Children and War
A week from Tuesday, Vietnam marks the anniversary of the day North Vietnamese troops took over Saigon in 1975, a moment that “re-unified” the country.
In America’s history classes, the conflict that ended in 1975 is called the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, we’ve learned that it’s called the American War … as it is in this recent news article from the English-language paper “National”:
DAK NONG — Two children have died and six others injured in a grenade explosion on Tuesday …. The children reportedly found and picked up the grenade on their way home from school. … The grenade has been identified as a M79 left from the American war, according to provincial Military Command.
The claims in this story may or may not be true or accurate. Still, it’s a reminder that some of the places we’ve visited in the last few days once withered under the angry firepower and gruesome death of war.
How to understand a war with two very different names? Who regarded America as the enemy? Is today’s government in Vietnam the same one that took over in 1975? How is it ok for us to be here? These are the questions we’re trying to discuss … in between visits to bucolic lakes, busy beaches, and Baskin Robbins.
A Mekong Delta tour guide’s father fought for the South Vietnamese, and was “re-educated” after 1975 with a few days of government classes in Saigon. Another man we met on a coastal train was an electrical engineer for the North Vietnamese. (My own father nearly navigated the same waters as E does in the photo above.)
I was a child when these men were at war. How do my own children regard that war … at peacetime in a foreign land … as an anniversary approaches that bends the understanding of their own?
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