By David Cohen
From the moment the itinerary arrived for my recent trip to Southeast Asia, it was Saigon--or Ho Chi Minh City, as it's now called--that most excited me.
I don't remember when I first heard the words "Vietnam" or "Saigon," but I do remember hearing the phrase "Laotian guerrillas" while studying current events in Miss Praetz's sixth-grade class. Gorillas or guerrillas fighting in the jungles! I was confused, yet didn't ask for clarification. That was 1961, and it wasn't too long before Saigon became a familiar place to everyone.
As my awareness grew and, as I grew older, the Vietnam War began to seep into every aspect of my life. The high school newspaper in the small Massachusetts town where I grew up contained stories about the war and the forces being forged as its result.
"Love it or leave it" never really entered my world view. However, the images on the television did not escape me: The helicopters landing in tall grass with soldiers nearly my age jumping out with backpacks and rifles; the countryside with its rice paddies, water buffalo and bent-over farmers with conical straw hats at work as the choppers and soldiers swirled around them.
The ongoing body-count reports repeated as a ritual. Every night on the TV news and throughout the day on the radio between Supremes and Doors songs, the casualty numbers crept into my mind like poison seeping into an aquifer.
Many of these feelings and memories resurfaced during my recent trip.
Emotional 'return'
The Australian pilot for Thai Air announces our approach to Tahn Sot Airport. The greenness visible below squares off into fields and paddies, just as if my memory were returning from a distant time. It is a very different feeling.
I never fought in Vietnam, but I had very close friends who did. I had heard every story, courageous and sad. Most of all, I knew the images imprinted on my brain. I now know that I was part of this war, yet in a way so different from the men who pulled the triggers and counted the bodies of their compatriots and victims.
As we approach the runway, I imagine how a half million young men and women had viewed this very scene from a plane or perhaps a helicopter. Ghosts were everywhere, and I was not even a returning GI.
The Vietnamese are amazed at how emotional returning soldiers can be. It seems that they have come to realize the significance of the Vietnam War to American families and friends whose loved ones shed blood on their soil.
Today, there is little hatred displayed toward Americans in Ho Chi Minh City. Maybe this is because the Vietnamese have suffered so much themselves over the past 2,000 years. Perhaps it's because mere survival and subsistence living breeds compassion for others' sorrow. Whatever the reasons, the people appear friendly for the most part--tolerant, curious and amused at worst.
Ghosts reappear
The broad French-designed boulevards are filled with motor scooters and pedicabs. Compared with the gridlock of Bangkok, the wide, tree-lined streets of Ho Chi Minh City are navigable and pretty. As prosperity increases, of course, the number of cars could ruin the ambiance that the motorbikes' smaller size has created. (I hope party officials think long and hard about this Asian dilemma.)
Shops and open-air cafes fill every block. There are makeshift sidewalk eateries with small tables and chairs. The air is humid and sweaty-hot. As I sit at the table in the corner cafe, next to me sit young Vietnamese couples looking fashionable--like kids anywhere.
My mind shifts to memory again, and the ghosts reappear. A scooter drives by with two young men. I remember the bombs thrown into the cafes where the soldiers drank 333 beer. As I drink a 333, the streets are peaceful. No soldiers anywhere. Yet this city was filled with American military.
My imagination runs rampant, and I see the jeeps and MPs and camouflaged uniforms filling the streets. I have this overwhelming feeling of sadness and sorrow. I can't put my finger on it.
It's not as if I served in the Vietnam War and watched in horror as friends died all around me. I felt I was not entitled to these emotions. Maybe it is the realization of the passing of time that seems so evident that infused these moments with a depth and poignancy.
Vietnam had affected me and probably millions others like me who never went to war there. It was our generation's war, whether we like it or not.
Images on film
We leased a Toyota van and had the driver take us to the countryside. I had this obsession with capturing certain images on film. Rich green fields, rice paddies with farmers working them, and thatch-roofed homes with water buffalo grazing nearby. The tall trees would be in the background near the horizon. An ox cart with its driver silhouetted against the lush fields would authenticate everything.
We drove for an hour and a half over coarse roads with grooves carved by heavy motor-scooter use. The bumpy ride did not quash the desire to get my photos. "Take a right," I suggested to the driver. "Maybe we'll find the countryside that way."
Our Vietnamese friends were amused by my search. "You need to go to Danang to see what you are looking for," our friend said.
I was beginning to believe her. But we persevered, and around the next turn were the most beautiful fields, with water buffalo and farmers. They were the images I had to see.
Vietnam is a beautiful country, and one could spend endless hours photographing its landscapes and people. But by capturing the images I did along with my stay in Ho Chi Minh City, I came a lot closer to understanding the feelings I had locked away for most of my life.
David Cohen is publisher of the Los Gatos Weekly-Times.
OUR TOWN
Bob Aldrich is recovering from eye surgery. His 'Our Town' column will return soon.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, June 19, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved