Interchange

A Quarterly Newsletter for and about International Cooperation with Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Cuba

Volume 10, Issue 1-2

September 2000

Vietnam After Twenty Eight Years

By Stewart Herman

Ed. Note There have been many articles written by military veterans about returning to Vietnam, but little from those other American veterans, people who served in the country with religiously based humanitarian agencies.]

Since 1987 I have been teaching in the religion department at Concordia College, an (ELCA) Lutheran liberal-arts college. In March 2000 I returned to Vietnam for the first time in 28 years, to conduct research for a project on global business out of Concordia University in Montreal. I was apprehensive about the trip. From 1970 through 1972, I had worked in Quang Ngai with Vietnam Christian Service, an ecumenical relief and development agency; my task was to organize and sustain educational programs for refugees, a dispiriting task given the grinding destructiveness of the war. Often during the past three decades I have wondered about that war, and even written about its effects on Quang Ngai (see “Vietnam: Widening our Perspective”, Christian Century, May 1, 1985).

So I wasn’t expecting much as the jumbo jet touched down in a darkened Tan Son Nhut. Nor did the streets look much different on the way in. But as the days passed, I realized there was a difference. Let me report one overriding impression for those of you who remember the war and still think you might want to return. I had heard all the yak-yak about how the Vietnamese people bear no grudges, love Americans, and so forth. And I found it hard to believe. But after a mere two and a half weeks there, my dominant, overriding impression was that Vietnam is a different country, psychologically speaking. The mood I remembered from the war was of tension and anxiety. The people I knew were preoccupied, worried, and sometimes clingy. Well, maybe more than sometimes. Now, It was a GREAT delight simply to travel around. After two weeks in Saigon, I took the train to Danang, then hired a honda to spend three days riding around Quang Nam and Quang Ngai. I talked with all kinds of people. They were remarkably relaxed, friendly, open, and best of all, dignified.

Never during the war could I conceive of Vietnam as a place simply to visit as a traveller. Now I wouldn’t hesitate to go back in a more casual vein. This is not to suggest that the ghosts are gone. The official war cemetaries are ubiquitous, and open only to the politically correct; true reconciliation seems a long way off. I suspect there are many, many more people whose experiences I would want to sit down and listen to than I ever could engage in conversation, even if over half the population is too young to remember the war. But for shallower or deeper, I have shed my fear (yes, fear) of going back.

For the practical minded, note there are easy and cheap ways to get there; you needn’t spend more than $1100-1200 for airfare. You can ride around all day on a honda for $25 or less, gas included. The taxis in Saigon are metered and the drivers are unfailingly polite. There are cyber cafes, even in Quang Ngai, where you keep in touch with home for a pittance.

A contingent in the 25th anniversary parade in Ho Chi Minh City


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