My Lai Remembered

We woke up the next morning, packed up the two motorbikes Thuy so generously lent to us, and headed south down Highway 1 towards Son My.  We had thought of doing the whole trip by motorbike, but the woman at our hotel in Hoi An had convinced us it was a bad idea.  When faced with the prospect of another bus, we convinced Dad otherwise, and early that morning, we were off, doing the second half of the route by bike.  Dad took the backseat with me driving, Lillie took the backseat with Rebecca at the wheel, and just like that we officially became the most gawked over, pointed out and laughed at vehicles on Vietnam’s North-South artery, Highway 1: the backbone of the highway system, and only road connecting northern and southern Vietnam.

It kind of feels like Frogger come to life.  Most moments on the highway see 6 lanes of traffic trying to file down a two lane road.  More motorbikes and bicycles than you’ve ever seen, trying, for the most part, to stay in the wide shoulder afforded to bikes but needing to pull out to pass other bikers or the big, lumbering trucks frequently.  The main discernible code in Vietnam: the bigger your vehicle, the higher up the hierarchy you reside.  Poor pedestrians rank at the bottom, than bicycles, motorbikes, cars, trucks and at the top, buses.  The buses you have to watch out for.  The buses don’t care, the drivers clearly feel blessed by civic duty and the God of the roads to do what they want when they want.  They will give a honk (often a multi-note horn that fades in and out) and then pull out to pass, and you had better get out of the way.  Passing in Vietnam is done whenever someone in front of you is traveling slower than you, without any regard to yellow lines or, seemingly, other traffic.  Three cars (and sometimes four) will fit side-by-side on a two lane road pretty easily, and drivers won’t hesitate to do it: motorbikes, forget about it, just get over when you hear the horn.  And the horns.  A cacophony of various pitches, various lengths (you know a country likes laying on the horn when most are custom-made), various tunes; ones that fade in and out or ascend/descend in volume.  As far as motorbikes go, they are respected by the other vehicles for the most part: because roughly 80-90% of the vehicles on the road are motorbikes, cars and trucks look out for you.  They all have family on motorbikes, and may be out there themselves on one from time to time.  Just watch out for the buses, because when they want to pass, they honk, they take up the entire opposite lane and they pass.  Usually leaving you with most of the shoulder to work with, a shot of adrenaline, and a shaking body because you just slipped by a truck that was two feet away and barreling down the highway 100 km/h in the opposite direction.  Then you wipe the grit from your face, listen to the horn fade into the distance, and get ready for it to happen all over again.  It’s great fun.  

Scarier: my receding hairline or Dad and me asking directions?

So we motored down Highway 1 on two small motorbikes, the four of us covered the 70+ kilometers in about three hours, and made it to Son My on our own, against the better judgment of the concierge in Hoi An.  Dad seemed a little nervous at first, but before long, he was scouting ahead with me to help pass the slower cars and trucks.  And, we all found quickly, there is a code.  Be deliberate, be consistent, and if you are going slowly, get out of the way.  Rebecca and I like passing, because we like going fast.  The biggest decision, as you approach the back of a truck, is whether to pull out to the left and risk the opposite traffic passing each other, or pull to the right and pass on the shoulder, risking the truck squeezing you off the road.  One thing is certain though: we were not going to ride behind the truck, sucking in dust and fumes, blocked from the promise of the open road.

Marriage is learning how to share a map

You know, Dad wasn't that bad a passenger, really

We made it down to Son My unscathed, if a bit dirty.  We headed first to My Khe, a small beach resort near Son My, very quiet in the middle of the offseason.  After a swim in the South China Sea and a bite to eat, we headed back up the road to the My Lai memorial.

On March 16, 1968, American troops slaughtered over 500 civilians: mostly the elderly, women and children; all from a small cluster of villages on the east coast of the country, just north of Quang Ngai.  The troops were led by Lieutenant William Calley, and after executing nearly every human being in the area, torched the villages to the ground before moving on.  No justification could possibly be given for the actions, and no one really tried.  I imagine the American soldiers that day would claim it was a manifestation of the horrors of war.  Several US officers, most notably helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson, did actively try to prevent the raid, and were ostracized for it: both in the days and weeks after the massacre, and again on US soil upon return.  The US government spent nearly two years trying to cover up the attack, by both physically destroying remnants of the village, and by discrediting and/or coloring later accounts of it.  When that failed, apologies followed.  Calley, who had personally killed and, by all accounts, directly and proximately ordered the death of dozens of women and children, was the only soldier convicted of a crime for the massacre.  He was convicted of killing 22 villagers and sentenced to life.  President Nixon ordered him released pending appeal, and the sentence was later reduced to three and a half years under house arrest.  Thompson, who had physically intervened, stepping in the line of fire and loading over a dozen Vietnamese onto his helicopter and then to safety, was not recognized for his acts in protecting defenseless Vietnamese citizens until 1992.  He reported years of harassment upon his return from Vietnam, including hate-mail and death threats. 

The photos and first-hand accounts of that day were astounding.  American kids, 19 and 20 years old, participating directly and indirectly in acts of brutality that are scarcely imaginable.  In addition to the violence, reports surfaced of sexual assaults of women and children and other acts that indicate a moral bankruptcy in the men who committed them.  Photos on the wall at the memorial depicted ditches with piles of bodies in them, and the faces of women and children could be made out.  All shot by automatic weapons at close range.  To be sure, the memorial makes one question the actions of our government and our military some 40+ years ago in Southeast Asia; but just as much, the site memorializes acts that are all-too-common in wartime: how do young men become desensitized and dehumanized to the point that they are capable of acts like these, whether commands are issued from an officer’s mouth or not.  The examples throughout history are too prevalent— the mob mentality, fear, doubt, violence, insecurity, ignorance—during wartime young men are pushed and pulled and tested and too often they end up becoming something they weren’t before.  They lose their compassion, their empathy, their very humanity: and that is when horrific events like My Lai happen.  At the risk of speaking for Dad and Lillie and Rebecca; I don’t believe what happened at My Lai was unusual in a time of war, but I was truly ashamed that an American Lieutenant would oversee it, and above all, I was ashamed that powerful people in our government would go to such great lengths to cover it up after the fact.

My Lai is hard.  It’s uncomfortable to go to another country and visit a place remembering the atrocities your country committed on their soil.  Rebecca asked an apt question shortly after we arrived: how would we, as Americans, react if traditionally-garbed Middle-Easterners stood next to us at a 9-11 memorial.  While I sincerely hope that we would treat them with the unquestioned respect and unconditional decency that the Vietnamese afforded to us, I have my doubts.  It was astonishing to us how warmly we were greeted; not just at the memorial, but everywhere we went in the country.  I am sure time heals old wounds, but even the older Vietnamese seemed hospitable without reservation.  As I read through the guest log-book at the memorial, among the many American well-wishers, I found Hugh Thompson’s name, neatly scrawled across the bottom of the page from when he had visited the site’s inauguration.  Further along, I recognized another name in the book, Chi Mai’s old friend, Earl Martin.  I don’t know what he said, as he penned his entry in Vietnamese, but his dedication to the people of Vietnam had not waned over the years.  The book captured my attention for several minutes, and seemed an open line of communication between the two countries, a door intentionally left wide open by the Vietnamese people, symbolic of their incredible capacity and willingness to memorialize the past yet move on without bitterness.  It is a lesson for all.

After making our way through the museum, and silent in that way that comes after reliving tragedy, all four of us made our way out to the grounds and surveyed the rest of the monument to Son My’s fallen.  It was the way we felt after touring Dachau.  There is not much you can say, and you don’t want to cheapen the moment or the memories by trying.  The grounds outside the museum were brilliantly designed to resemble the village at the time of the raid.  The pathway was recreated out of cement to show the bare footprints of the peasants, the bootprints of the GI’s, and the tracks of the bicycles.  A statue of a survivor dominated the middle courtyard, and recreations of homes, fallen oxen, and fallen villagers were dispersed throughout.  Perhaps most strikingly, many of the palm trees in the area were still gashed, still contained holes hollowed by bullets that had ripped through them in 1968, lasting reminders of the massacre that spilled blood on the same grounds 43 years earlier.  Feeling slightly self-conscious, we nevertheless thanked the men sitting in the box office before soberly pulling out and heading back to the beach.

The four of us had a wonderful dinner that night, even if the food wasn’t that great.  We dipped into the local rice vodka for the first time, and spent the evening dining on fish and noodles, overlooking the beach and the sea beyond.  There is nothing like traveling with family, and we had a wonderful but exhausting day.  Our first taste of highway driving in Vietnam, which we would get A LOT more of once Mom arrived, short stops in several villages, and of course, the memorial itself.  All of our heads hit the pillow hard that night. 

Lillie had a hard time giving this one back

The next day, we made our way back to Tam Ky.  Lillie stayed with Chi Mai’s daughter, Thuy, and by all accounts, had a fantastic day.  Thuy had looked and sounded so disappointed that Lillie was leaving that afternoon that we left her behind, much to Thuy’s delight.  

Dad and Rebecca and I returned to Hoi An to collect our many, many articles of clothing that were now ready to be retrieved from the Cloth Market.  So a word about the tailors of Hoi An.  They are everywhere; it seems half of the shops in the city are home to talented, somewhat aggressive and very reasonably priced tailors.  You walk into the shop, and immediately are met by a fast-talking but inevitably quite friendly face, who then whisks you around to the various fabrics.  The fabrics are separated by gender, quality, color, and style.  Do you want a suit, a shirt, a jacket, a dress, a sweater, pants, anything.  You pick out the fabric.  You decide on a style.  Then they measure you and make the article of clothing, along with 6-7 other articles of clothing that they talked you into along the way.  I did not realize how much I love shopping until Hoi An.  It’s truly wonderful, although Rebecca, Lillie, and all of the women working at the market made fun of me for being…particular.  How dare they.

The turnaround time for your clothing is about 12 hours.  Then you return, try on the clothes, and judge the fit.  If it’s not what you want (which it wasn’t for one of Rebecca’s jackets) they make a quick call on the cell phone.  5 minutes later a young man on a motorbike appears, grabs the bag, and returns an hour later with a finished product.  It’s an amazing sight to behold, and one that will siphon off more money than you know within an hour or two.  Although, when you are getting suits for $50, shirts for $10 and pants for $15, all custom made, well, it’s probably worth it.  The three of us gathered our many bags of new clothes, slung them across our backs; and walked, quickly and somewhat embarrassed, back across town to our little hotel room.    

Lillie joined us later that night for dinner, and we toasted our last night in Hoi An, central Vietnam, and the coast.  We would board the plane for Hanoi the next morning.  Northern Vietnam, Hanoi; once an unthinkable place to visit, the forbidden heart of the north, now just an hour flight away.

And it was time to meet Mom…