In the end last month, the Wichita City Council voted 7-0 to place the Vietnamese-American community’s memorial near but not in Veterans Memorial Park, separated by an earthen berm and the lack of a sidewalk between them. The issue caught the attention of the New York Times, which published an article about the memorial dispute. Among the Times’ quotes:
“How could people now separate us with a wall? Why the need?” asked Nga Vu, whose brother died in Vietnam War.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with being Vietnamese,” said John Wilson, a U.S. Army veteran. “This is about serving in the American military. That’s it.”
“This has divided us, our American community, and we don’t want to make this a thing that will divide us,” said the Rev. Kenny Khanh Nguyen. “But I hope that it will look silly to our children and grandchildren. I hope that the next generation will take down that berm. And I hope that the relationship can heal later on.”
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26 Comments
Screw that! Add another 15 feet to the height. Veterans Memorial Park is an AMERICAN park to memorialize AMERICAN Vets.
I was there and I can think of many instances where we were sold out by our supposed allies.
Didn’t really have an opinion on it one way or another, XXX.
Until now.
I bow to your feelings and thank you for your service.
I agree with Nga Vu, it’s pure silliness.
I hope any future allies take note of how we treat their sacrifice.
If it’s just to commenorate all those who died in the VN war, then the list should include all the NVA and VC as well.
If it’s a tribute to Americans that died, then things are right.
Now, if they were American Vietnamese that died fighting in VN, their names should be listed on our side of the wall.
Well……………
All I can think to say is that I invite the New York Times out of it.
Actually, it was this government that sold us out in Viet Nam. We never had a chance over there, and a politically run war was the reason. Even Cronkite knew it.
War brings out the best and the worst in people. Tear it down: the war’s over. Use it as a reminder that war kills people and shouldn’t be taken lightly, like, say, Iraq, which never should have happened.
If its just about Americans then the confederate flag needs to come down
It’s silly to state it’s not about the Vietnamese. It’s all about them and trying to defend prejudice. Most of us Veterans do not belong to the all Caucasian group of drinking club members that have deluded themselves into thinking they are better than others.
Just what America needs is more division. Us vs them, blah blah blah.
Hate for other people is unacceptable.
I served as an infantry Sgt. in combat in Viet Nam. We lost upwards of 58,000 troops in that war. I believe the Vietnamese lost 10 to 15 times that number. It pains me to read that we would separate the memorial with a berm. Maybe we should separate those, who served in combat arms from the REMFs. Would that be fair?
With all due respect to XXX, and I mean that quite sincerely – I cannot thank you enough for your service – the berm ought to come down. The war is over. There were sacrifices on all sides, with the soldiers on all sides serving their respective countries. To the young men and women in the trenches, a war is never over political objectives or grand ideals. It’s about staying alive, keeping your buddies alive, and going home.
I know that my son, now in Iraq doing his second tour, understands that.
Take it down.
“With all due respect to XXX,….”
You don’t say “with all due respect”
and then ignore very deeply held and justifiable feeling.
But it is right to point out that that deep and justifiable feeling exists on both sides of this issue.
I don’t really belong commenting on it and certainly the New York Times does not.
That said?
Isn’t there a way to compromise? Perhaps, plant the berm in flowers all around to honor BOTH memorials?
Instead of the berm, a reflecting pool that in the morning would reflect one memorial and in the evening, the other?
With all due respect to XXX,….”
You don’t say “with all due respect”
and then ignore very deeply held and justifiable feeling.
—-
JR – let me explain something to you. Persons who respect one another may still disagree with each other. I rarely agree with XXX, but he has earned my respect on this blog. Repeatedly. And I’d be proud to share a beer and call him a friend, despite – or perhaps because of – our differences of opinion. It’s called being an adult.
At some point, you may learn to understand that.
That said, the reflecting pool idea is a very good one.
I liked it.
It could represent the gulf between the veterans American and Americanized and as a place of reflection on a war and a time that causes hurt feelings long after the last shots were fired.
Is it not bad enough that we have wars? Must we quarrel over memorials to them?
These are not my questions to answer.
Reflecting pool…
Very good idea – send that in BlueJay, I think it’s a perfect solution.
Heck, I’m sure people will contribute to see it built.
After seeing ARVN guards at the Nha Trang airfield, which was manned by US troops, point their weapons at another American soldier at the gate, I have always been leary of the ARVNs.
A bus load of us were stopped at the gate when the incident occured, and I yelled out “Lets get them”, we all unloaded and circled the ARVNs. The MP’s were called and no one was hurt.
Keep the berm.
After returning home, I worked with a former ARVN colonel. I asked him if he ever killed anyone? His reply, “No why would I kill my countrymen?”
Keep the berm!
Perhaps I should have been an artist. The Vietnam memorial in DC which I saw a traveling replica of, THAT is art.
I am not a veteran, and this war was fought when I was a little kid. My only connection to it is a neighbor’s kid who used to tease me when I was little.
He came home, but died horribly of Agent Orange poisoning.
It is not my place to say here. Certainly the New York Times should not have weighed in.
The funny part of the story is, it was for the same mission I received my Bronze Star, so the base commander was faced with the option of decorating me, or court martialing me.
Glad he chose the latter.
Ooops, the former!
This may be telling.
I have not seen either memorial. I have been to the general area MANY years ago. But I was not there to see the memorials. I was just walking along the area with a girl.
That is why I think it is wrong for me or the New York Times to comment too much here. These memorials are for the veterans and their families.
Blue,
A reflecting pool might be nice, except if you filled tonight is would evaporate by tomorrow afternoon. In the winter, it would have to be drained and in our few days of spring and fall it will turn green and slimy. Not terribly practical in Kansas.
As I recall, the area is shrouded by trees.
So, a pool is probably not a good idea.
“separated by an earthen berm and the lack of a sidewalk between them. ”
Well, how about this?
Allowing again that I have not been there.
The vets (the American ones that post here anyway) seem to favor the berm.
Perhaps a step added on each side of the berm every so many years? On one side they would go one way and on the other side the other until they began to approach one another along the summit?
A chance at least to reach some shared remembrance rather than continuing a war that is so long over?
Otherwise, people in the future who will not know either memorial will learn only of the reason for the berm.
Do we want the berm to be the memorial unto itself or for both sides? Then let’s make it a positive thing for both.
I am not a veteran of any but rhetorical and workplace war.
I hope I have (in my capacity as an outsider) respected feelings of the past while trying to bring about a more understanding future.
With that in mind….
In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915. Here is the story of the making of that poem:
Although he had been a doctor for years and had served in the South African War, it was impossible to get used to the suffering, the screams, and the blood here, and Major John McCrae had seen and heard enough in his dressing station to last him a lifetime.
As a surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Major McCrae, who had joined the McGill faculty in 1900 after graduating from the University of Toronto, had spent seventeen days treating injured men — Canadians, British, Indians, French, and Germans — in the Ypres salient.
It had been an ordeal that he had hardly thought possible. McCrae later wrote of it:
“I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days… Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done.”
One death particularly affected McCrae. A young friend and former student, Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2 May 1915. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery outside McCrae’s dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.
The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing station beside the Canal de l’Yser, just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. The major was no stranger to writing, having authored several medical texts besides dabbling in poetry.
In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook.
A young soldier watched him write it. Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the sergeant-major stood there quietly. “His face was very tired but calm as we wrote,” Allinson recalled. “He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer’s grave.”
When McCrae finished five minutes later, he took his mail from Allinson and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the young NCO. Allinson was moved by what he read:
“The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene.”
In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. The Spectator, in London, rejected it, but Punch published it on 8 December 1915.
Blue,
I do like the idea of a reflecting pool like the one at the Oklahoma City memorial. On rethinking, maybe a long flat sheet of highly polished black granite, tilted just slightly so that a thin film of flowing water could cover it in appropriate weather might make a year-round reflector that would serve the purpose you proposed and solve the problems I mentioned. If the water fell into a deep, very narrow acoustic well at the lower end, the sound could be soothing too, very appropriate for a memorial.
I used to think I was an “American” not a “ hyphenated-american “.