Saigon Stories: An Oral History of Five Vietnamese Families

History

Prologue

In the summer of 1980, Nguyen Dung, an 18 year old resident of Ho Chi Minh City (the former Saigon), was intently peering down the alley near his home. He was feeling sick to his stomach. He was waiting for one of two notices from the Government of Vietnam. One notice would be from the Ministry of Education. It would inform him whether or not he had passed his university entrance exams and thus had been accepted into a university. Though usually less than 5 percent of students who took the exam were able to pass it, Dung was a good student with strong grades and was confident that he had done well. This would mean at least four years of study at a state-sanctioned university. Aside from having strong Communist Party connections and a politically correct history (Dung had neither), a university degree was almost the only way to get ahead in Vietnam.

The second notice, however, preceded all. It would be a draft notice from the Vietnamese Army that would almost certainly send him to fight in Cambodia. Even if he had earned the very highest score on the university entrance exam and had been accepted into the nation’s top university, the draft notice would take precedence.

But, only if it arrived first.

Like so many of his classmates, friends, and many young men in Vietnam in 1980, Dung’s future was at the whim of two bureaucracies in a country that was desperately poor and in yet another vicious war just four years after the end of the American War.

Twenty-three years later, Dung and I are sitting in a posh outdoor coffee shop just across the street from the American Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City. We converse quite easily in a mix of Vietnamese and English. I have known Dung for almost the entire 11 years that I have been living and working in Vietnam. When I first arrived in late 1993, I rented a very small house directly across from his even smaller house in a short and crowded dead-end lane near central Saigon. He had just started working at the HCM City television station and he was earning extra money by operating a toy car arcade for little kids at a nearby public park. Dung was one of the very first ‘man on the street’ interviews I did when I wrote my first news story on the lifting of the US Embargo for the Vietnam Economic Times. His wife, Nga, operated a small in-home beauty salon where she cut hair and cared for their twin daughters who were just beginning first grade. Though I did not know it at the time, Dung and Nga were excellent examples of the educated working class of Vietnam.

When I asked Dung to tell me about Cambodia and the military draft, he slumped into his chair like he had been shot. He exhaled deeply as he tilted his head back and stared at the sky before beginning his story.

I was so scared. It was purely a matter of which paper arrived first. I had spent more than a week staring down my alley looking for the messenger. If I hadn’t done well on the exams, I wouldn’t have been afraid. But, I knew I did well and I thought I had passed. But that wouldn’t matter if the draft notice arrived first, he recalled.

His fate arrived by messenger. It was from the Ministry of Education informing him that he had passed his exams and was accepted at the University of Agriculture in Bien Hoa. On the very same day exactly two hours later, the army showed up with his draft notice. By a mere two hours, he would spend the next four years of his life in a university instead of in the jungles of Cambodia fighting a guerilla war against the Khmer Rouge.

This book is a collection of family stories. These stories, such as Nguyen Dung’s, are meant to do what most histories and many modern descriptions of Vietnam have usually not done very well. That is to bring real human voices and real stories and experiences to what has happened and what is happening in the country. Most outsiders do not have a chance to hear anyone’s story in Vietnam. For starters, you probably have to travel to the country since so few Vietnamese can afford to travel abroad. Or, if you are lucky, you can meet a Vietnamese immigrant who at the very least will probably have an interesting story about how he or she arrived to your country. But there is a larger reason why real-life human stories from Vietnam are so rare. For most people in western countries, Vietnam remains a war and not a country. So when it comes to telling stories about Vietnam, Hollywood and the media rule. They tell stories of war, not stories about the Vietnamese human experience.

Google the word ‘Vietnam’ on the Internet and you receive an enormous number of responses. There are a handful of travel sites, an enormous number of veteran and military sites, and a lot of responses from newspapers and other media. Click further on the media stories and you will find that most of them are not about Vietnam at all. They are about the US war in Iraq and Afghanistan. A February 2004 cover of Newsweek magazine’s international edition displayed two photos of a youthful John Kerry and George Bush in military uniforms smiling and staring directly into the camera. The cover read: ‘Kerry vs. Bush’ and then in big, bold red letters ‘The Battle Is Over Vietnam’ and in more standard black print ‘As Much as Iraq.’ Nearly 30 years after Vietnam dropped off the front pages of the world’s largest newspapers, the word ‘Vietnam’ has become part of international newspeak. It is sometimes on the front pages of the world’s media, but they are rarely talking about the country itself.

The stories which follow will only talk about the country. These stories will provide the reader with a new means to explain and hopefully understand contemporary Vietnam. There is another reason I am compiling these stories. I am an American and I have lived and worked in Vietnam for more than 11 years. At the beginning, I was a student considering a PhD, and then a journalist, and finally an entrepreneur. Over the years, I heard hundreds of interesting, fascinating, tragic, and wonderful stories. And, for the past few years, I have been bewitched by an enigma.

Contemporary Vietnam, and in particular Ho Chi Minh City [Saigon], has a unique pulse and energy. There is something driving the country and its people forward in a way that is unique in Asia, and perhaps unique for the developing world. This enigma draws people from the outside in whether they are foreign business people, diplomats, non-government organization (NGO) workers, tourists, or returning Overseas Vietnamese (Viet Kieu). As a journalist and an entrepreneur I lived and worked in Vietnam from 1993 to 2004. I personally witnessed how this pulse kept people there longer than they had anticipated. When foreigners left, they often could not wait to return. It also held Vietnamese people in the country even when they had seemingly more promising opportunities abroad or had desired to go abroad for many years. Unlike overseas students in many other Asian countries, Vietnamese who study overseas return almost immediately after graduation rather than staying on (legally or illegally) in the country where they have studied. Saigon’s energy kept this Montana boy in Vietnam for more than 11 years when I had absolutely no intention of ever staying so long. It kept me up at nights and it made me eager to start my day the following morning. It also kept me in the country to work on this book even though, enigma be damned, I was more than ready to go home.

So what is this enigma? What is this feeling or aura? What is the energy that is pervading the country? What is the buzz?

It is comments from travelers who have spent just 10 days in the country and became fascinated with stories told to them by cyclo and motorcycle taxi drivers. It is my 55 year-old landlady who is a former school teacher. Back in the late ’70s when food was in short supply in Saigon, she smuggled rice up from the Mekong Delta and recounts with full and angry detail when the Viet Cong confiscated her rice. [Recently she traveled to France with intentions of staying two months but returned home early because French food was ‘khong ngon lam’ (not so delicious) and France was too cold. When she returned, she immediately made plans to go to Thailand instead.] Or, the buzz is a friend that I met early in 1994. He used to run, right in the center of Saigon, a small bia om (literally translated as ‘hugging beer’ it is a kind of hostess bar/brothel). Over the years he opened and closed a handful of them, started a restaurant, started a bar, bribed one sister out of jail, and is now selling hi-tech security devices and alarm systems. I attended his wedding and swilled expensive champagne with about 500 other guests in a huge ballroom in one of the most expensive buildings in the city.

The buzz is also guys like a British friend who quit his investment banking job in the mid 1990s to build an investment fund from scratch. His fund focuses on small, often risky private sector companies run by local entrepreneurs. Nearly all the larger investment funds focused on foreign-managed companies and they failed to find investments and had to close their funds and return the capital to shareholders. In 2003 my friend’s fund finished its third round of fund raising which was over-subscribed. It has invested in more than 20 private Vietnamese companies. Like a handful of other foreign businessmen and a huge number of local business people, he is both a believer in—and a creator of—the buzz.

But where and how do I begin to define the buzz? In a country full of fascinating stories, how do you choose the best ones to represent the whole of Vietnam? First and foremost, I focused on families and not on individuals. The stories are also mostly ‘southern stories’ because all the families live in Saigon though their histories stretch back to other regions of the country. The families had to be willing to talk to me and more importantly to trust me. They had to believe in the merits of this book and believe that I was the person who could pull it off. They had to have something to say and want to say it. The telling of the stories had to lend to an understanding of the enigma and contemporary Vietnam. This meant that the families had probably achieved some kind of financial or social success. Their stories also had to come from several, rather than one or two, family members and they had to encompass the entire range of the time periods of this book. That is, the stories would relate the experiences of family members from the 1940s and ’50s up to the present day. I also asked the family members to peer into the future.

I selected five Vietnamese families that fell into one of five family backgrounds. One family [The Returnees] is from the South, but they left the country for the USA in April 1975 only to return nearly 20 years later to re-start their lives in Vietnam. Another family [The Southern Patriots] is from the South, but they moved to the North in 1954 to carry out the country’s nationalist agenda and then returned to the South after Liberation on April 30, 1975. A third family [The Southern Officer] was fully committed to the Government of South Vietnam’s war against North Vietnam and after the war they had to pay a price for this commitment. A fourth family [The Southern Politician] was neither pro-North, pro-South, pro-American, or pro-Viet Cong. Instead they were part of the ‘Third Force’ that protested against the South Vietnamese government, wanted the Americans to leave, did not know who the Viet Cong were, and sought an independent peace. The fifth family [The Northern Migrants] endured three decades of war in the North and then moved to the South in late 1975 to seek prosperity.

Of course, there are many different types of backgrounds that can describe contemporary Vietnam. The backgrounds chosen here are among the most distinct experiences that have shaped the country, the South in particular, and the later generations. These backgrounds and experiences are also largely responsible for the creation of the buzz that is encompassing Vietnam. These families are all Vietnamese, but their histories and political and social philosophies are very different. I hope that these different points of view will give readers some new perspectives on what has happened in Vietnam over the past 60 years.

I also recorded the stories of many other individuals. These appear as short anecdotes within this book. This entire project is a final chapter of my own 11 years of living and working in Vietnam. I enjoyed every single day of my life in the country. I have been a student, a journalist, and I started my own research company. I also met my wife while she was writing her own family story. Our only son was born in Hung Vuong Hospital in the Chinatown district of Saigon. During my 11 years of living and working in Vietnam, I have been fortunate to hear many wonderful, touching, humorous, tragic and beautiful stories. Now I want to share these stories with others. I have included some of my own stories and insights to help explain Vietnam to the outside world. I hope I have something to say. I know the storytellers do, and in recording and re-telling their stories I hope that I have done their experiences justice.

Vietnamese Terms, Phrases, and Key Figures

During the course of more than 100 hours of recorded interviews (mostly in Vietnamese), there were several words and phrases which were difficult to translate well. There were also words and phrases that would have lost their meaning if they had been translated into English. The story tellers also referred to various political or historical people, groups, and organizations that some readers may not know about. Thus, I have included below some short definitions of the different terms, phrases, and key figures/groups that appear in this book.

Vietnamese Terms and Phrases

Tap Ket—This is a Sino Vietnamese word and in this book the actual word is used rather than using some kind of translation. The two words together form the verb for the people from the South who moved to the North in 1954 [e.g. Bo toi tap ket trong nam 1954. My father tap ket [went north] in the year 1954]. It can also be used like an adjective as in ‘may nguoi tap ket’ [the tap ket people or the people who are southerners but went north because of the Revolution in 1954]. It is a very political word because only those who were officially invited and officially allowed to move to the North and join the revolutionary forces in the North were officially considered tap ket people. For example, a southern Vietnamese could not simply decide to move North in 1954 and join the tap ket forces. He or she had to be completely screened and then invited to come north. It was not possible to simply join the Viet Minh at the last moment. Nor was it possible to move north after 1954 as a tap ket person even if you were a formal member of the Communist Party. It is a word heavy in political meaning and it applies to a certain group of people and only for a certain time of the country’s history.

So Tan—In the stories that follow, the Northerners use the word so tan which is usually translated into English as evacuation but could also be translated as ‘relocation.’ When Northerners, Hanoians in particular, had to so tan it could mean an evacuation for a very long time, even up to several years. The term also applied to schools, government offices, and even entire industries that were evacuated or relocated from the cities to the countryside. The reason for the evacuations was the American bombing. The word was generally used in the North though southern villages were also bombed by the Americans and the people in the South also had to evacuate or be relocated elsewhere.

Doi Moi—The word Doi Moi means ‘new change’ or ‘renovation.’ In the late 1980s, it was sometimes called the ‘Vietnamese Perestroika’ after Mikhail Gorbachev’s reform efforts of the Soviet Union. However, Vietnam’s Doi Moi actually pre-dates most if not all of Gorbachev’s efforts. It is also quite different. Doi Moi is effectively a type of renovation of the existing system to allow market forces to make many of the economic decisions the country was facing. Unlike Gorbachev’s moves in the former Soviet Union (which ultimately led to the downfall of Communism in all of Eastern Europe), Doi Moi has very little to do with political freedom, curtailing the power of the Communist Party, rights of expression, new interpretations of history, or any other kind of social or political issue. It had more to do with market forces setting prices, opening the doors to trade and investment, and simply allowing Vietnamese citizens to start businesses, borrow money, gain property rights, trade property, and basically go about the business of doing business. Vietnam is still a one Party state and the Communist Party of Vietnam is still very much in control.

Que—a person’s que is their ‘hometown’ or ‘home village.’ However, the word has a much more significant meaning than its English translation. Many Vietnamese will identify their que as a place that they may have never been. Perhaps, this is because both their parents were born there, as were their grandparents, and great grandparents and so on. The que is the place where the person’s roots are, where their family began life. Though most Vietnamese are Buddhists (with about a 10 percent minority of Christians), nearly all Vietnamese also practice ancestor worship which, at least on the surface, is not much different than any modern religion. Pretty much everyday, Vietnamese people pray in front of a ‘ban tho’ [family altar] which has photos of their ancestors as well as a place for incense and sometimes an urn for ashes. They receive comfort knowing that their ancestors are in the home and that they can see them and pray to them everyday. When children have exams, they pray at the family alter. When they get married, they ask for support at the family altar. This is why a person’s que is very important. In the stories that follow, a young girl will ‘know’ that her que is a village in the Mekong Delta even though she was born in Hanoi in 1969 and had never been to South Vietnam.

Key Entities and Groups

Viet Cong—The term ‘Viet Cong’ or ‘VC’ generally refers to the Communist guerillas in South Vietnam who were fighting the American and South Vietnamese military. For some people, they were considered different than North Vietnamese military forces. Some people also considered them as a separate entity from North Vietnam overall. The extent and closeness of the relationship between the North Vietnamese government in Hanoi and the Viet Cong soldiers in the South is a favorite topic for Western historians to argue about. Some argue that they were completely under the North’s control while others argue that they were actually quite independent and not even necessarily Communists [i.e. believers in communism as a way to build a country and a society] but that they were fighting much more for a nationalist cause.

Bo Doi—This is the Vietnamese word for soldier. In particular, it meant a North Vietnamese soldier from the North Vietnamese army rather than a guerilla soldier from the Viet Cong. The bo doi were generally Northerners who wore uniforms and were around Saigon after Liberation in 1975.

Vietnam Cong Hoa—This is the Vietnamese word for the Government of South Vietnam. The terms Cong Hoa means Republic as in Republic of Vietnam.

ARVN—this is the acronym for the Armed Forces of the Republic of South Vietnam. It included an Army, Navy, and Air Force.

South Vietnam Liberation Front—This was the political entity of the southern Communists. The Viet Cong were the military arm of this group. The latitude and freedom this group and its leaders had from the North Vietnamese government is a good political and historical question that may never be truly addressed. The group was enough of a political entity to command a seat at the Paris Peace talks in 1973. Moreover, it had a legal headquarters of sorts within the compound of the Tan Son Nhat Airport in Saigon prior to the end of the war. However at the end of the war on April 30, 1975, the South Vietnam Liberation Front was immediately subsumed into the Government of Vietnam.

The Third Force—This term refers to a group that never really existed in any tangible form. It was comprised mostly of southern intellectuals who were protesting and fighting for an independent peace. No doubt, many hard-core members of the Diem or Thieu regime and their American advisors considered them Communists. If there were Communists involved in such groups and meetings, they were mostly likely planted Communists who never revealed their true beliefs and identities to their peers. The people who considered themselves as part of the Third Force were fighting for a peaceful end to the war and an independent South Vietnam with no Americans involved. They had few or no illusions of living under a Communist government. They were not Communists. They were also not pro-American or pro-Thieu. This left them in a no-man’s land between the two most powerful political forces of the 1960s and ’70s.

Viet Minh—This was the first name used for the Communist Party organization that fought the French in the 1940s and ’50s. In effect the Viet Minh won the fight against the French in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu and then formed the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). The term ‘Viet Minh’ was no longer commonly used other than to refer to the forces who fought and defeated the French. The Communist forces who fought the Americans and the South Vietnamese after 1954 were called the Viet Cong.

Linh Nguy—This term refers to the ‘puppet soldiers’ of the South Vietnamese government or ARVN [linh means soldier and nguy means puppet]. It has always been considered a quite offensive term to former South Vietnamese soldiers.

Puppet Regime—Most Northerners and many Southerners still refer to the former South Vietnamese government as the ‘puppet regime’ [che do nguy]. This meant it was a puppet of America and that it did not represent the Vietnamese people.

Key Figures Mentioned

Uncle Ho—Ho Chi Minh, or more commonly ‘Bac Ho’ or ‘Uncle Ho,’ is the father of modern Vietnam. Enormous numbers of books have been written about him by both Vietnamese and western academics. He has had several different aliases and actually spent nearly half of his life overseas including a stint as a short-order cook in New York City. Officially, he was the President of the Government of Vietnam (North Vietnam) from 1954 until his death in 1969. The only image on all denominations of the Vietnamese currency is his, and his photograph is ubiquitous throughout Vietnam. Visitors can see his body on display at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi. He is a very respected man even among hard-core Southerners who were very anti-Communist.

Emperor Bao Dai—Bao Dai was the last emperor of Vietnam. He spent most of his life in France and was largely ineffective in any of the 20th century political movements within Vietnam. Most Vietnamese, both Northerners and Southerners, considered him as little more than a French puppet rather than the leader of a monarchy that represented the people of Vietnam.

Ngo Dinh Diem—Diem was the President of South Vietnam from 1954 until his assassination in 1963. He was a Catholic, in a predominantly Buddhist country, and very much an American ally—at least through the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was assassinated by his own troops. Some historians argue that the American CIA ordered the assassination because it felt Diem was leaning too heavily towards the Communists and that he would not have allowed American troops to come into Vietnam to fight the Communist movement.

Nguyen Van Thieu—Though there were a few temporary leaders after Diem, Nguyen Van Thieu eventually gained full power and became the leader of South Vietnam from the mid 1960s until late April 1975. He was a vicious anti-Communist and also quite corrupt. He left the country on April 20, 1975 reportedly with suitcases full of gold and US dollars currency.

Nguyen Cao Ky—Ky was one of the power brokers in the late 1960s and also a high ranking military general. Through various political maneuverings, he fell out of favor and power with the Thieu regime. He remained anti-Communist and was later a leader among the Overseas Vietnamese community in the USA and France who were hoping to somehow win back their country. Similar to the Cuban-American lobby in Florida, the Overseas Vietnamese community was effective in keeping the US government hostile to and against any kind of reconciliation with the Hanoi government after 1975. Ky spearheaded many of these efforts. However, in February of 2004, he returned to Vietnam as a visitor for the very first time and declared in the Vietnamese media that he would work towards improving relations between Vietnam and the USA.

Vo Van Kiet—Vo Van Kiet is a Southerner who joined the Communist Party in the 1930s. He held different posts within the government of Vietnam including a stint as the mayor of Ho Chi Minh City and the Prime Minister of the country. He is credited with being the leader of the current reform movement and paid particular attention to getting Southerners and southern issues on the national agenda in the 1980s. Among many southern Vietnamese who worked for the former South Vietnam government or military, he is considered an ally because he tried to help them by bringing them into the new Vietnam as regular citizens rather than as outcasts.

Nguyen Van Linh—Linh is a southern Vietnamese who joined the Communist Party in the 1930s. He made a name for himself as a reformer and is largely considered the creator of the Doi Moi policies. While he was the Secretary General of the Communist Party (the most powerful position in the country), he pushed forward the first series of Doi Moi reforms in the 5th Party Congress in 1986.

Part One

The War Years and Liberation

The War against French Colonialism 1932 to 1941

The Japanese Occupation 1941 to 1945

The French War 1945 to 1954

The American War 1965 to 1975

Liberation of Saigon and the Unification of Vietnam—April 30, 1975

The Border War with China 1979

The War in Cambodia 1979 to 1989

Vietnam was at war for most of the 20th Century. Political and social historians from within and outside of Vietnam will debate at great length the title of the war, the reasons for the war, its starting date, its finishing date, the countries involved, the identity of the enemy, the winner, the loser, and a host of other issues. The American/Vietnam War has generated the most probing debate and remorse, along with scads of articles, papers, books, documentaries, movies, and probably more PhD dissertations than were really necessary. For example, an argument can be made that the American War did not begin until 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson ordered the first significant number of Marines to storm ashore on the beaches of Danang, and yet the first American killed in Vietnam (his name is on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C.) was Army Captain Harry C. Cramer. He was killed on October 21, 1957 during a military training exercise. Many historians recognize Dale R. Buis and Chester R. Ovand as the first Americans killed by the enemy. They were killed on July 8, 1959 in a mortar attack on their camp. The title ‘the American War’ also omits and completely disrespects the role of an entire government’s military forces, the Armed Forces of South Vietnam or ARVN. Hundreds of thousands of young South Vietnamese men paid an enormous price in defending what many of them considered their homeland and their way of life. In addition, Canadian, Australian, British, and South Korean soldiers were killed in the war.

There is less debate about the number of Vietnamese people (civilians and military personnel) who were killed. Most history books round the figure off at roughly three million dead from 1945 to 1975. Perhaps there were simply too many people killed for anyone to become pedantic. Yet even this figure ignores a horrible famine that hit northern Vietnam during World War II in which an estimated two million Vietnamese died of starvation. The main reason for the famine was the Japanese Army’s occupation and their policies which forced northern farmers to grow industrial crops like cotton and jute instead of rice. The French Vichy government, which still had some administrative control over its colony, helped implement the policies. Historians can also provide evidence that rice output, and thus consumption and nutrition standards, steadily declined over the previous 30 years of French colonial rule. So even the blame for the millions dead can be parceled around if one wishes to do so.

The War Years stories that follow were not collected to provide evidence for or against any of these arguments. The storytellers are not trying to clarify any historical details as much as they want to talk about their own war experiences. Some of the stories, like that of Hoang T H, are quite clear memories of dead Viet Cong soldiers laid out on the road towards Tay Ninh when she went to visit her grandmother. Though just a child at the time, she understood that this was done by ARVN soldiers who hoped that family members would claim the bodies so they could then identify Viet Cong supporters.

Another childhood memory is that of five-year old Trinh Xuan Hoa. During the Christmas Bombings of Hanoi in 1972, her family evacuated Hanoi to a small farming village in the north. They had some advance information that the Americans had targeted the village for bombing so they left. They returned two days later, after the Americans had bombed the village. Hoa clearly remembers the bodies of dead villagers scattered around the village pond. She used some of her own clothes to dress a girl her own age who had been her playmate. More than 30 years later, movies that have bombing scenes and news clips on the US war in Iraq make her cry.

Other stories are anecdotes told by old soldiers who are usually thrilled to meet an American and have the chance to talk about what they did during the war. This happened to an American friend of mine who was working on a film project in Hanoi. An old man on the film crew collared him to tell him about the time he shot down an American B52. It was during the 1972 Christmas bombings which Hanoians call ‘the 12 days and nights bombing of Hanoi.’ With a bright glint in his eyes and rapid arm movements, he excitedly replayed his role manning an anti-aircraft gun protecting Hanoi. Whether or not it was his shell that hit the plane (or even if it is possible to see such a shell hit such a plane) is irrelevant. My friend was convinced that the old man would go to his grave believing that it was his anti-aircraft gun and his trigger finger that blew away an American B52 that was bombing his nation’s capital.

There are many other stories heroic in an entirely different way. Like the story of one of my staff who had been a Viet Cong guerilla from 1972 when he was just 13 years old up until the end of the American War in 1975. He was assigned to the Cu Chi area which was the location of a labyrinth series of tunnels about 100 kilometers from Saigon. The Viet Cong directed much of its war efforts in the South from there. The Americans knew about the headquarters and bombed the area repeatedly, but they could never find its center. They also had no idea of the extent of the tunnels. Today, Cu Chi is a major tourist attraction. I toured the tunnels with some friends from Hong Kong and told my colleague about our trip. He asked if we had crawled through the tunnels. I said that we had crawled through a much widened section of about 25 meters of tunnel that was dug out for fat foreign tourists. He then told me about the time when he was 14 and working in Cu Chi. Some American soldiers were nearby and he was told by his commander to go underground and wait for further orders. Together with an equally young guerilla, he crawled into a space about three meters long and just high enough to crouch and they waited. Their ‘further orders’ did not arrive for two weeks. They spent the entire time underground living on cassava root and water.

Most Vietnamese who were not directly involved in the war as soldiers or in some other military role did not suffer such horrific living conditions as the Viet Cong guerillas. However, the war did make life difficult for most average people, especially those in the North. When I was studying Vietnamese at the University of Hanoi in 1990, my teacher calmly told me that her house had been bombed to the ground three times during different American bombing campaigns. A friend of mine from Hanoi fondly remembers climbing up on the roof of his house during the US bombing raids to watch the bombs fall onto Hanoi. He said it was just like watching fireworks. However, many young people in the North have few direct memories of the war. This was not because they were too young to remember, but because they had evacuated to the countryside to escape the American bombing runs. Entire schools and even industries were moved to the countryside to escape the American bombers. For the older generation, it was war time. In addition to the bombs and losing so many sons and daughters to the fighting, there were long lines for food, medicine, and other necessities for living. The war made life difficult, and even miserable, but it was for a cause they believed in so it was acceptable. This cause went on for decades.

In the South, city residents knew about the war from television but most had little direct experience of it until the Tet Offensive in 1968. The well-coordinated attacks brought the war directly into Saigon and other major cities in the South for the first time. In the countryside, life became a frequent, if not daily, experience in terror. It would depend upon where one lived, the extent of the Viet Cong activity in the area, and their village leader’s relationship with the guerillas. For pretty much all Southerners, life was uncertain and tense especially for young South Vietnamese men who usually had to face the prospects of getting drafted into the southern army or joining the Viet Cong. At the same time, Saigon was one of the richest cities of Southeast Asia. For the bright and cunning entrepreneur, there was money to be made from the war.

Of course most Vietnamese, North and South, have no memories of the American War at all. This is because more than half the country was born after 1975. More than 60 percent were born