There was a war? Oh, yeah

My friend Andrea, who is coming for a visit, wrote a letter recently where she talked about the Vietnam War (called the American War here). It’s funny to me that when Americans think of Vietnam they seem to think mostly of the war, when the Vietnamese are just focused on getting ahead. Every other article I read in Vietnam Investment Review is about the country’s economic reforms, all the foreign investment that Vietnam’s getting, what the country needs to do to join the WTO, etc. It seems like the war’s a distant memory, its remnants kept alive mainly for tourists.

But every now and then I’ll see a reminder. My former tutor once asked what I thought of the fact the U.S. wouldn’t compensate for dropping Agent Orange all over Vietnam’s forests. My aunt, while explaining a grammar concept, used the example, “The Americans dropped heavy bombs on Vietnam.” And my friend’s husband’s name is Chien Tranh, or “war.” His mother went into labor while hiding in the bushes as French planes dropped bombs not too far away.*

So the war memories are there. Sometimes there’ll be a soap opera or music video with actors who are clearly supposed to be soldiers (although I’m surprised at the amount of makeup Vietnamese female soldiers wore). One of the main streets near my house is Kham Thien, which caused an uproar in the States when it was bombed. My current tutor said the Kham Thien bombing killed many civilians, mostly the very old and young. Now I just see it as a perpetually busy street that’s a pain in the ass to drive on.

*I originally wrote had his name wrong (Chien Thang instead of Chien Tranh) and also had the war wrong, claiming it was the Americans and not the French who bombed away. Chien did fight in the American War, though.