Download PDF of this full issue: v24n1.pdf (11.8 MB)

Vet Returns to 'Nam on a Hire Mission

By Bruce Stanley, AP

Hanoi, Vietnam- Bill Willert takes pride in his service as a gunner's mate on a U.S. Navy destroyer that shelled communist targets during the Vietnam War.

Now a successful manufacturer, Willert, 47, is president of Willert Home Products, a family-run firm that makes mothballs, toilet bowl deodorizers and potpourri. He spoke from his booth at Vietnam's first trade fair for U.S. companies, which ended Sunday.

"As corny as it sounds, I want to create jobs in Vietnam, without taking jobs away from my current U.S. work force," he said.

Willert first came to Vietnam in 1968 as a gung-ho volunteer aboard the USS Stoddard. He commanded a gun crew that fired daily salves at communist forces near the central Vietnamese city of Da Nang.

"I knew who was on the receiving end of the shells," he says with passion. "they were people trying to do harm to U.S. troops."

Nevertheless, he now calls the Vietnam War unjust and says the mistakes are continuing today.

President Clinton lifted the 19-year U.S. economic embargo against Vietnam in February, but he still has not established full diplomatic relations with the country or granted it must favored nation trading status.

"Because the U.S. lost the war...many American don't like Vietnam," he says. "Conversely, we won the war with Japan and Germany, and we are very good trading partners with both of these countries."

Willert hopes to do something about that. His plans include finding a local partner to help him grow flowers for potpourri and make incense sticks, plastic fly swatter, flypaper strips and mop handles.

None of these projects with a total estimated star-up cost of $300,000 would cost American jobs, he stresses.

Willert first employed Vietnamese who came to the United States as refuses in 1985. Today, they make up-about 20 percent of the 350 workers at his main plant in St. Louis.

Willert a college dropout whose firm generates revenues of $50 million says he is not a typical businessman.

"The concept of increasing the size of my company for dollars or profit is not my No. 1 thing." He said. "I'd rather provide jobs for more families in St. Louis, New Jersey, Los Angeles, or West Virginia—and Vietnam."