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It really surprised me that two of the books he mentioned were about the Vietnam war. I am a Vietnamese millennial who have never experienced a day of the war
by jimmies 9y ago
It really surprised me that two of the books he mentioned were about the Vietnam war.
I am a Vietnamese millennial who have never experienced a day of the war and moved to the US as a college student. While most people have come to the agreement that the war is over, I have seen myself many ugly scars it left in people's minds. My friend and I would go to a Vietnamese supermarket, and after hearing that my friend was not speaking "hello, how are you" with the South Vietnamese accent (like a refugee), the cashier refused to look at or speak to her. We checked out in silence. We, as millennials, have never decided to invade the South. Our parents didn't either. We didn't fight that war, we didn't endorse that war. We don't have shit to do with it.
The war has ended 40 years yet we felt the pain every once in a while.
- noobhacker 9y agoWhich city were you in when the South Vietnamese cashier refused to talk and look at you? I've been to various Vietnamese community (New York, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, admittedly NOT California yet), and it has never been an issue. Just curious how our experiences differ. I very much think that the Vietnam War isn't as big a factor in people's daily, commercial life anymore.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jimmies 9y agoIt was in St Louis. I would say that was extreme. But I understand that -- if my family was killed in the war or on the way fleeing, I might never get over it.
- sangd 9y agoI think your case is rare and such person would hold an extreme political view which exists in any culture. I live in Anaheim, Orange County, the biggest Vietnamese community here in the US for 15+ years, and I haven't experienced that. I've been through other Vietnamese communities also and I haven't seen such attitude either. Vietnam War has been a wound to the Vietnamese that would never heal. The new Vietnamese generation after the war rarely think about it except the Vietnamese outside of Vietnam including myself.
- rawnlq 9y agoI have many relatives who work in a nail salons with a mix of both northern/southern vietnamese. Northern vietnamese gets teased over liking dog meat and having an accent. But I don't think there's any actual hate and more of a cultural and language difference. Kind of how city folks don't get along with hillbillies/rednecks? They will still get together to talk shit about anyone not vietnamese.
- gumby 9y agoHe's a baby boomer so though he was much too young to go it was likely still influential as he grew up.
- tzs 9y agoHe was too young, but not by much. Gates was born 1955-10-28. The war ended 1973-01-27. Gates was then 17 years, 92 days old, so only 272 days too young to be drafted. He definitely would have been quite aware of the Vietnam war, not just as a current event, but as something that he might very well have to either fight in or take active steps to avoid. Heck, I'm about 5 years younger than him, and even kids my age were quite aware of that possibility. For us, this was something that we had seen on the evening news for as far back as we could remember. We knew people whose older brothers had gone. Our schools had plaques or other memorials to recent graduates who had died there. We had no reason to expect that it would not still be going on in six or seven years when we were draft age.
- framebit 9y agoThis doesn't address the rest of your comment, but I have a theory about the presence of Vietnam War books on this list. Ken Burns and co. released their multi-part series on the Vietnam War this year: http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-vietnam-war/episodes/ http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-vietnam-war/episodes/ That has likely contributed to an uptick in general interest in the subject.
- maxxxxx 9y agoThe US is still not over the civil war which was 150 years ago. Stuff like this takes a very long time. I am surprised how quickly Europe moved on from WW2 but I wouldn't be surprised if old resentments from that time would flare up again in the future.
- te_chris 9y agoI live in the UK at the moment. They won't fucking shut up about WWI/WWII. It's one reason why the brexit negotiations have been such a mess: parts of the govt are still under the delusion that they're some sort of plucky saviour of Europe.
- hinkley 9y ago“Excuse me sir. Would you mind stepping over here for a moment? The delegates from the US and Russia would like to have a word in private.”
- robotresearcher 9y agoPerhaps Russia should be doing most of the talking. It paid 20X or so more in lives than the US or UK to win WWII. US and UK losses were about the same. Data from Wikipedia. WWWII deaths: Russia: 20,000,000 to 27,000,000 UK and colonies: 450,900 USA: 419,400 WWII Military dead: Russia: 8,668,000 to 11,400,00 UK and colonies: 383,700 USA: 407,300 At the time the population of the US was roughly 3X the UK, and the USSR was roughly 1.4X the US. edit: I wondered, and found that about 25% of US casualties were in the Pacific theater. http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/Casualties/Casualties-1.html http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/Casualties/Casualtie... What terrible goddam war. Anyway, it's not like the Brits hid in a hole while the Americans saved everyone. No snarky comments at imaginary cocktail parties, please.
- kharms 9y agoSince we’re giving credit where it’s due, let’s not mix the USSR and Russia. Ukraine and Belarus suffered proportionately greater losses.
- polack 9y agoI went to Hanoi 10 years ago. First thing I tried to do was to get new batteries for my camera but the cashier (really old lady) just told me "Fk you, you fking American!" and gave me the finger. First and only time I have been subjected to racism as a white european guy. Obviously not in a serious way, but was still interesting as an experience.
- bitL 9y agoMaybe it wasn't racism, maybe she went through hell during the war, lost relatives/parents/kids; frankly, why should she be nice? Would you be automatically capable of being nice to individual Germans, when their army massacred your relatives, 40 years after it happened?
- gregshap 9y agoInteresting, maybe those scars are part of why it takes this long to see better histories. I think US-Vietnam war books and documentaries are also popular now because of the parallels to Afghanistan, Iraq, and other traumas today.
- XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y agoMaybe this isn't the time/place, but after visiting Hanoi and being surprised by the differences in cuisine I found I was wondering how much Vietnamese food in the US is it's own thing vs mostly just South Vietnamese food.
- xapata 9y agoPart of my family is Jewish. I went to my cousin's wedding and the rabbi spent about 20 minutes talking about the Holocaust. At a wedding. Wars leave permanent scars.
- billfruit 9y agoMore Soviets were victims of Holocaust than Jews, yet modern popular imagination of Holocaust appears to be as an exclusively Jewish tragedy.
- danaliv 9y agoDo you mean more Soviets died fighting the war than Jews were rounded up and exterminated? Because that is not at all the same thing.
- billfruit 9y agoI was referring to the large numbers of Soviet POWs and civilians who were killed in concentration camps and in mass executions.
- cloverich 9y agoIts definitely worth remembering. But i think the reason its more particularly associated with Jews is it represented the culmination of thousands of years of persecution, ultimately resulting in an attempt to literally wipe them from the earth. That, and the fact that the Russian's managed to both resist and ultimately defeat the Nazi's, probably cements the more generalized view of what happened.
- coconut_crab 9y agoOh Hello, I found your reply on one of my posts awhile ago. At first I was puzzled, but then I recognised the writing style. It's nice that you were able to stay in the States. I am still in Vietnam advocating for FLOSS and GNU/Linux, and also the sole OpenSUSE user in a company full of MBPs.
- jimmies 9y agoGlad to hear you're doing well and cheers that we still recognize each other on this international forums :)
- ekianjo 9y ago> The war has ended 40 years Even if you have nothing to do with the war, it may be good for you to understand how horrible it actually was (especially for Vietnamese people). That kind of thing will leave scars for a very, very long time.
- vpmpaul 9y agoIn the southern US I have atteneded rich old southern parties where it is traditional to have a toast to "the confederacy/south rising again" Yeah the old pre-civil war government who's main ideological difference was that slavery should be legal. People are just nutcases in general.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoMy guess is that it isn't really about slavery or the actual Confederacy - it's just a proxy for "we want to be rich and for our region to be important again". Basically the same reason here in Poland people are digging through history, and probably why every place ever brings up their own things from the past.
- randcraw 9y agoTotally agree. At age 14 I moved from Michigan to small town southern Virginia, where I lived on and off for the next 20 years. So I have some sense of the contrast between north and south. I think most Southerners don't reminisce for the "good old plantation days" as much for a sense of identity and a reason to be proud of who they are and respect for their heritage. It's not the Confederacy (per se) that they identify with; it's "being a southerner", and hailing from a specific state (though I suspect few could describe how their state's history is distinct from other southern states any more). Tradition has long been much bigger in the South than the North. Southerner are less likely to move away from the South than Northerners move from the North. And I think social status is also more important there; honorific titles have long held more sway (e.g. Colonel Sanders), as has the tradition of serving in the military and hailing from a long military lineage. IMHO, the Confederacy is mostly just a a "high water mark" for southern identity and independent spirit, but not especially meaningful in defining their values today.
- jriot 9y agoYou have to be an idiot to think Southern Pride is based on slavery being legal.
- 9y ago