Week 7_Andrea Gomez_ASA 150E

The readings this week focused on the histories of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Loas. Nayan Chanda wrote, Brother Enemy: The War After the War, details the relationship between the three countries, and the Indochina wars. The author gives a history that is untouched in by Western audiences, and a first hand account of the tensions and strife that has existed between these people and countries. The theme of focusing on the histories of these places is obviously needed, as all we involved and affected by the war in Viet Nam, and I believe that it is a result of many tensions that continue to persist today.

I wasn't aware of many of these issues in the South East Asian American community, and while I'd like to chalk that up to a lack on in-depth education, it's just as much my own fault. All I had been taught of the war in Viet Nam, was that America had gone in with the goal to stop communism from over taking the country. Any other information is devoted to the counter culture, to draft dodging, tot he heroics of boys who gave their lives for something they didn't understand. Loas is never mentioned. China is never mentioned. Cambodia is never mentioned. And how Viet Nam got to that point before the Fall of Saigon is never mentioned. As a historian I felt as if a gap had existed in all my knowledge, and it bothered me.

But the worst was the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Because I had read about that. I had seen First They Killed My Father, I had read about Phnom Phen, I had listened to stories about the atrocities that people fled from. I knew about the population of Cambodians who had come to Southern California, particularly Long Beach, as a result of the war and refugee camps. I knew all of this, and yet not once had I connected it to the war in Viet Nam. I didn't pay much attention to the dates, it had never even crossed my mind that the dominos of consequences had fallen throughout South East Asia, and we're still being dealt with toady. But history doesn't work that way. It's all connected, and the events of one country affect another. Millions of people suffered, continue to deal with the scars of those decades, or have simply resolved to never speak of them again. But if you don't speak about what happened, if you don't educate people on how things happened, why they happened, and how they affected things everywhere else, how can you hope that it will never happen again?