UW-Madison’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies is pleased to announce the winner of the 2024 Waging Peace in Vietnam Essay Contest, sponsored by the Madison Veterans For Peace Clarence Kailin Chapter 25 and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
The winner is Charlene Huynh, a rising fourth-year undergraduate at UW-Madison, from San Jose, California.
Charlene was chosen by Craig McNamara, author of Because Our Fathers Died: A Memoir of Truth and Family From Vietnam to Today. McNamara’s father was Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, who is considered the architect of the Vietnam War.
The essay contest asked for personal reflections on the exhibit, Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War, which was on display at the Wisconsin Historical Society during the first three weeks of April.
“I am honored to have been able to read these essays,” McNamara said.
McNamara said the following passage resonated with him and helped to spur his selection of Charlene Huynh’s essay:
As I begin to heal intergenerational traumas that have been passed down, I find that I cannot forgive and forget what the U.S. did to my motherland.
McNamara was also moved by Charlene’s final sentence: “The most powerful force of change is the power of people.”
The principal university sponsor of the exhibit, as well as of events featuring speakers and films over three weeks, was the Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
Nam C. Kim, Director of the Center said, “The many thoughtful student essays, including Charlene Huynh’s prize-winning piece, serve to validate our belief that exploring the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s is vital and necessary for our younger generations of students. Particularly significant is how this exploration can help heritage students like Charlene to engage with these complex histories related to the wars in Vietnam.”
Ms. Huynh received a $500 prize provided by the Madison Veterans For Peace Clarence Kailin Chapter 25. Representing the chapter and delivering the award, John Fournelle said: “We are pleased to have partnered with the Wisconsin Historical Society to teach students and scholars how the underground papers written by and for active-duty GIs built a soldiers and veterans peace movement that helped end the war.”
The Wisconsin Historical Society is the repository of America’s largest and most complete archive of these GI papers, The GI Press Collection. When the Waging Peace in Vietnam exhibit first opened in March 2018, it was the first public display of material from the Society’s collection. Madison was the last stop on a tour of the exhibit that included 27 universities throughout the United States and Vietnam.
See winning essay below: “The Waging Peace in Vietnam Exhibit: What It Means to Me and Lessons for Today.“
For more information, contact Mary McCoy at mccoy2@wisc.edu.
Winning essay by Charlene Huynh
The Waging Peace in Vietnam Exhibit: What It Means to Me and Lessons for Today
When the Communist government seized power in 1975, my grandpa was imprisoned for thirteen years for his duty in the South Vietnamese military. My grandma was left alone with five children, working three jobs just to be able to feed her family. In 1990, my grandpa was released and successfully applied for a U.S. visa. The story of the Vietnam War is the story of my family’s immigration and the beginnings of my life.
When I started becoming more politically aware at the age of thirteen, I started to clash more with my parents. Observing the vast inequalities and oppressions in America, I always wondered why they were so patriotic. After learning more and more about the War and the atrocities that the U.S. committed, I began to see the Viet Cong as heroes, and as liberators against imperialism.
Of course, reality is never that simple. In learning more about my family’s life, I came to understand why they see America as their refuge. However, the long history of imperialism in Vietnam was what made Ho Chi Minh and the Communists so inspiring, and I wonder how history would have played out if it were not for imperialist invasions. As Special Forces Sergeant Donald Duncan said, “It’s not democracy we brought to Vietnam – it’s anti-Communism. This is the only choice the people in the village have. This is why most of them have embraced the Viet Cong and shunned the alternative.” To see that those in the military questioned the entire establishment of war only attests to the horrors that were happening on the ground. As I begin to heal intergenerational traumas that have been passed down, I find that I cannot forgive and forget what the U.S. did to my motherland.
In “Tribute to Ho Chi Minh,” a G.I. underground paper at Fort Dix, New Jersey wrote that “The Vietnamese should win. Not by killing more GIs – but by us withdrawing and leaving Viet Nam for the Vietnamese. That war for freedom, that war against land-lords, corrupt businessmen and dictators should go on here, in the streets of America.” In Vietnam, the U.S. intervention prolonged the War, killed more people, infected the land with herbicides and bombs, polluted millions with trauma, and sent soldiers home with shrapnel as a reminder of the atrocities they committed. Where was that promise of democracy?
Ron Haeberle’s photographs during My Lai of the bodies of my people will always haunt me. I had the opportunity to speak with Haeberle, who recalled the moment the soldier next to him shot a child point-blank. Haeberle asked, “Why did you kill him?” The soldier responded with a shrug, and walked away. Additionally, Haeberle photographed a group of women and children that were rounded up by soldiers and testified that immediately after, he heard automatic fire and saw “all the bodies falling over.” The photo depicts a woman holding a child, buttoning up her shirt because she was raped prior to the photo. Unsurprisingly, the exhibits in Waging Peace in Vietnam attested to the policy of indiscriminate killings and lack of condemnation of sexual violence that occurred not only towards the Vietnamese citizens, but also within the military.
I wonder what my family’s life would be like if it were not for the War. I grew up with harsh resentment and hate towards the U.S. troops in Vietnam; however, knowing that many of the troops were students forced into conscription and those who came to oppose war until their resistance forced U.S. withdrawal is something that has altered my perception of the soldiers. The lessons of veteran resistance and the anti-war movement continue to be relevant today. Imperialist war will never bring peace and democracy. We, as citizens in the imperial core, must speak up and resist war. The most powerful force of change is the power of the people.