PSU Magazine Summer 1987

bomb craters, land once overgrown with the lush growth of a rubber plantation. To the north, the countryside along the "Street Withoutjoy" (Highway 1) and Highway 9 was scarred with the wasted remains of military equipment and dotted with military cemeteries. The view from Doc Mieu Hill, however, was spellbinding. As we looked down into the valley that was once the Demilitarized Zone, farmers were planting fields and there was _no hint of the tension and destruction that charactenzed the area twenty years before. In Hue, to the north, our group met with Nguyen Van Luong, President of the People's Committee of Binh Tri Thien province and the former commander of the National Liberation Front forces for the Quang Tri region. He still carried Americ~n shrap~el ~nd recalled the American enemy huntmg for him m the tunnels below Doc Mieu. Nevertheless, he received us graciously. Later, at the Truong Son Revolutionary Martyrs' Cemetery south of the DMZ, the Vietnamese veterans who took care of the cemetery also welcomed our delegation. Offering refreshments a~d hospitality, th~y posed for pictures with the two Amencan veterans, with soldiers' gravestones as a backdrop. W hat was most surprising about our trip was the contrast between the lingering effects of the war and the warm reception given our group by the Vietnamese. While the official view as seen in various publications and at historical sites and museums is that of an American war machine which wreaked havoc throughout the whole country, the anger appeared directed toward the American govern– ment, not the American people. "The Vietnamese have always distinguished between the American peo~le a~d the American authorities," the Rector of Hue Umvers1ty Polytechnique told our group. The view from the capital of Hanoi, as well as at the provincial level, is toward reconciliation with the American people and toward the establishment of diplomatic relations with the American government. In the words of one high– ranking official of the Communist Party, "we are waiting for the day that the White House will normalize relations with Vietnam." For the U.S., one major hindrance to normalizing relations is the POW-MIA question, an issue that most Vietnamese officials with whom we talked found diffi– cult to understand. They insisted that their government was doing everything it could to help the United States recover the remains of MIAs, reminding us that they have 200,000 of their own MIAs for whom they are trying to account. The Party official stated categorically, "there are no American MIAs alive in Vietnam," adding, "why should we keep (them)?" He felt the issue was being kept alive by the current administration in Washington for its own political purposes. Nevertheless, the question of diplomatic relations becomes increasingly important in light of con– temporary geopolitical events. The Russian influence, for example, is seen today in a massive embassy which occupies a full city block and, according to one Western ambassador, employs "3,000 to 4,000 people and who knows how many technicians and advisers throughout the country." Taking into consideration the Vietnamese fear of China on both their northern and western borders and the continuing economic problems as acknowledged by the Sixth Party Congress, the ambassador fears that Vietnam will become even more integrated into the Soviet bloc, especially if the United States continues to place Vietnam in a "semi-outlaw position" by denial of diplomatic recognition. T he question for an educator returning to Vietnam is how we can teach about the Vietnamese and the American experience in Vietnam to a new generation of students unfamiliar with this experience. Noted historians McAlister and Mus wrote during the height of the war that "what has been repeatedly said about Vietnam has been written almost exclusively from a very particular Western per– spective," a perspective which in my view has continued into the present. My return to Vietnam has reinforced Continued on page 28 PSU MAGAZINE PAGE 18