A Day to Heal 25-Year-Old War Wounds

The ceremony was meant to honor Vietnam War veterans from two countries, as well as the South Vietnamese refugee families who first arrived at Camp Pendleton after the fall of Saigon. It was intended as a simple, yet long overdue salute, and, organizers say, it was the only one of its kind in the nation.

And for some who attended the “From War to Hope” service at the Marine base Sunday, it was all they wanted. To be recognized for just an hour or so, in metal bleachers and in blazing heat, with an unreliable sound system that seemed to cut out at the worst possible times.

They wanted to be remembered more than they wanted to remember. They wanted to reflect a little, not too much.

But for most of the 250 veterans and former refugees, the day was more complicated. The emotion was strong and inescapable, not unlike it is every year on the day that veterans and former refugees mark the fall of Saigon and feel it in their hearts, “aching, because the wound has not healed,” one expatriate said.

Such feelings were especially overwhelming on Sunday, when thousands across the county commemorated the 25th anniversary of the Day of Mourning. And yet, as was true about most everything with the Vietnam War, the feelings were hard to explain.

“I feel so happy today,” said Ky Nguyen of Irvine, a former captain with the South Vietnamese air force who arrived at Camp Pendleton with his wife and three children, shortly after the communists seized his country’s capital. He held a large American flag that blew gently around his face, hiding the tears that were about to come. “I feel so sad.”

It was as close as he--and many others--could get to describing how they felt Sunday, when a fleet of buses brought them back on base for the first time in years, to the former “tent city” that more than 50,000 refugees called home.

In 1975, they had been told they were going to a hotel--Hotel California, they joked now--but then they saw the tents, the water trucks and the Quonset huts. It was a temporary city. More than 150 babies were born there in seven months.

Now, the land is a bare field, with a parking lot and a gas station. When the former refugees climbed off the buses again Sunday, they waved American flags alongside red-and-yellow South Vietnamese flags. They looked around the former tent city and tried to remember how it was, squinting in the sun and pointing things out to their children, many of whom were too young then to feel much of a connection now.

Some of the South Vietnamese veterans shook hands with American veterans they’d fought next to before, striking up conversations about combat and casualties, but mostly about newfound friendships.

Uc Van Nguyen, a Tustin resident who was a helicopter pilot in the South Vietnamese air force, spotted his former American advisor, Craig Mandeville, and shouted, “Hey, buddy!” until they worked their way through the crowd for a strong reunion handshake. By the time they’d finished talking, the handshake had turned into a hug.

“It is so good to be reunited after all of this time,” Nguyen said, scanning the crowd for more familiar faces. “We were friends in the past. Why should we not be friends into the future? Friendship is one of the last things we have in this world.”

A ceremony of a different type was held Sunday in Westminster, where dignitaries made combative speeches and urged all people to band together to free Vietnam.

The crowd of about 700 at the Cultural Court shouted, “Freedom! Human rights! Down with the communists!” and raised American and South Vietnamese flags high into the air.

“This is a sad day when we lost our rights and freedom,” said Christine Tran, 16, of Hawthorne. She said she didn’t know about communism until she attended classes at a temple that taught her about religious persecutions in Vietnam.

The crowd demonstrated for half a mile along Bolsa Avenue, amid honking cars and a sea of flags, shouting anti-communist slogans.

Kim Nguyen, 43, took her four children to the event as a way to educate them.

“Who is Ho Chi Minh, Mother?” asked son Bao Long Nguyen, 9.

“He’s a killer, a liar,” she responded as they waved the South Vietnamese flag during their march. “He’s like Adolf Hitler.”

About 300 people also gathered at the Lac Hong Center in Garden Grove to remember those killed in the war and those who died in the wilderness or deep sea trying to seek freedom. The event included speeches from various dignitaries, urging youths to carry on the fight against communism.

“The unfinished business . . . has not been completed and we are getting old,” said Thu Van Nguyen, who organized the event. “We hope you, sons and daughters, will do better and complete what we’ve left off.”

Sponsored by the Orange County chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America, the anniversary ceremony at Camp Pendleton was the only one in the country to honor both American and South Vietnamese veterans and families, organizers said. The veterans’ group recently made headlines with its decision to offer associate membership to South Vietnamese soldiers who fought beside them more than a quarter century ago--the first chapter in the country to do so.

There are about 110,000 Vietnam-era veterans in Orange County, including about 37,000 who actually served in Vietnam, according to chapter President John Lynch. There are about 40,000 veterans of the South Vietnamese Army in Orange County, more than 1,000 of whom responded late last year when the VVA chapter first offered associate memberships to them.

The agreement has since caused tension among the two groups, with some members still unable to shake a fundamental distrust of their allies, but none of it was evident Sunday. Despite the heat and the no-frills ceremony with the staticky microphones, there was an energy in the former tent city that veteran Billy Godwin called exhilarating.

“It makes the hair on my arms stand up,” said Godwin, who returned from war in 1974. “To me, it’s strange and sad that we would be the only ones doing something like this in the whole damn country. To me, this is all about healing and closure. We may not get either one today, but we’re moving closer.”

Cheers, loud and long, erupted from the crowd when a group of former South Vietnamese commandos stood up, wearing sharp green uniforms and small tags on their chests that revealed how many years they’d been prisoners of war in North Vietnam: 18 years, 11 years, 19 years. Chap Ha’s number read 21. Ha, now 76, was finally rescued in 1982.

“I wanted to be here today to meet the families who first landed” in the United States, he said through an interpreter. “They got freedom and I helped fight for that. Seeing them makes me feel proud and good. Seeing them helps my pain.”

On a hillside away from the crowd, Huyen Tran walked alone through the grass, searching for the spot where her family’s tent had been 25 years ago. It was so hard to picture what it was like back then, but she thought she found the area anyway, in a little dirt clearing above the road. She and her husband and three children lived there for two months. The Marines were kind; the hills were green and pretty.

“It was so beautiful here,” said Tran, of Fountain Valley. “But we could not enjoy it because we did not have peace in our hearts.”

Suddenly the crowd behind her broke into song. Dozens of families were welcoming former South Vietnamese Army Gen. Nhut Van Tran, 64, who waited quietly until they finished singing their fallen country’s national anthem.

He smiled and stared at the flutter of waving flags from two countries, their colors blurring in the sun-soaked haze. What he said brought the cheers to a fever pitch.

“Here we are, shoulder to shoulder again.”

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Times staff writer Mai Tran contributed to this report.