PANO – Exchange of keepsakes of soldiers between the Vietnamese and US sides is the best approach to healing the war wounds, US Defense Secretary A. Carter said. Although keepsakes of participating soldiers recall the past war, the exchanging of keepsakes still demonstrates good will of the two sides to close the painful past and to head toward a brighter future. This is the case of Vietnam-US relations.

During a three-day visit to Vietnam in June 2012, former US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta handed over some keepsakes of a Vietnamese soldier sacrificing himself in a battle in Quang Ngai province in 1966 to former Vietnamese Defense Minister Phung Quang Thanh. The keepsakes were preserved by a US veteran for years. In return, the former Vietnamese Defense Minister returned three unsent letters written by a US fallen in the past war. The first-ever exchange was widely applauded and highly appreciated by political officials and military figures from both sides.

In June 2015, when the talks between former Vietnamese Defense Minister Phung Quang Thanh and US Defense Secretary A. Carter finished, the US Defense Secretary presented two keepsakes related to Vietnamese soldiers that the US side had preserved. The two keepsakes include an old military belt and a yellowing diary. A. Carter said that the diary had drifted in the USA for 43 years. This was one of many keepsakes the US side had obtained from the war and were in a state of fair preservation, he added. He said he wanted those keepsakes to be returned to relatives of the dead Vietnamese soldiers to relieve the past pain and to together look toward a brighter future.    

US Defense Secretary A. Carter handing keepsakes of Vietnamese soldiers to Vietnamese Defense Minister in June 2015

In fact, the two sides conducted a number of other exchanges of war keepsakes. Such an exchange leaves deep impression and feelings. Thanks to the exchanges, a wife can receive the belongings of her husband after they have been lost for nearly half a century; a child can see his father’s image for the first time; and a mother knows that her son thought about her in the life-and-death situation.

As US Defense Secretary said, returning keepsakes of the fallen in the war to their families is a good therapy to heal the past war’s wound. By returning keepsakes to Vietnamese martyrs’ families, the US side is making its effort to relieve their pains and losses. The Vietnamese side does even more. Alongside its assistance and close collaboration with the US side in searching US servicemen missing in actions over the past years. Vietnam has returned a number of belongings of US troops to the US side. Many Vietnamese veterans are preserving keepsakes of US troops and they are awaiting a chance to return them to the US dead troops’ families.

Surprisingly, keepsakes from the painful past can now help the two old enemies close the past and head toward a brighter future.

At the talk with his Vietnamese counterpart in June 2015, US Defense Secretary A. Cater said, the future of the bilateral relations is bright but when the relationship is moving toward, the two countries should not forget the past. He confirmed that the US side will continue to collaborate closely with Vietnam in dealing with war legacies. He said that with his great honor and commemoration of the participating soldiers in the war, he returned the keepsakes of Vietnamese soldiers to the Vietnamese side, and that he hoped the keepsakes would soon be delivered to their families.   

Apart from exchanges of belongings of soldiers of the two sides participating in the past war, the two sides have also collaborated closely in dealing with war legacies over the past 20 years. In meetings with US leaders, Vietnamese officials usually emphasize the cooperation on dealing with war legacies. In the meeting in June 2015 with Defense Secretary A. Carter, General Phung Quang Thang highly valued US supports in solving war legacies in Vietnam. The former Vietnamese Defense Minister wished the US side to deal with war legacies as actively as to search US servicemen missing in action in Vietnam. He also applauded the US side’s support in cleaning the dioxin-polluted area nearby Da Nang airport and clearing bombs, mines and explosives left by the war in some localities in Vietnam.

Alongside the US government’s effort to heal the war wound, many US veterans in the past war did good deeds. In the 1980s, several US veterans sought to normalize relations between Vietnam and the USA. As the war shortly ended, they overcame many obstacles, such as hostility and the war syndrome in the US, to lay first bricks of the road to the normalization of the two nations. They then returned to Vietnam, the old battlefield, to spend their time and effort dealing with war legacies in the country.

Two US veterans Bobby Muller and John Terzano founded a non-governmental organization, the Vietnam Veterans Assistance Fund or Chuck Searcy to support Vietnamese war victims and Vietnam’s effort to solve war legacies. Thanks to those vanguards, many other US veterans either came to Vietnam to heal the nation’s war wound or raised their voice for the normalization and later for better relations between the two countries.  

Today, many US veterans personally or representing non-governmental organizations come to Vietnam to work for charity. They do various jobs. Some participate in clearing leftover unexploded ordnance (UXO), supporting victims of UXO, or cleaning dioxin polluted areas; others teach English to children, treat agent orange (AO) patients and fund for projects to improve local people’s living condition. Among them, there are several US veterans who have flown thousands of miles to come to Vietnam to return keepsakes of Vietnamese soldiers to their families.     

US veterans are also seen in old battlefields in Vietnam. Some US veterans go in groups but others are on trips with their families. Several US veterans try to meet Vietnamese veterans to say sorry for what they had done in the past war. It is not very unusual when US veterans are seen in the line of Vietnamese people to pay tribute to Vietnamese martyrs at cemeteries.

It is two decades since the two countries normalized their relations. The Vietnam-US relationship has entered another page. Hostility has given way to friendly relations, multifaceted cooperation and comprehensive partnership between Vietnam and the USA. In a recent interview with the People’s Army reporter, Lieutenant Colonel Julian Tran, Chief of the US MIA Office in Vietnam said that the war is the past. The American generation of Julian Tran cannot change the past but what all Americans and Vietnamese people can do now is to “create a road to boost cooperation and ease the pain and legacy of the war,” he added.         

Translated by Thu Nguyen