Module 2: The Vietnam-American War
Has leaving Vietnam as refugees impacted what it means to be Vietnamese American?
This module introduces what has been known as the Vietnam War in the United States and the American War in Vietnam, covering the period from 1954 to 1975. This period has also been referred to as the Second Indochina War. While mainstream histories and chronologies often center the American perspective and highlight well-known events such as the Mỹ Lai Massacre or the Tết Offensive (both occurring in 1968), this module considers the perspectives of the South Vietnamese who fled their homeland after the war, and whose stories are often distorted or erased in Vietnam and the United States.
We will engage with the “ordinary” experiences of people who lived through extraordinary times. This “bottom-up” approach to learning about a major world event will foster critical thinking and analytical skills. We will also examine how official archives are partial and incomplete, often reflecting the priorities of those in positions of power and privilege. This will prepare us for exploring how people who are left out of official history can construct their own community archives.
Who gets to tell the story of the Vietnam-American War?
How are people turned into enemies during wartime?
What sources can we explore for a more nuanced understanding of the Vietnam-American War from the Vietnamese perspective?
Perseverance: A Voice from South Vietnam
Born in the era of French colonialism, Nguyễn Thị Hạnh Nhơn’s life overlapped with different periods of political upheaval and war in Vietnam. Her perspective helps us understand more about the experiences of refugees from South Vietnam.
Nguyễn Thị Hạnh Nhơn was born in Huế, the former imperial capital city located in the central region. Her father was a high-ranking official under Emperor Bảo Đại of the last ruling dynasty, the Nguyễn. While some parts of Nguyễn’s life were filled with privilege due to her family’s ties to the royals, she also suffered tremendous losses each time the regime changed. “After successive waves of evacuations, my family became extremely poor,” 1 she recalled.
In the 1950s, Nguyễn served in the corps of female assistants under the French regime fighting against Việt Minh forces, the Communist Vietnamese that had fought for independence from French rule. This group of female assistants later became the corps of female soldiers under the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) after the country was divided into North Vietnam and South Vietnam in 1954.
In the ARVN, Nguyễn was responsible for training female soldiers for the South during the Vietnam-American War. Recalling the fateful day of April 30, 1975, when the southern capital of Saigon (Sài Gòn in Vietnamese) fell to North Vietnamese Communist forces, she shared: “That morning while at home I received the news of surrendering, I burst out crying. Suddenly, all was at a loss and that was a deep sorrow that we had to undergo but could not do anything because the last President [Nguyễn Văn Thiệu] already surrendered. What could we do?”2
Nguyễn was imprisoned in a reeducation camp due to her involvement in the South Vietnamese armed forces. The reeducation camps of postwar Vietnam have also been called concentration camps, hard labor camps, or prisons because of the inhumane conditions of forced detention. Her imprisonment lasted nearly five years. After her release from prison, one of her nine sons sponsored her to come to the United States under the Humanitarian Operation (HO) resettlement category of the Orderly Departure Program. After resettling in the United States, she got involved in community work and served as president of the HO Society, assisting wounded veterans and war widows.
Image 19.02.02 — Due to her involvement in the South Vietnamese armed forces, Nguyễn Thị Hạnh Nhơn was imprisoned after the war ended. This map locates sites of reeducation camps and prisons in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
At the time Nguyễn Thị Hạnh Nhơn recounted her story for the Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation’s 500 Oral Histories project, she was eighty-three years old. She lived until the age of ninety-one. In her lifetime, Nguyễn demonstrated how the Vietnamese people persisted through war, their spirits indomitable, despite overwhelming hardships:
“I was Group Chief of Women’s Group in the Air Force. As female soldiers, we did our best to contribute to Vietnamese Armed Forces. At that time the ARVN ranked second or third in the world, so we tried our best in our work. We were also proud of our contributions to serve in the armed forces in serving the country… We were proud because we were equal to the male soldiers, and our ability was not inferior to theirs. They treated us very well as among sisters and brothers. We respected one another as comrades, so whenever there was a reunion of military units of the armed services, we always joined them. Despite being defamed as losers, we still found ourselves not losing. We lost because that [was] the fate of the country in that period. But we were also very proud to have brought together our best to protect the South so that the people could live in peace. And in here we could inhabit in a free country, our children could contribute in the mainstream of the US or of other countries. Female soldiers were now getting here either by escaping by sea or by land, or through the H.O. program or by family reunion or by any other means. Whether we were settling either in France, in Australia, in Canada, or in all the states of the United States, we always offered our ability to do useful things.” 3
Nguyễn Thị Hạnh Nhơn’s story is only one of the millions of Vietnamese whose lives were impacted by the Vietnam-American War, a war that resulted in the deaths of three million Vietnamese and fifty-eight thousand Americans. The death toll alone is horrendous, but millions more also suffered from the ongoing effects of war: displacement, fractured families, physical disabilities, trauma and mental distress.
Image 19.02.03 — This May 1972 cover art of Gidra, an Asian American Movement publication, critiques how people are turned into enemies during wartime. The word “gook” is a derogatory term and was used to dehumanize Asian people during the Vietnam-American War.
“War! What Is It Good For?”: The Antiwar Movement
A song performed by the Temptations and Edwin Starr in 1970 has served as an anthem for the antiwar movement, and remixed by later generations. Called “War,” the song has the following verse:
War, I despise
’Cause it means destruction of innocent lives
War means tears to thousands of mother’s eyes
When their sons go off to fight
And lose their lives 4
The song was a number one hit upon its release in the United States. It captured many of the anxieties Americans were experiencing as the Vietnam-American War escalated and became very visible to them through television screens. From newspapers and photographic images to radio broadcasting and television reports, the Vietnam-American War entered the lives of Americans as no other war had done at the time.
The antiwar movement, sometimes called the peace movement, kicked off in 1965 with a series of protests against US involvement in Vietnam and lasted for a decade. It intersected with other major social movements of the era, including the African American civil rights movement, second wave feminism, ethnic studies strikes, the Chicano movement, and anticolonial struggles around the world.
Significantly, it was Motown Records, a Black-owned label, and Edwin Starr, a Black veteran of the US military, that brought this antiwar hit song to the American public. While Black people were still fighting for civil rights in the shadow of centuries of enslavement and Jim Crow segregation, they were also being drafted by the military and sent to Vietnam “to die for their country” under the government’s rationale of stopping the international spread of Communism.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. referred to the Vietnam-American War as “a white man’s war,” but “a Black man’s fight,” due to the disproportionately higher percentage of combat casualties of African Americans compared to whites. “We were taking the Black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem,”5 he said.
Image 19.02.05 — This cartoon highlights the contradiction of Black soldiers sent overseas to fight for a country that continued to deny their civil rights back home. The term “Negro” was commonly used in the 1960s. It is not an acceptable term today.
Among those most critical of US militarism at the time were Asian Americans, the majority being of Chinese, Japanese, or Filipino ancestry. They pointed out how the Communist “enemies” of the United States in Vietnam looked like Asians here, and the similarities between US war policy and how Japanese people were demonized and targeted during World War II.
In that time period, mainstream magazines like Time and Life portrayed Japanese people as the racialized enemy, caricatured as yellow, ape-like, and emotionless. Dehumanizing the enemy “other” has always been part of wartime propaganda, but during the 1960s and 1970s, antiwar activists made a clear connection between the historical injustices long suffered by Asian Americans—at the hands of the US government—and what was happening in Southeast Asia.
Beginning in the 1960s, violence towards Asians became visible through the work of wartime photojournalists. They captured iconic images, such as the execution of a suspected Communist soldier in South Vietnam—who was part of the armed forces referred to as the Việt Cong—and the photo of a naked child, Kim Phúc, running from a misdirected US napalm bombing of a village. This violence toward Asians also appeared on television and in films. Few of the early Vietnam War films such as Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Apocalypse Now told the stories of soldiers of color, or of Vietnamese people. When appearing in these popular culture representations, Vietnamese people were often shown as either the enemy or as helpless victims.
Efforts to counter these negative perspectives often come from within these reflected communities. In 1989, writer Le Ly Hayslip published her memoir, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman’s Journey from War to Peace, which was later adapted into a film. Her story of growing up in a small village, being caught between the North and South, and making difficult choices for her and her family’s survival captures the complex lived experiences of the Vietnamese people during and after the war.
Image 19.02.06 — Le Ly Hayslip (left), humanitarian and author of When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (1989) and Child of War, Woman of Peace (1992). Her writings re-center narratives about the Vietnam-American War with stories by and about Vietnamese people.
Other writers have also provided alternative perspectives that connect the Vietnam-American War to liberation struggles experienced by people of color. Anthony Grooms’s novel Bombingham follows the life of a Black man, from a childhood filled with racial violence to his time as a soldier experiencing more racial violence in the rice fields of Vietnam.
Even when official history records do not include their stories, marginalized people leave archives in the form of oral history, music, literature, and political speeches. In this way, they are able to tell their version of the story of the Vietnam-American War.
Glossary terms in this module
archives Where it’s used
A collection of historical documents, records, or ephemera providing information about a place, institution, or group of people.
colonialism Where it’s used
When one country takes partial or complete control over another country economically and politically, which can include exploiting its natural resources for profit. The colonizer imposes their belief system and way of life onto the colonized.
Fall of Saigon Where it’s used
Refers to the collapse of the South Vietnamese capital on April 30, 1975, marking the end of the Vietnam-American War. For Vietnamese people who remained after the war, this date is often referred to as “Liberation Day.”
militarism Where it’s used
The belief in and use of force, including full-scale war, to assert power, authority, and control over a nation or people.
reeducation camp (trại cải tạo) Where it’s used
Prison or hard labor camps under the Communist government of Vietnam where approximately 200,000 to 300,000 former South Vietnam military officers, government workers, and affiliates were sent for months to years following the Vietnam-American War.
refugee Where it’s used
A person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.
