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<h1 class="reader-title">Vietnam – The Journey Continues</h1>
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<h4>My presentation ended with an audio recording, from the
Freedom Archives, of Ho Chi Minh addressing the US antiwar
movement in English, to the applause and tears of
everyone.</h4>
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<h4>by Alex Hing - August 2019<br>
</h4>
<h4>Five years after the publication of <em>The
People Make the Peace—Lessons from the
Vietnam Antiwar Movement </em>(Just World
Books 2015), our book was translated into
Vietnamese by Gioi Publishers. As authors,
we decided to organize a book launch in
Hanoi with our Vietnamese publisher, the
Vietnam-USA Society, and the Vietnam Union
of Friendship Organizations. Five of us were
able to attend which allowed me to return to
Vietnam for a third time in a continuing
process of observing first hand changes in
this important nation.</h4>
<h4><img
src="https://eastwindezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Screen-Shot-2019-08-07-at-7.42.06-PM-300x219.png"
alt="" width="356" height="261">The
general feeling I got from the Vietnamese
was although they are poor they are happy
and optimistic. Unlike New York, all of the
storefronts in Hanoi were bustling and, as
always, the people were very kind and
friendly. This is not to say that people are
unaware of the serious problems they face,
the top two being China’s bullying in their
Eastern Sea (China calls it the South China
Sea) and global warming. The situation with
China is the background for Vietnam’s recent
unabashed moves to cement ties with the US,
both officially and on a people-to-people
level. Our people’s delegation was not bound
by protocol so we voiced strong misgivings
about our government.</h4>
<h4>The Vietnamese deeply appreciate the
American activists who helped build the
antiwar movement that ended the horrific,
genocidal war of US aggression. All of us,
however, understood that it was they,
through their persistence, vision, wisdom
and brilliant military implementation of
protracted people’s war, who forced the US
withdrawal and unification of their nation
with unimaginable sacrifice. To them, we
are heroes and sheroes, to the extent that
we were awarded medals for “Peace and
Friendship Among Nations” at a nationally
televised ceremony. In the US, however, we
are caricatured and trivialized so that a
movement that encompassed the majority of
the American people for peace has been
replaced by a cynical, patriotic,
pro-military sentiment leading to endless
war, so dangerous were we to dare to
implement another way of living.</h4>
<div id="attachment_40879" class="wp-caption">
<p><img
src="https://eastwindezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/IMG_20190711_081403-300x225.jpeg"
alt="" width="704" height="528"></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">American peace
activists: (left to right) Frank Joyce,
Judith Albert, Alex HIng, Karin
Aguilar-San Juan, and Mary Anne Barnett.</p>
</div>
<h4>We arrived in Vietnam on a festive
occasion, the 20<sup>th</sup> anniversary of
the recognition by the UN of Hanoi as a City
for Peace. Part of the celebration was the
opening of the “Peace Diary” exhibition at
Hoa Lo prison (the “Hanoi Hilton”). Since
returning war veterans are a mainstay of
peoples’ friendship, ex-prisoners and
veterans were given prominent recognition in
the museum. We arrived two days after the
official opening ceremony when international
antiwar activists presented memorabilia from
their movements to the museum. However, a
special ceremony, which was televised at the
museum, was held for us. I saw in this an
opportunity to make a presentation on the
Asian American contribution to the antiwar
movement. Before leaving for Hanoi, I put
out a call for any photos, flyers,
newsletters and such to be put into a
portfolio which I would present to the
museum. The response was swift and large.
Thanks to Eddie Wong, Leon Sun, Greg
Morozumi and the Freedom Archives, I put
together two dozen pages of memorabilia as
well as a video and two audio recordings
which I had on a thumb drive.</h4>
<div id="attachment_40878" class="wp-caption">
<p><img
src="https://eastwindezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Union-of-Vietnamese-Los-Angeles-300x190.jpg"
alt="" width="605" height="383"></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Los Angeles march
in support of Vietnamese students. October
1971. Photo: Visual Communications
Archives.</p>
</div>
<h4>Asian Americans punched way above our
weight. Though less than 1% of the
population at the time, we consistently
turned out in Asian American contingents to
antiwar marches in the hundreds. And, we
were discriminated against by some of the
leaders of the general antiwar movement, who
we thought were racists. The slogan “Bring
the Troops Home Now!’ only concerned itself
with American troops without any regard for
the Vietnamese who were the victims of US
aggression and offered no solution to ending
the war. Our slogan was, “Victory to the
Vietnamese”. By this, we wanted the war to
end based on the Vietnamese demands at the
Paris Peace negotiations. Since nobody paid
attention to the negotiations because of a
US news blackout, Asian Americans not only
marched, but built grassroots sentiment for
the Vietnamese demands in our communities.</h4>
<div id="attachment_40881" class="wp-caption">
<p><img
src="https://eastwindezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Van-Troi-Anti-Imperialist-Youth-Brigade-Los-Angeles-1972-300x237.jpg"
alt="" width="600" height="474"></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Van Troi
Anti-Imperialist Youth Brigade at NYC
rmarch, October 1971. Photo courtesy of
Greg Morozumi.</p>
</div>
<h4>The demands were simply: An immediate
ceasefire; Total withdrawal of all US
military forces from the country; Freeing of
all POWs; Ending US support for the Tieu
government; A democratic process for
reunification. We held forums in libraries,
schools, churches and community
organizations. We provided draft
counselling, which enabled many to escape
the draft and even won a legal suit for 4
military personnel to be reclassified as
conscientious objectors. We held events such
as a ladies bowling tournament to raise
medical funds for Hanoi. But the general
antiwar mobilizations disregarded our
coalitions, such as the Bay Area Asian
Coalition Against the War (BAACAW), as
having a right to address post march rallies
from the stage. Instead, we were relegated
to the tail end of the marches. So, we
amassed our contingents with the flags of
the National Liberation Front, posters of Ho
Chi Minh, and a demand to accept he 7 Point
Peace Proposal of the Provisional
Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam
and snaked danced throughout the march. On
one occasion, we continued our snake dance
to the stage and took it over, unfurling a
banner supporting the 7 Point Peace Proposal
to the wild applause of the gathered
audience. The war did, indeed, end based on
the PRG’s demands in Paris. My presentation
ended with an audio recording, from the
Freedom Archives, of Ho Chi Minh addressing
the US antiwar movement in English, to the
applause and tears of everyone. Nobody knew
of the Asian American antiwar activities.
The museum managers said they would display
our material when they change the exhibit in
two years.</h4>
<h4><img
src="https://eastwindezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/BayAreaAsianCoalitionAgainstWar-235x300.jpg"
alt="" width="360" height="458"></h4>
<h4>The legacy of the war continues in Vietnam
with the ravages of Agent Orange into the
fourth generation affecting some 3 million
people and, although dioxin in the soil can
now be neutralized, there are still some
twenty-eight major contamination sites
throughout the country. We met with the
directors of VAVA (Vietnam Agency for
Victims of Agent Orange) and paid a visit to
a Friendship Village, where Agent Orange
victims undergo medical treatment,
rehabilitation and vocational training.
While the Vietnamese government has provided
many resources for these activities, they
rely mainly on individual, NGO and foreign
government donations and, more recently, the
US government has made contributions to this
effort. Presently, Dow Chemical and Monsanto
who produced the deadly dioxin in Agent
Orange for the US military have escaped any
liability for their role in this continuing
tragedy. At VAVA the directors explained
their program to assist the Agent Orange
disabled, including education for acceptance
and inclusion, training programs and equal
access and, especially now, elderly care.
We could not help but notice that none of
the directors were disabled themselves.</h4>
<div id="attachment_40880" class="wp-caption">
<p><img
src="https://eastwindezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/FB_IMG_1563130384143-225x300.jpeg"
alt="" width="501" height="667"></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Alex Hing
presents artifacts from the Asian American
movement’s support for the Vietnamese
people and the PRG’s 7 Point Peace Plan to
Dao Thi Hue of the Hoa Lo Relics Board.
Photo by Mary Ann Barnett.</p>
</div>
<h4>When we met with the Ministry of Defense,
officers there presented us with a detailed
outline of their efforts on the war
legacies. They believe that toxic
contamination while still serious is under
control. A bigger problem is with
unexploded ordnances. During the war over 8
million tons of bombs were dropped in all
areas of Vietnam (and also in Laos and
Cambodia), more than 3 ½ times the amount
dropped in all of World War II, 10% of which
were unexploded. The US cynically produced
brightly colored bomblets released by
cluster bombs, specifically so that children
would see them as toys which would explode
when touched. Today, these unexploded
munitions are still causing damage. The
task of finding and removing them all is
insurmountable so an ongoing education
campaign aimed at avoiding shiny or metal
objects in the field and reporting them to
authorities who will then send a team for
safe removal is having success, especially
with vulnerable children.</h4>
<h4>And then there are the MIAs, the some
300,000 who fought for the Vietnamese on
both sides of the war. While the US has
used its own MIAs to bolster a rightwing
pro-military narrative, the Vietnamese have
accommodated the US in its search for the
few remaining US MIAs. This is part of
their strategy to work more closely with the
US vis-a-vis China. However, whenever the
issue is brought up, the Vietnamese also
mention their MIAs and given the importance
of familial respect and ancestor worship
more needs to be done on the US side,
especially since the US has the logistical
data and technology.</h4>
<div id="attachment_40888" class="wp-caption">
<p><img
src="https://eastwindezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/unnamed-12-300x200.jpeg"
alt="" width="716" height="478"></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Alex spoke with
Bui Van Suu, who was wounded in the
American bombardment of Quang Tri. He
lives at Vietnam Friendship Village. Photo
courtesy of Alex Hing.</p>
</div>
<h4>Climate change/global warming is an
immediate challenge that was brought up in
all of our meetings. Vietnam ranks high on
indexes of countries most affected by
climate change (from 5<sup>th</sup> to 9<sup>th</sup>)
due to rising sea levels, droughts partly
due to international upstream damming,
monsoons of increasing severity, increasing
population and the concentration of poor
people in costal urban centers. The Mekong
Delta, the country’s rice basket is
switching to shrimp farming and other
aquaculture because rising sea water is
making it impossible to grow rice there. Our
meeting with the Ministry of Natural
Resources and Environment, unfortunately did
not happen. However, as in the US, I got
the impression that young people are more in
tune to the problem than their elders, a lot
of whom do not understand that revolutionary
change must occur rather than just recycling
plastics. A meeting with the World Wildlife
Fund also did not happen, and for that I was
glad. The WWF is an agent of US interests
globally, often assisting in the forced
removal of indigenous populations in the
name of environmental conservation. In a
meeting with a government agency that works
with NGOs, it was mentioned that the WWF is
doing work in Vietnam’s border area, meaning
along the Chinese border.</h4>
<h4>In the meantime, our delegation had some
of the best food in the world. At present,
Vietnam produces a wide variety of fresh
tropical fruit and vegetables as well as a
wide assortment of spices and herbs, many
native to the country. It also has
livestock, game and abundant seafood. It has
culinary influences from China, France,
Japan and India as well as its own culinary
tradition and a new and prosperous
generation of chefs are exploring the joys
of their nation’s bounty. After all, Ho Chi
Minh was a pastry cook in Escoffier’s
kitchen in Paris. Vietnam has always had a
highly creative vegetarian cuisine, and on
this trip we had a vegetarian feast that
would be hard to match anywhere. And Hanoi
egg coffee, a specialty that was created due
to a shortage of dairy products where a
foamy egg custard with sweetened condensed
milk floats atop very strong robusta coffee,
brewed Vietnamese style.</h4>
<div id="attachment_40882" class="wp-caption">
<p><img
src="https://eastwindezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/IMG_20190707_091531-300x225.jpeg"
alt="" width="791" height="593"></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">A view of the
mountain villages in Sapa, Vietnam. Photo
courtesy of Alex Hing.</p>
</div>
<h4>On the second day after our arrival, Karin
Aguillar San Juan and I went on an 18 km
trek over two days in the northern highlands
around the township of Sa Pa, which is being
developed as a tourist attraction. Both of
us wanted to see Nature and not just the
urban scene while we still could and took an
overnight train covering 380 km into the
mountains northwest of Hanoi near the
Chinese border. We barely checked into the
hotel when we were informed that after
breakfast, our Hmong tour guide would lead
us into the forest. It was a jagged, steep
and muddy slog, having rained the night
before. But it was worth every step. The
weather was cooler in the mountains so we
did not suffer the heat and humidity that
our comrades did closer to Hanoi. The
landscape was breathtaking with misty clouds
hugging the mountains, immaculately
sculptured rice terraces, giant bamboo,
hemp, indigo, many different kinds of trees,
streams, rivers and waterfalls. We even saw
a rainbow! On the second day, we visited Cat
Cat a Hmong village and tourist site to
partake the native crafts and culture. It is
a popular honeymoon site where families
dress up in rented native Hmong costumes.
Indigo grows in the area and we learned how
the cloth is made by drying and shredding
the roots and weaving it into cloth before
soaking it in the leaves for the distinct
indigo coloring. After dinner we took an
overnight train back to Hanoi.</h4>
<div id="attachment_40884" class="wp-caption">
<p><img
src="https://eastwindezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/IMG_20190707_110802-300x225.jpeg"
alt="" width="748" height="561"></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">A roadside cafe
in Sapa, Vietnam. Photo courtesy of Alex
Hing.</p>
</div>
<h4>The book launch was a huge success, our
hosts had to add more chairs and provide
more books than they estimated. Many people
from the friendship organizations attended
as well as a fair amount of students and a
number of American ex-pats. The venue was a
salon type question-and-answer dialogue on
national television with a host and emcee
interviewing our two editors and publisher
followed by an open mike which the rest of
our delegation could participate in
answering questions from the audience. In a
meeting prior to the event with the
publishers, I was pleased when they
mentioned that the book opened up issues
that would not be otherwise discussed, like
the lingering issue of reunification as well
as possible solutions. A journalist and one
of the publishers also talked to me about
the martial arts and I was interviewed on
video twice. Apparently, they read in my
chapter how I thought the Vietnamese news
agencies had stereotyped the American
antiwar movement as all white when they
abruptly ended my interview in mid-sentence
and rushed off to interview Ramsey Clark,
never to be seen again.</h4>
<div id="attachment_40883" class="wp-caption">
<p><img
src="https://eastwindezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/IMG_20190706_125325-300x225.jpeg"
alt="" width="654" height="491"></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Four Hmong
trekking guides in Sapa, Vietnam. Photo
courtesy of Alex Hing.</p>
</div>
<h4>Our delegation also visited the Ho Chi
Minh museum, had a good meeting with the
Vietnam Confederation of Trade Unions, a
meeting with the Foreign Ministry, The
Women’s Union and Women’s Museum, and
revisited GARCO, a successful garment
enterprise that formerly made military
uniforms and is now a model of the
“socialist oriented market economy”, which
nobody can still give me a clear
explanation.</h4>
<div id="attachment_40877" class="wp-caption">
<p><img
src="https://eastwindezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/unnamed-4-2-300x200.jpeg"
alt="" width="635" height="423"></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Judith Alpert,
one of the founders of the Youth
International Party (Yippies), talked
about the role women played in the
anti-Vietnam War movement. Here, she shows
a picture of a women’s contingent in a
protest rally in Miami, Florida. Photo
courtesy of Alex Hing.</p>
</div>
<h4>A film crew was following us around
getting footage for a future documentary on
the US antiwar movement and they spoke
English. They were in their early thirties
and I got the impression from them, from
some students we met and from our young
translator that not all of the newer
generation is interested only in making
money. Climate change is real for a lot of
youth and talking about the future is
problematic without engaging in hard
discussions about where the earth is
heading, and basic survival, and this is
coming amidst postwar reconstruction and a
new prosperity. Interest in international
relations, especially people-to-people
relations acknowledges that we are all in
this together and by understanding how the
people make the peace can lead to overcoming
what lies ahead for all of us.</h4>
<h4><em>Author’s Bio: </em><em>Alex Hing is a
sous chef in a New York City hotel, a
trustee of UNITE HERE Local 6 and is on
the Executive Board of the Asian Pacific
American Labor Alliance. He is a senior
student of Grandmaster William CC Chen and
has been teaching yang style tai chi in
New York as well as internationally for
over twenty years.</em></h4>
<h4><em>Hing is a longtime activist and
organizer beginning as a student and in
the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War
movements as well as in the community and
labor. He was the Minister of Education
for the Red Guard Party which drew its
inspiration from the Black Panther Party
for Self Defense.</em></h4>
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<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://freedomarchives.org/">https://freedomarchives.org/</a>
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