Vietnam tries to forget bitter past and enter new peroid<\/p>\n
By Olaf Kanter<\/p>\n
SAIGON: Vietnam underwent a veritable apocalypse. In the late
\n1960s and early 1970s more bombs fell on the small South-East
\nAsian country than on the entire German Reich throughout World
\nWar II.<\/p>\n
Three million people were killed. Yet today the Vietnamese
\nshow no signs of the horrors they experienced. They are
\ncapitalizing on them. Necessity is, after all, the mother of
\ninvention.<\/p>\n
The neon sign over the bar door is in bad taste. Apocalypse
\nNow is the name of the bar. Here in Thi Sach Street the night is
\nyoung and people are thick on the ground: rickshaw drivers and
\nbeggars, hawkers and shoeshine boys, pimps and prostitutes.<\/p>\n
They all want to earn some of the money that is burning a hole
\nin the visitors' pockets. The visitors are businessmen and
\ntourists, mainly from the Far West.<\/p>\n
Vietnam went through the real thing, but the neon sign would
\nseem to indicate that the apocalypse is now history - and that
\nVietnamese no longer want to hear anything more about it. They
\nwant to get on in the world and are even prepared to capitalize
\non the horror that cost three million lives.<\/p>\n
In 1979 Francis Ford Coppola made a blockbuster film about the
\nVietnam war, Apocalypse Now, in which the emphasis was on the
\ndarker side of mankind. In the film, U.S. helicopter gunships
\ndance over the sandy beaches of Vietnam to the accompaniment of
\nWagner music.<\/p>\n
In the bar, helicopters are painted on the ceiling in ugly
\ncamouflage colors. A real \"chopper\" has rotors that turn. Here in
\nthe bar, electric fans whirl hot and humid air across billiard
\ntables and the dancefloor.<\/p>\n
A few Vietnamese girls are dancing to the sound of 1970s
\nAmerican rock music. European and American tourists eye the
\ntalent as they drink Tiger beer. A U.S.-Vietnamese joint venture
\nor two look as though they might be in the making.<\/p>\n
Twenty-three years after peace terms were agreed in Paris, the
\nVietnamese apocalypse is indeed history, but its traces are
\nassiduously marketed. Tourists arrive with visions of the Vietnam
\nWar: scenes such as the naked girl running away from a burning
\nvillage and U.S. soldiers throwing their prisoners out of the
\nairborne helicopter.<\/p>\n
Saigon has set up a museum, the War Crimes Museum, as a
\nmemorial to the victims of atrocities.<\/p>\n
Nguyen Quang Tho, a wiry man with a predilection for Hawaii
\nshirts and neat trouser creases, tells a group of German visitors
\nabout the howitzers and helicopters, tanks and fragmentation
\nbombs.<\/p>\n
He shows them pictures of U.S. atrocities. A tank is seen
\ndragging a Vietcong behind it to his death. A GI is seen posing
\nfor a picture holding a Vietcong's scalp.<\/p>\n
Grossly deformed children were born after the defoliant Agent
\nOrange was dropped on large areas of Vietnam. \"A monster: three
\nmouths and no eyes\" is the caption to a picture of a baby on the
\ndissecting table, a baby that only lived to be three months old.<\/p>\n
Tho tells his tale in a detached manner even though he
\npersonally experienced the war. He fought with the Vietcong at
\nthe age of nineteen. Now, at 47, he cautiously says that \"this
\ncollection only shows the Vietnamese view of what happened.\"<\/p>\n
At the museum's exit souvenirs are on sale. For 22,000 dongs,
\nabout two dollars, you can buy a Zippo. GIs scratched their
\nposting and the year on one side of their cigarette lighters -
\nand slogans from the poetry album of death on the other: slogans
\nsuch as \"Death is my business, and business has been good.\"<\/p>\n
Business with these macabre souvenirs is good. So good that
\nfake Zippos are now manufactured in Vietnam, complete with
\nslogan!<\/p>\n
Thirty years ago U.S. General Curtis Le May boasted that he
\nwas going to \"bomb the Communists back into the Stone Age.\" He
\nwas as good as his word. Millions of tons of bombs were dropped
\non Vietnam, not to mention millions of gallons of defoliant.<\/p>\n
Today the harbingers of destruction are sold over the counter
\nas children's toys: jet fighters and bombers made from the tin of
\nold Coca-Cola cans.<\/p>\n
Vietnam, like China, Laos, North Korea and Cuba, is one of the
\nlast bastions of Communism. The Vietcong flag - a yellow star on
\na red background - still flies from many houses.<\/p>\n
But since reunification in 1976 Vietnam has been politically
\nand economically isolated. It remained the poorhouse of Asia -
\nuntil the late 1980s when communist regimes fell like ninepins
\nall over the world.<\/p>\n
In 1986 the Vietnamese Communist Party called its version of
\nperestroika, Doi Moi, or New Thinking. But that referred solely
\nto economic thinking. The Communist old guard has surrendered
\nnone of its political power.<\/p>\n
The Vietnamese economy has been booming ever since trade and
\nindustry cast off the fetters of economic planning and even
\nforeign capital is welcome. Vietnam is making up for lost ground
\n- with double-digit growth rates. Saigon, a bustling center of
\neconomic recovery, is one big building site.<\/p>\n
The endless hard work of its six million people is reflected
\nin the gleaming plate glass and steel of new office buildings,
\nwhile international companies show their presence on house-sized
\nhoarding by the Saigon River. They range from Carlsberg, the
\nbrewers (they brew in Hanoi), from Toshiba, the computer company.<\/p>\n
This input has transformed the life of the city. Tho tells the
\ntale of his brother-in-law, a highly decorated officer who now
\nworks as a doorman for a Korean investor.<\/p>\n
\"We won the war but we have lost the peace,\" Tho says. It is
\nthe first and only time he sounds a note of bitterness.<\/p>\n
Sixty kilometers north-east of Saigon the Vietcong were the
\nwinners. Near Co Chi they dug in deep into the yellow clay,
\nbuilding a labyrinth of narrow tunnels several hundred kilometers
\nlong and three stories deep - from the Saigon River to the
\nCambodian border.<\/p>\n
As the Americans were unable to defeat this army of moles on
\nthe ground, they attacked it from the air. Nowhere in Vietnam is
\nthe ground so pock-marked as here. Sixteen thousand people lived
\nin the Co Chi tunnels. Only a third of them survived the war.<\/p>\n
Today the tunnels are a theme park. Behind the box office
\n(eight dollars a ticket) a narrow path leads through the
\nundergrowth to the \"armory,\" which is guarded by two uniformed
\nshop-window dummies.<\/p>\n
A hand-painted sign on the door promises: \"Here you can dress
\nup as a Vietcong.\" The kit includes an olive-green plastic topee,
\njacket and trousers made of rough denim, a raincape and sandals
\nmade from old car tire rubber.<\/p>\n
The main entrance to the tunnel, which used to be a hole in
\nthe forest floor no bigger than a manhole cover, is now clad in
\nconcrete. A staircase leads down to the \"field hospital\" - a six
\nby four metre room which, in the days when it saw active service,
\nwas just big enough for the nurses to stand up as they went about
\ntheir work.<\/p>\n
On the broad wooden table in the middle of the room operations
\nused to be carried out in the light of a gas lamp. The surgical
\nequipment in a tin box on the wall looks more like a carpenter's
\ntool kit. Tho takes out a saw and says: \"They did amputations
\nwithout an anesthetic.\"<\/p>\n
The underground passageway to the field kitchen has since been
\nwidened to accommodate the average Western tourist. Once you have
\novercome any feeling of claustrophobia you might have, you can
\nsample a Vietcong snack: manioc in a salty peanut dip and a cup
\nof bitter yellow tea.<\/p>\n
The tour ends at the shooting range. \"A dollar a shot!\" - And
\ntwo Japanese visitors fire a Kalashnikov at gaily painted
\ncardboard animal targets.<\/p>\n
On the road from Saigon to Vinh Long the bus trails an age-old
\nAmerican pickup with a coffin and six young people casting
\nbanknotes to the wind.<\/p>\n
Tho explains that \"when someone dies suddenly, the evil
\nspirits which took him away are still nearby. The money is
\nintended to distract their attention and stop them from do any
\nmore dirty work.\"<\/p>\n
Vietnam was too poor to impress the evil spirits who landed at
\nDanang in March 1965, invading the country. By April 1969
\nWashington had sent 550,000 U.S. servicemen to Vietnam.<\/p>\n
Tho only came into contact with the enemy. His unit, the 304
\nInfantry Division, the \"iron fist of the army,\" was in charge of
\nsupplies.<\/p>\n
On his very first combat assignment the young Tho was
\nseriously injured by a grenade splinter. So his war ended in
\n1971, when he was sent to study in East Germany: German studies
\nat Leipzig's Karl Marx University.<\/p>\n
He then worked as an interpreter for government delegations
\nfrom Hanoi and for the past two years had worked as a publisher's
\nreader at the Communist Party's children's book publishing house.<\/p>\n
He earns a little extra as a tourist guide.<\/p>\n
Sooner or later every visitor asks him how he came to terms
\nwith the war and how he deals with the Americans who now come to
\nVietnam as tourists. Nearly everyone in Vietnam gives his answer:
\n\"The war is over. There is no reason to hate the Americans any
\nmore. You only need hatred in war.\"<\/p>\n
Vietnam is a narrow strip of land on the South China Sea. In
\nthe course of history Mongols and Chinese have repeatedly tried
\nto overrun and occupy their small neighboring country.<\/p>\n
The Vietnamese have always offered valiant resistance, \"but we
\nnever could afford to be unforgiving,\" Tho says, trying to
\ninterpret Vietnam's pragmatic reconciliation with its history.
\n\"You can only do business with your enemies if you get on with
\nthem again.\"<\/p>\n
-- Die Welt<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/vietnam-tries-to-forget-bitter-past-and-enter-new-peroid-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }