Decades later, the ghosts of Vietnam still haunt us
Documentary seeks perspective, answers to lingering questions
Why do the ghosts of Vietnam continue to haunt us? Why did things go so badly wrong? Who is to blame? Why haven’t we been able to have a civil, informed conversation about it?
“It’s like living in a family with an alcoholic father,” Marine veteran Karl Marlantes told us on camera. “You know: ‘Shh, we don’t talk about that.’ Our country did that with Vietnam. It’s only been very recently (that we) are finally starting to say, ‘ What happened?’ ”
For more than a decade, we have immersed ourselves in this epic tragedy and have tried to see the war with fresh eyes and from many perspectives.
Nearly 100 so-called ordinary people generously shared their stories with us on camera: grunts and officers in the Army and Marines, prisoners of war, a fighter pilot and a helicopter crew chief, a Gold Star mother and the sister of a fallen soldier, a nurse, college students, reporters, anti-war activists, military analysts, spies and many others.
We wanted to honor the heroism and sacrifice of those who served and those who died. “It’s almost going to make me cry,” Army veteran Vincent Okamoto said, remembering the infantry company he led in 1968.
“Their loyalty to each other, their courage under fire, was just phenomenal. And you would ask yourself: How does America produce young men like this?”
While Okamoto and hundreds of thousands of other Americans were fighting overseas, hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens back home were taking to the streets to try to put an end to a war that a majority of Americans eventually believed was unnecessary, unjust, unwinnable or simply not in our country’s best interest.
As anti-war activist Bill Zimmerman recalled, “People who supported the war were fond of saying, ‘My country, right or wrong.’ … Those sentiments seemed insane to us. We don’t want to live in a country that we’re going to support whether it’s right or wrong … so we began an era in which two groups of Americans, both thinking that they were acting patriotically, went to war with each other.”
In the 50 years since, the chasm that opened during the war has widened and deepened. So many of the troubles that beset us today — alienation, resentment, disillusionment and cynicism — these seeds were sown during the Vietnam War.
Far too often, when Americans think about the Vietnam War, as writer Viet Thanh Nguyen has said, we think only about ourselves. For our film, we did not want to repeat that mistake. We wanted to hear from our allies and our enemies — the Vietnamese soldiers and civilians we fought with, and against.
We got to know many brave and resilient Vietnamese Americans who came to the USA as refugees. They spoke honestly about the brutality of the conflict and their doubts about whether the Republic of South Vietnam under the leadership of Nguyen Van Thieu and Nguyen Cao Ky had been strong enough to survive. “Thieu and Ky were corrupt,” Saigon native Phan Quang Tue said. “They abused their position. … We paid a very high price for having leaders like Ky and Thieu.”
To get to know soldiers and civilians from the winning side, we made numerous trips to Vietnam. We were surprised to discover that the war remains as painful and unsettled there as it is here. The victorious Vietnamese, too, have not reckoned openly with the horrific price they paid.
For Bao Ninh, a Hanoi-born foot soldier who later became a celebrated novelist, his country’s triumphal narrative of the conflict rings hollow: “People sing about victory … liberation,” he told us. “They’re wrong. … In war, no one wins or loses. There is only destruction. Only those who have never fought like to argue about who won and who lost.”
As this wrenching story reminded us at every turn, there is no single truth in war. The questions we began with led to deeper questions. What does it mean to be a patriot? Were the sacrifices in blood and bone too high? What meaning can be made from so much suffering?
Americans have argued about the rectitude of the Vietnam War for nearly half a century. But if we can listen to each other with open minds, we can finally have a courageous conversation about this unsettled, traumatic event.