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Copyright 1995 Newsday, Inc.
April 30, 1995, Sunday, NASSAU AND SUFFOLK EDITION
SECTION: CURRENTS; LETTER FROM HO CHI MINH CITY (SAIGON); Pg. A40 Other Edition:A32 City
LENGTH: 1365 words
HEADLINE: The Americanization of Vietnam: Did We Win the War After All?
BYLINE: Jim Laurie.
"Jim Laurie, a correspondent based in London for ABC News, lived in Vietnam in the early 1970s.Twenty years ago, he was one of a handful of American reporters who witnessed the Communist
takeover of Saigon."
BODY:
IN MAY, 1975 - several days after the fall of Saigon - a portly Viet Cong major, sat with me,
sipping "Caphe Su da" (thick Vietnamese coffee with sweet milk poured over ice) and discussing
the future of a unified Socialist Vietnam.
During my recent trip to Saigon, the major, now retired and even more portly, rang to discuss a
business deal. "There's money in pharmaceuticals," he advised, "and American firms are planning
an exhibition here this summer. Can you offer some advice?"
Nearly everybody sees opportunity in Vietnam these days. And Saigon (very few here refer to it
by its official name - Ho Chi Minh City) is leading the way. Foreign investment, property values,
construction starts, living standards, GNP: all the indicators are up sharply.
The change is in marked contrast to the "wasted" years, as the Vietnamese refer to the period
between 1975 and 1990, when no one had much hope about anything.
On the early morning of April 30, 1975, as I stood in front of the American Embassy watching the
last CH 47 helicopter lift from the rooftop helipad, I was besieged by frightened Vietnamese. They
thrust military or embassy identification cards in my face to prove their American connections. They
would die, they cried, if I didn't help them get out; help I was powerless to give.
On May 8, 1975, I met Gen. Tran Van Tra, the new Communist military commander of Saigon. He spoke
about "reconciliation" between the divided people and promised peace and prosperity for all. It
soon became clear that reconciliation, peace and prosperity would be a long time coming. For many
, the "wasted" years - until Vietnam threw off its Communist straitjacket - were even more harrowing
than the war.
When I next returned to Saigon four years later, depression and fear were the prominent
emotions. Old friends wouldn't see me. Many had disappeared in "re-education" camps. Young men feared being
drafted and sent to the war in Cambodia. The nation was an economic mess. Collectivized farms
wouldn't produce. Shops and industries had been nationalized; the property of the wealthy confiscated.
My Viet Cong major sent me off to see the NEZs, "New Economic Zones": cooperative farming communities
in the barren lands north and west of the city, where thousands of urban dwellers had been forcibly
trucked and told to start new lives. Inevitably, many drifted back, selling their last ounces of gold
in order to join a growing flood of boat people fleeing Vietnam by the hundreds of thousands.
No one talks about NEZs anymore. Today, 15 miles north of Saigon, near an NEZ I once visited, there is a
new International Golf Club. Young Vietnamese caddy in 90-degree heat for fanatic Japanese, Taiwanese and
Korean golfers. A promotional brochure describes the "par 72 course in its attractive setting with
well looked after fairways and greens."
In one of the most startling reverses in the past few years, some of those who escaped this troubled
land have come back.
In the last-minute panic, Huynh Phu Qui and her family boarded one of those U.S. Embassy helicopters
I watched depart 20 years ago. But after building a new life in America, Qui decided to return to
Vietnam in 1991. "We hit rock bottom in 1975," Qui recalls. "We had to restart our lives in America with nothing. Now we've decided to come back, to reach for the heavens again. We have a chance to help restore our country and ourselves as well."
Last February, more than 40,000 Vietnamese-Americans returned to Vietnam to mark the traditional "Tet"
New Year holiday. In 1994, Vietnamese living in America, Europe and Australia poured an estimated
$ 500 million into Vietnam's economy. In Saigon, some of that money can be seen at work in the facelifts
nearly every home is undergoing.
Traveling from Saigon along old "Route One" which connects north and south along the coast, I found many
signs of newfound prosperity. Freshly built brick farmhouses dot the landscape. A surprising religious revival
is underway as well. In Phan Rang and Phan Thiet, known once for their big U.S. military bases, several large Buddhist
temples and Roman Catholic churches are under construction. When I traveled
this road 10 years ago, the only economic activity I saw was hundreds of scavengers digging for shell casings and other rusting American war material to sell as scrap metal.
Cam Ranh Bay was once one of America's key naval bases in the Pacific. After 1975, it became a major
Soviet naval station.
As I stopped in Cam Ranh today, I saw no sign of the Russian navy, even though it has an agreement to use the port
till 2003. One Vietnamese asked me if it was true that the American Navy would soon to return to
Cam Ranh. The speculation was sparked when U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Adm. Richard Macke told
reporters in Asia last November that "American Naval officers are always looking for good ports."
It is doubtful that Americans will return to Cam Ranh anytime soon. But that people here even
talk about the prospect seems extraordinary. In fact, it is part of an atmosphere that has
prevailed for some time. All Vietnamese, including Hanoi's leaders, have long sought the return
of an American presence, not only for business and investment, but also as a possible counterweight
to China, which has been a Vietnamese headache for nearly two millennia.
Attitudes toward America are complex. On each visit here over the past 16 years, I've relied on
Duong Quynh Hoa as a true barometer of conditions. Pediatrician, revolutionary, a communist who
years ago broke with Hanoi policies and quit the Party, Hoa has long advocated reform, but now
admits the rapid changes - Vietnam's Americanization - have her worried.
"The only morality in Vietnam today," Hoa laments, "is the making of money." She worries about
the widening gap between rich and poor. In a single night on the town, Saigon's nouveau riche will
spend what most Vietnamese earn in a year. Hoa reminds me that average per capita income in Vietnam
remains under $ 250 dollars a year. By World Bank criteria, 51 percent of Vietnam's population live in poverty.
The social cost of success has been high: corruption in high places, alarming levels of drug abuse and prostitution.
"In many unfortunate ways, the clock has been turned back 20 years," Hoa adds. And now, there's
something that wasn't around 20 years ago: HIV, which some estimate could infect half a million
people by 1998.
It is hard to find any Vietnamese who did not lose a family member during the war or in the
traumatic years just after. The current prime minister, Vo Van Kiet, is believed to have lost
his first wife in an American helicopter raid in 1966. Yet Vietnam's official policy now is to
downplay the impact of the war.
In Saigon, drivers of "cyclos" (bicycle-propelled taxis) accost Western backpackers with the
standard sales pitch: "Me take you to see American war crimes museum." South of Da Nang, along
the central coast, the national tour agency promotes journeys to the village of Song My, site of
the 1969 My Lai massacre. And along what we used to called the DMZ, separating North and South
Vietnam, a large Vietnamese billboard pays sarcastic homage to U.S. know-how. It advertises
the "McNamara Line: One of the World's Most Advanced Electronic Systems." Constructed under
former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the "system" was designed to keep North Vietnamese
troops from infiltrating south but, as the billboard notes, it failed to stop the south's "liberation."
Notwithstanding the pointed humor and the tours, there is surprisingly little hostility toward
Americans. That could, in part, be due to the fact that Vietnam has more than doubled its population in 20 years
and half its people have no memory of the American war. Considerable tension remains, however, between
northern and southern Vietnamese.
My emotions were torn on this trip - so near to the anniversary of the "fall of Saigon."
There's a sense of satisfaction that after 20 years Vietnam appears at last to be on the right
track. But there's also pain and sadness that it has taken so long, and that so many Americans
and Vietnamese sacrificed so much in the process.
NEWSDAY GRAPHIC: 1) Photo-Jim Laurie. 2) UPI Photo-Twenty years ago, with the Viet Cong closing in, an American crewman helps Vietnamese escape Saigon.
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