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Lafayette Journal and Courier
April 24, 2005
Thirty years after the fall of Saigon marked the end of the Vietnam War, many Americans -- including former Vietnamese refugees -- continue to relive the conflict in their minds. "I'm not bitter, but sometimes we feel betrayed," said Kim-Diep Pham-Ly, a South Vietnamese refugee now living in West Lafayette. "When the Americans started to leave (in 1973), we still thought they would never let us fall." Saturday marks the 30th anniversary of the South Vietnamese government's surrender to communist North Vietnam. Images of that day include frantic Vietnamese civilians fighting to climb aboard U.S. helicopters as Marines evacuate the U.S. Embassy. After the communist takeover, the former capital of South Vietnam was renamed Ho Chi Minh City and an estimated 1 million Vietnamese refugees fled their homeland. They include Kim-Diep Pham, now 45, and her husband, Thua Pham-Ly, now 53, who left South Vietnam separately in April 1975 and later met in Lafayette and were married. Thua keeps a scrapbook with photos from the war and other memorabilia. He is proud of his service as a South Vietnamese Navy SEAL. "When you write the story, just say I am a soldier," said Thua (pronounced Too-ah). "The soldiers never lost the war. It was lost in Washington." The Vietnam War, fought halfway across the globe in a nation about the size of Indiana, Illinois and Ohio combined, was not the costliest conflict in terms of American lives lost. But it was the lengthiest war America has been involved in, lasting from 1957 to 1975. And its legacy lives on. In all, about 2.7 million U.S. men and women fought in the war, 58,000 lost their lives and 365,000 were wounded, according to World Book Encyclopedia. More than a million South Vietnamese lost their lives in the war, and 500,000 to 1 million North Vietnamese lives were lost. U.S. spent billions The United States spent almost $150 billion on the war, including a bombing campaign four times more extensive than the combined U.S.-British bombing of Germany in World War II. Amid mounting resistance in the United States that began in the late 1960s, Congress cut funding for the war effort, and U.S. troop withdrawal started in early 1973. For the Pham-Lys, who revisit Vietnam occasionally, the memories of those years are still vivid. They refuse to say "Ho Chi Minh City," instead preferring Saigon. Ho Chi Minh was the leader of North Vietnam for most of the war. Kim-Diep fled Saigon on April 20, 1975, and Thua left South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. She was 16 years old and a student at an all-girls Catholic high school. Her sister married an American soldier and became a U.S. citizen in 1972; her father worked for the U.S. government. As the North Vietnamese closed in, Saigon was in a state of panic. "The U.S. ambassador called my house at midnight and said we had 24 hours to leave the country," she said. "Nine of us made it out. "We were frightened. An MP came to our house in the morning, and we only had 10 minutes to leave. We flew with American soldiers to the Philippines, Guam, San Francisco and then straight here. My brother-in-law lived here." Lessons of war Purdue professor Patrick J. Hearden, 62, is a diplomatic historian who teaches a course on Vietnam. He said there are lessons to be learned from the Vietnam War. "We learned, you don't want to go into a war without the support of American public opinion," he said. "You don't want to go it alone. "We received some help from Australia and South Korea, but the body bags were coming to the United States." The author of The Tragedy of Vietnam, he earned a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1971. He had a student deferment from the draft while in college. By the time he finished college, he was 28 -- too old for the draft. Hearden said other lessons included how to fight a war. "The Army learned a lot," he said. "They rotated soldiers every year and officers every six months. It was always a learning experience for the soldiers sent to Vietnam." He said the United States also has gone away from a military draft to a volunteer army. "You then have people who want to be there, instead of pulling kids from college," he said. He said a "fundamental lesson" may be the hardest for the United States government to grasp. "No matter how justifiable or humanitarian your motives are, oftentimes people don't want us sticking our noses in their business," he said. "They might not want your help." At the time, U.S. political leaders subscribed to the "domino theory," a belief that if South Vietnam fell to communism, other Southeast Asian nations would follow. In his book's last chapter, ''The War That Nobody Won," Hearden said the U.S. "did lose the war." "We failed to keep South Vietnam a non-communist country," he said. "We failed to accomplish the political objective." Survivor guilt A former lieutenant, Thua said he feels guilty about escaping the communists in 1975 while some of his friends remained to face execution and imprisonment. "I still remember my friends who died. Why did I get to leave?" he asked. He also has physical reminders of the war. He has a piece of shrapnel embedded in the back of his head, and his limbs are scarred. "I am grateful to the American soldiers who fought to protect our freedom," he said. "Thirty years isn't enough time for me to forget. I feel there is
unfinished business." "How can I tell my children to help the poor if I don't help the poor?" said Kim. Thua and Kim-Diep are owners of Pham-Ly Property Rentals in Lafayette. Fulfilling the American dream is many years removed from the $2.15 an hour Thua made as a chef in Lafayette. "We did it with hard work," Kim-Diep said proudly. Lingering feelings She and her husband still get emotional about the Vietnam War. "When I see a movie or TV show about Vietnam, I cry," said Kim-Diep, a Purdue University employee. Their son, John, 18, is a senior at Central Catholic Junior-Senior High School. He will accompany his father to Vietnam. "I'm saving my allowance to give to the poor in Vietnam," he said. "The kids over there are great. They wanted to know if I spoke Vietnamese, which I do. They taught me how to build slingshots to shoot fruit out of trees." John said he is learning more about the Vietnam War and his parents' homeland as he gets older. "I see it on movies, and my parents tell me stories," he said. "I want to learn more." New generation Purdue graduate student Chi Thi Kim Le, 26, said she was "happy" to be born after the war. She came to Purdue from Ho Chi Minh City in August 2003 to study at the Krannert School of Management. She said the war devastated her homeland. "We all know the effect the war had on American soldiers," she said. "But do we know that the war left many Vietnamese children without parents and severe illness due to (defoliant) Agent Orange? "The economics was destroyed, and we had to build from scratch. Otherwise Vietnam would have grown faster." She said people in Vietnam are of "equal value," regardless of their race, religion or economic standing. Le said she will return to help her country, which has embraced some elements of capitalism. "I will use my knowledge I acquire here to serve my country and to help in building back the relationship between the two countries."
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