Tet and remembrance of the dead New Feature Brennon Jones International Herald Tribune Monday, February 28, 2005
Vietnam II HO CHI MINH CITY The end of April marks the 30th anniversary of America's defeat in Vietnam, and many U.S. veterans are expected to return there, heads filled with memories of the war and, undoubtedly, of former comrades killed or lost in action. . The Vietnamese pay special respect to their own dead on Tet, the Lunar New Year, which fell earlier this month. Finally, after three long decades, this year's holiday saw an increase in the honoring of South Vietnamese soldiers who died in the war fighting alongside U.S. forces. . In the "dark years" after the Communist victory, the Vietnamese government dismissed such dead combatants as puppets of the former Saigon regime. While elaborate cemeteries were built to honor Communist soldiers, the South Vietnamese dead were accorded pariah status. Their cemeteries were neglected, dishonored, sealed off or built over. . For many years, most relatives of dead South Vietnamese soldiers made little effort to visit their graves. Large numbers were "Viet Kieu," Vietnamese who fled into exile after the fall. But even those who stayed kept away, to avoid being tainted in the eyes of Hanoi officials. Besides, with the Vietnamese economy in shambles, most were too poor to travel to distant cemeteries or to pay to maintain the graves. . One wholesale casualty was the old military cemetery in Go Vap, a northern Saigon district. It was turned into an industrial park. Another was Mac Dinh Chi, the bucolic European cemetery in the heart of Saigon. It had been the resting place not just of French colonialists and their Vietnamese supporters, but of Ngo Dinh Diem, the onetime South Vietnamese president, his scheming brother, Ngo Dinh Dzu, and even François Sully, the French correspondent who wrote for Time magazine. It is now a park and playground. . The former national military cemetery in Bien Hoa is the one that is seared into my own memory. Created in the mid-1960s, it is the resting place for thousands of South Vietnamese soldiers killed in the latter phase of the war. As part of the crew for the documentary "Hearts and Minds," I visited it in 1972. We filmed the shattered bodies of young soldiers in the cemetery's morgue, and long rows of hollow graves waiting to be filled with what seemed an endless stream of arriving dead. We also documented one family's anguish as it buried one of its own. . The experience has haunted me ever since, and after I began returning to Vietnam several years ago, I revisited that cemetery. The first time, in late 2002, I was shocked at its condition. Cattle grazed in the high grass between shattered and neglected tombstones, and the narrow roadways between cemetery sections were being mined for soil by a nearby brick factory. . In January, however, I discovered a remarkable transformation. With Tet approaching, countless graves were substantially rebuilt and freshly painted. New planting abounded. . Local residents told me that Viet Kieu and other Vietnamese are increasingly arriving at the cemetery. They are more prosperous now, and they know that the Hanoi government in recent years has quietly taken an increasingly lenient approach toward the cemeteries of these former South Vietnamese soldiers. It's a promising start to what I hope will lead one day to full reconciliation. . On a visit to Bien Hoa, I talked with the wife and daughter of Nguyen Hang Anh, a soldier who was killed in the Delta in 1974. Their home is in Quang Ngai Province, in far-off central Vietnam. This was their first opportunity in 31 years to make what had previously been a prohibitively expensive trip to visit Anh's grave. "Until now, we have been too poor to travel here," his wife told me, as they bent over his grave burning a Tet offering to his spirit. It included an expensive new shirt and pants, still in their wrappings. . Before I left the cemetery I gave some money to two old women, caretakers of the graves for relatives of the dead who can't make the trip to the cemetery themselves. I asked them to upgrade a few neglected graves on my behalf. "Chuc Mung Nam Moi," I said. "Happy New Year!" . I meant it for those fallen South Vietnamese soldiers, may they rest in peace. But I also meant it for all those young Vietnamese, from the north and the south, who made the ultimate sacrifice, right or wrong, in a sad and tragic conflict. I hope come April 30, Americans will remember each and every one of them, just as we do our own. . (Brennon Jones was a journalist and social worker in South Vietnam from 1969 to 1971.) [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> DonorsChoose. A simple way to provide underprivileged children resources often lacking in public schools. 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