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"Returning To Vietnam Was A Joyful Experience"

By Stanley Campbell

I first went to Vietnam in 1970 thinking this would be a noble cause, but I return knowing it was a horrible mistake. I remember serving with the best group of men and women our country had to offer. I'm glad I went.

I am glad I served in Vietnam because I was a firm anti-communist that thought we could kill commies from thirty thousand feet with high explosives. I learned you cannot tell the communists from the normal people who wanted their own country. I am glad I served in Vietnam because I learned to hate war. So I am very happy to return to Vietnam, to lay some ghosts to rest, to work for the return of my comrade's remains, and to seek reconciliation, if not between our two countries, then perhaps, between the people who actually did the fighting.

Returning to Vietnam was a joyful experience, for this is where I learned to love peace, to rejoice in the humanity of all, and to begin seriously questioning my government's foreign policy.

Our country dumped more bombs on Vietnam than on any other country, so I was really surprised when people greeted us with joy and laughter when we told them, "No, we are not Russians, we are Americans." And when they discovered that we were veterans, they quickly ran to get someone who could speak better English, sat us down, and peppered us with questions:

"What do you think of our country?"

"Why are you here?"

"Will more of you visit?"

The days were full of meetings and site seeing, but we had plenty of time to ourselves. Housed in government guest houses, we soon found English speaking cyclo drivers (bicycles with big seats) who took us on unescorted tours. The beauty of the countryside—the green beyond any green—left impressions on me. The poverty is appalling, especially in the south. Former ARVN (South Vietnamese Army Veterans) are not treated well, and there is a general malaise on the economy. "We learned the hard way that you cannot disobey the law of the market," said Foreign Minister Dang Nghiem Bai, director of the American Department. "You cannot build socialism while people are walking around without pants." "We tried to build a country the same way as we fought the war. We won the war, but lost the economy." "The government cannot forever subsidize businesses that lose money. We lost 89% through subsidies; now, with a quasi0marker economy, we only loose 20%." Hard words, but you wonder if the government will respond to the challenge. The Vietnamese economy sucks. Everyone knows it. The remarkable thing, everyone has an opinion. Hard-liners say "the Vietnamese people can reconstruct the country themselves, with the help of our friends." "Our friends" does not include the U.S.

The head of the VN-US Friendship Society, was blunt when he said "We have had to fire 'heroes of the revolution' from economic positions because they could not run the country."

Outdoors, I shopped. I loved the markets, and the prices were amazingly low. The market place has had a boost from the government's new "hands-off" (comparatively)—lots of people buy in bulk and sell on the street. Cafes open as boxes over-turned on a street corner, the patrons sipping at the sludge called coffee, purchasing tobacco by the cigarette or by the "bowl" for their individual "bongs". Marijuana is cheaper than tobacco and we caught a whiff of the illegal memory down some of these back streets.

I bought a pair of scissors that were cut, themselves, by and pounded into shape: primitive hand-made scissors! They had drop-forged stainless steel scissors at government shops (at high prices—no more subsidy). People will set up shop selling anything(!) and they seem to locate themselves in "districts". One street dedicated to shoes, the next stocked with larger items: furniture, televisions (assembled in Vietnam for Japan), but in Hanoi, it was Spartan living.

Ho Chi Minh City is more a tourist town. The climate and the people are warmer (all Vietnam is friendly). Bars are more prevalent, but Hanoi is beginning to swing—with a disco, some dancing, western dress (coming from the south?), and even bar girls. Just for the sake of investigating decadence in the capital of Marxism-Leninism we allowed ourselves to be taken, and we were: thirty bucks for a short time with b-girls, American coke, and Asian rock and roll at the "café Mademoiselle:, our hosts: the cyclo drivers!

You can see a worn, almost desperate, Saigon. We ate well: five course meals for six people for ten bucks. But there were beggars on many streets, and the streets closed up after eleven pm, leaving it to the many homeless men, women and children. We were approached many times with appeals for help, and sometimes with appeals to "help me leave."

Vietnam is going to get a good dose of capitalism. While I was eating dinner at the Cuban-build Liberty Hotel a swarm of 25 Japanese business men descended on the place. The American embassy official we spoke with in Bangkok, Thailand, said the U.S. was having a fit keeping Australia and Japan from buying up Vietnam. Lumber, shrimp farms, tourism, cheap labor, and undeveloped natural resources make Vietnam a dream for venture capital.

If anything can bring Vietnam and the United States together, it will be a chance to make a buck!

—Stanley Campbell, VVAW Rockford, IL