Vets recall battles abroad and struggle back home
According to one vet, being in Vietnam was easier than life at home
KIHEI — Fifty years after he was deployed to Vietnam, the first memory that comes to Wayne Nahooikaika’s mind is not the bombs and bullets, but the calmness of the countryside, a sliver of peace in the war-torn country.
“We used to fly tree-top level, so you can really look at the lands below you,” he said. “When you go flying over the countryside and you see the beauty of the country, it’s such a shame that we had to be in this war.”
A helicopter door gunner and crew chief, Nahooikaika was shot down five times during his two years of service in Vietnam and, like many veterans, came home to a country that wanted nothing to do with him. On Sunday during a picnic at Kalama Park organized by the Maui County Veterans Council, Nahooikaika and other veterans reflected on their service and what it was like to come back home.
Shortly after graduating from Hilo High School, Nahooikaika was shooting some hoops with friends when he got the idea to join the Army.
“We don’t got nothing else to do,” Nahooikaika said.
The boys joined an all-Hawaii company of about “300 strong,” and Nahooikaika was sent to Vietnam in 1968.
“When I first got in there, bombs blowing all around me, I said, ‘God, what am I doing over here? I’m only 18 years old,’ ” Nahooikaika recalled.
The young soldier became a door gunner and a crew chief operating out of a “Huey” helicopter and recalled going to “some heavy places” where they were constantly being shot at.
“You would sit at the door, the door’s always open, and you sit there with your M-60 ready to open up anytime you see any trouble,” Nahooikaika said.
He was shot twice, “a lot of that where the sun don’t shine” because they were usually getting shot from below and had to sit on armored plates, Nahooikaika explained. He recalled one of the five times his helicopter went down — the rotor spinning in the back, smoke billowing from the engine, the pilots calling “Mayday” over the radio as the helicopter plummeted into a rice paddy. The fact that he survived the same incident five times is nothing short of a miracle.
“God had his hand on me,” he said.
Perhaps some of the most painful memories for Nahooikaika are the friends he lost, not just by the hand of the enemy. He remembered one friend who was scheduled to fly back home the next day when he received a “Dear John” letter from his partner saying she planned to leave him. The young man pulled out his gun and took his own life. Nahooikaika recalled that suicide was common among the soldiers.
“That’s why they say when you go in the service, don’t make friends cause you never know if you’re going to see them again,” he said.
Nahooikaika came back to Hawaii in 1970, where the fury over the war spilled over into angry encounters with people who would spit in his face and call him a killer.
Nahooikaika said what got him through was his wife, Lani, whom he met after moving to Maui in 1974. They were married in 1976 and stayed together for 40 years until her death last year.
“My wife helped pull me through,” Nahooikaika said. “She held my hand every time I wake up in the middle of the night . . . . (She would say) ‘It’s all right, it’s all right honey. I’m here.’ . . . I was very fortunate to have met her, to have shared my life with her.”
Despite all he witnessed, the Pukalani veteran still yearns to go back to Vietnam to see the beautiful landscape. And, he has no doubt what he would do if America were to go to war again.
“If ever anything should happen again, we have to go to war, I would be the first in line,” he said. “I would be ready to defend my country.”
Like Nahooikaika, Pukalani veteran Karl Calleon remembers the vitriol toward Vietnam veterans in the 1970s.
“It was like I wasn’t welcome,” he said. “Every time I came home on leave, I wouldn’t wear my uniform because they were so against the war.”
In fact, Vietnam at times seemed preferable to home.
“It wasn’t hard over there because you were with guys who were doing what you were doing,” he said.
Calleon served in the Navy from 1968 to 1972. He was on an aircraft carrier, “one of the safest ships” around because of the many submarines and “tin cans,” or smaller warships, that followed the carrier wherever it went.
Calleon preferred to keep to himself when he came home, coping with the things he’d seen by isolating himself, even from other veterans.
“I never used to do this,” he said, motioning to the picnic festivities. “I couldn’t handle it.”
Then he started to get involved with local veterans causes, fighting for facilities and services on Maui so that veterans wouldn’t have to travel to Oahu. He’s especially proud of the one-stop Veterans Affairs facility soon to come on a site near Maui High School.
“I think the Vietnam veterans did more fighting at home than we did over there,” he said.
Alicia Tibbitt of Huelo realized the same thing Calleon did — sometimes the greatest service is at home.
Tibbitt served at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia from 2000 to 2005 and was part of a platoon that responded to the events of 9/11.
“We responded to the Pentagon being hit,” she recalled. “It was a real mess. They didn’t provide us with gas masks or protective gear, so a lot of us got sick. We had to clean it up for like a year as they rebuilt the Pentagon.”
Tibbitt’s time in the military taught her that it “takes a lot of self-sacrifice to get anywhere or accomplish anything” and that “if you want to see change, it takes you taking action.”
“You have to be the change,” she said. “And I think that starts a lot with serving your country and putting on your uniform and being on the front lines and being there when a national disaster happens.”
Sunday’s picnic, which was preceded by a ceremony at the Maui Veterans Cemetery in Makawao, was like “a family reunion to see other brothers and sisters,” Tibbitt said.