in a lot of like basic government classes right they talk about the media as being the watchdog of democracy and so you seem to not have a very positive view of the media during the Vietnam War or even really in the Iraq war and I was just wondering if you thought maybe the role of the media had changed or if there is another role that the media should be playing or even offering suggestions as to what the media could be doing to be offering a more true portrayal of what went on or what is going on now well no I think I believe in the media different outlets not just one and what my point was when I went back and looked at the reports that come out of Vietnam they were just coming from a few sources whereas in Iraq that you can reblogs you can read soldiers stories you can read the military version you can read a variety of reports coming out of Iraq and it's almost overwhelming the media's role is to report the truth and if you look at the Newsweek scandal you look at 60 minutes you look at Jason Blair in the New York Times you look at Mitch Albom who's one of the most famous authors in the United States and he was suspended from the Detroit Free Press for a month for writing an article about some basketball players that didn't attend the NCAA s I don't know if you heard about that story he wrote Tuesday with Morrie but I think the thing that's better today than it was in the 1960 is there were some mistakes made with reporting but they're not being admitted to I mean we're still looking at these reports as if they were just gold standard and now we know so much more about the Vietcong we know so much more about Ho Chi Minh but those reports from the 60s and the textbook from this American author and journalist there are many faults in that book and it's still the gold standard for teaching so the reference is still the same so if you if you got it wrong or if it's incomplete 3040 years ago and you still use it today that nothing has changed but there has been progress made I think the media is being held responsible a lot sooner and it's correcting itself sooner so I think that's progress there's one more in the back first of all thank you for coming to speak to us you've been talking about the veterans of the South Vietnamese Armed Forces and you mentioned there are hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese or Vietnamese Americans in California how do the veterans of those Armed Forces see themselves I mean I can think of many memoirs of US soldiers in Vietnam but I can't really think of a memoir written by someone say he was a South Vietnamese soldier another another great question what happened with the fall Saigon is was some of the South Vietnamese soldiers got out and so depending who you ask if you ask the people who got out in 75 you would get a different story and depending on the rank to you ask those like my father who got out in 1992 17 years after the war and after 12 years in prison you get a different perspective just like if you ask an American vet who got there in 1965 versus 1970 you're gonna get a different story there are many stories in the Vietnamese language but not in the English language I think most of those vets most of South Vietnamese veges the American public would care so none of these stories are being translated - just they're just being written with for each other in military journals to be shared among themselves not even with my generation and so when I went out and and did some research on the books I couldn't find hardly any in the English language Vietnamese is no longer my first language so I had a hard time understanding some of the deep emotions what I did was I interviewed six of my father's colleagues who were in the prison camps with him and who had served with them before 1975 to get secondhand recollections because my father passed away in 2000 I think a lot of the South Vietnamese veterans felt abandoned and totally miss portrayed for their role in their action I think there were some leadership failures in the Vietnamese military but to say you know they didn't fight is is wrong because the American casualties were high the South Vietnamese casualties were four to five times that 250,000 died during the during the Vietnam War and the the biggest difference is people always ask me is what happened when they got here when they got here they had to start all over no pension no VA no rank salutes were left in Saigon they were men without a country without a military without any honor and recognition so they could use a lot of help mentally and do psychological sessions but there's just no services so a lot of them just don't talk about it to their families they just they're just with themselves and I think some of them just fight through it because there are no other there's no alternative action I mean you can't go out and protest for more benefits because you don't write any you know we have through the University of California Santa Barbara bookstore your books over there in the next room and I was just thinking about how much fun I had as an undergraduate student a graduate student and I still do it buying these books and having their authors find them because you open them up many many years after you you've been there and it's like reliving it again so I hope you will take advantage of perhaps cuong's visit and his book I do know that you also have a website which is the title of the book a sense of duty calm you know and you have to have that WW before it but it's a sense of duty and I checked it out earlier today and he's been writing a lot for a long time commenting on foreign policy the United States and Vietnam he's been writing for a long time articles about Vietnamese Americans in California Southern California the kinds of things that you've been active in like the the Vietnamese Memorial and in Orange County the effort to build a museum and all those articles I think or many of them are found there in the website along with a lot of pictures and other things that you ought to take a look at so a sense of duty calm but also I noticed and this is a this is I think a very good reason why you're so appropriate to the Walter hCAP Center he has this one sentence and I think I'll conclude with this he writes in his acknowledgement there are many many people who acknowledges for contributing to his book he writes giving back to society is an admirable example of being semper fidelis Semper Fi there's something extraordinary about Kuan farm and I think we saw a little bit of it this evening and I thank you again Wong for coming again to Santa Barbara and sharing your experience with it with us and best of luck with this wonderful new book

Channel: University of California Television (UCTV)

Views: 13,574

Rating: 4.5398231 out of 5

Keywords: Vietnam, war, effects, of, refugee

Id: QGg2D_OoKGA

Length: 58min 30sec (3510 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 11 2008