God bless America

 It's easy to become dismayed, even angry, at the failures and mistakes our country has made during the course of its history, look at current events today and despair.  But others, most especially immigrants, look at this country through different, and much more favorable eyes.  Not all, of course.  There are always malcontents and failures, as well as those who simply don't fit in and would find some other country much more to their liking.  That applies to native-born Americans as well.  That's just the way it is.

Anyway, I got to thinking about this after talking to my father about why his father, my grandfather, a career naval aviator, didn't want him to join the Navy and wanted him to use his aeronautical engineering degree to obtain a job with an aerospace firm, maybe working on space probes, the Apollo project, or designing airliners.  We actually have a family friend who pursued that career path and is employed by UTC Aerospace Systems.  And one of my relatives worked for North American Aviation on the Apollo command module and the B-70.

Yes, the Japanese did this.

Dad said that gramps had had his understanding of how a war should be conducted formed by his experience in World War II.  We fought truly evil enemies.  I don't have a lot of interest in the European war, but I know a very great deal about the Greater East Asian War and Japanese behavior towards their neighbors.  They were truly monsters, committing unbelievable atrocities, things so shocking you would think even the most vile human being could not bring himself to commit them.  But the Japanese did.  And it was left to us to stop

Be glad you can't read Japanese.

them.  My grandfather was one of those who did that, operating under the simple hands-off orders of Washington to do what you have to do to win the war as thoroughly and quickly as you can.  Don't fool around.  Just smash the bastards.  And that's what we did.  And that's why the war only lasted three-and-a-half years, ending in total victory.  And that's how my grandfather understood that wars should be fought -- stay out of them or go in to win in a knockout.

An F8E hunting for legal targets in North Viet Nam.

Then came the Viet Nam War with its rules of engagement meant not only to avoid drawing in China as in the Korean War, but also, it was intended, to reduce civilian casualties. But these rules also hampered military effectiveness, often severely so.  In World War II, it was acceptable to bomb a city and kill thousands of civilians in order to ensure a ball-bearing factory was put out of action for six months.  But in the Viet Nam War it was forbidden to attack military installations in Hanoi or Haiphong for fear of inflicting civilian casualties.  Even when these rules were relaxed for the 1972 Christmas bombing, civilian deaths were only in the hundreds under the rain of bombs dropped by B-52s, each of which carried a bomb load ten times that of a B-17.  We chose to accept losses to our own air forces rather than inflict casualties on our enemy.  Had we bombed Hanoi the way we bombed Tokyo, there would have been deaths in the tens of thousands, the city would have been obliterated.

You can't win a war that way and my grandfather, along with everybody else at the pointed end of the spear as far back 1965 and probably before knew that.  He was also frustrated by the hands-on micro-management of the war by Washington.  Neither President Lyndon Johnson, a career politician, nor Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, a former Ford executive, knew anything about fighting a war, especially about the capabilities and limitations of air power.  But they selected every single target our aviators were assigned to attack.

Well, I don't want to get in to further detail about that war.  There are dozens of books discussing every aspect of it.  The point is that my grandfather did not want his son to waste his life in a war we were bound to lose.  

Huan Nguyen

So from this dad and I had a discussion about the role of America in the world, and whether, overall, and especially compared to the actions of other countries, it has been good or bad.  It was then that my father recalled a man he had met when he was serving on board the Kitty Hawk when it was forward deployed to Yokosuka, Huan Nguyen.  He was introduced to Huan, who was the ship facility testing officer, as a very remarkable man it would be an honor and a privilege to know.  And so he was.

Huan's father was an officer in the ARVN when the Viet Cong attacked Saigon during the Tet Offensive of 1968.  He was targeted by the communists for execution as an enemy of the people.  And to inflict maximum terror on those who opposed the Viet Cong, so was his family.  The Viet Cong broke into Huan's home and executed his father, mother, his five brothers, his sister and his grandmother.  Huan himself was shot three times, including in the head and left for dead.  His mother lived for two hours after the attack and Huan stayed by her side trying to stop the bleeding from her cut throat until she died.  For some reason, the guerillas shot the father and sons but cut the throats of the mother, grandmother and daughter.  The man who cut their throats was Nguyen Van Lem.  He was captured shortly afterward and summarily shot dead by Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the execution caught in a famous photo taken by AP photographer Eddie Adams.

Asan Beach Park on a recent Memorial Day.

Huan Nguyen, who was nine years old when he lost his family, lived with an uncle until the fall of Saigon when he was evacuated to Camp Asan, Guam.  (The site of the camp is now a beach park and I've picnicked there many times. It's also the site of Memorial Day ceremonies, as it was the site of savage fighting during the liberation of Guam in 1944, with the Japanese attacking the field hospital there, bayoneting the wounded in their beds as well as doctors and nurses before finally being driven out by our Marines.)

In an interview, Huan said, “The images that I remember vividly when I arrived at Camp Asan were of American sailors and Marines toiling in the hot sun, setting up tents and chow hall, distributing water and hot food, helping and caring for the people with dignity and respect. I thought to myself how lucky I am to be in a place like America. Those sailors inspired me to later serve in the United States Navy.” 

And that's what he did.  But first he went to university, earning masters' degrees in electrical and manufacturing engineering as well as information technology. He is an alumnus of  Carnegie Mellon.  He was commissioned as an officer in the Navy in 1993. Besides serving in Japan, he has also served in Iraq and Afghanistan while rising through the ranks to rear admiral, serving as deputy commander of cyber engineering at NAVSEA.

In an interview with MC1 Mark D. Faram Huan said, "Growing up in the war zone, it is literally a day-to-day mental attitude.
You never know what is going to happen next. The war is at your doorsteps. Images of gunships firing in the distance, the rumbling of B-52 bombings on the countryside, the nightly rocket attacks from the insurgents—it becomes a daily routine. There is so much ugliness in the war and living through a period of intense hatred, I didn't have any peace of mind.

War, war, always war.

It is not easy to get over the trauma of losing your entire family. It has been over fifty years, but it is something I will never forget. Every day I asked myself: 'Why me?'

I thought of myself as a curse. In my mind, bad news was always around the corner; it was just a matter of time. I was afraid of building relationships just to lose the people I love. I was afraid of losing everything.

Tet Offensive, 1968.

I have often thought of the actions of my father the day he died. Why did he make those decisions that ultimately led to not just his death but those of my mother and siblings? Would I have made the same choices?

The message I have come to understand from his example is that it is about service before self and doing what is right, with honor. What I experienced and learned from that event is about honor, courage, and commitment. The same ethos that the Navy I serve pledges today to uphold — honor, courage, and commitment."

The full interview is here.   It's well worth reading.

When he was promoted to admiral, Huan said, “It is a great honor to attain the rank of admiral. I am humbled to become the first Vietnamese American to wear the flag rank in the U.S. Navy. The honor actually belongs to the Vietnamese American community, which instilled in us a sense of patriotism, duty, honor, courage and commitment to our adopted country, the United States of America. This is our America, a country built on service, kindness and generosity as well as endless opportunity. These values are what inspired me to serve.  And what a great honor and privilege it is to serve our Navy, to serve our country.”

God bless America. You may not say it, but they do.

So....  What...?

I guess what I'm thinking, what I'm trying to convey is that, as screwed up as America may be, as many mistakes as we make, as many things wrong that we do, we are still a worthy country, a worthy people, trying our best.  We often do not realize that, or grow cynical in the face of rah-rah phony shows of patriotism by contemptible politicians and their hangers on, crooks and cowards that they are, but others who come to us from far different and far worse backgrounds see that it is true.  If we falter, feel the country is done for, they seize the flag before we let it touch the ground and run forward with it.

Oh, why did my dad decide to become a naval aviator, knowing by the time he joined up that the war was lost and that if he flew combat missions over North Viet Nam he had a good chance of being killed or ending up tortured at the Hanoi Hilton?  Simple:

"I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me."

 

 

PS:  Here's Douglas Pike's analysis of the Viet Cong's deliberate use of terror against civilians:

The Viet Cong Strategy of Terror