We were on a one day tour to the Mekong Delta. Tom and I were having a Coke
on the Dock in My Tho. My tour guide, translator and friend, Miss Dung
(pronounced Yung) was wandering around talking to local people. She met this
woman and they talked for a while. I noticed a change in Miss Dung's demeanor
and asked her what was wrong. She said that the lady told her that at the end
of the American War, Which we call the Vietnam War, this lady was approached by
Americans who convinced her to send her young daughter to the US where she would
be safe until after the "retribution" of the North Vietnamese was over. The lady
said that she never heard from her daughter and assumes that her daughter does
not wish to know her. I know that many children who were brought here were told
to forget their families and culture. One last betrayal in a decade of betrayals.
During "Operation Baby Lift" a plane filled with babies and children went down
just after leaving Tan Son Nhut. Standing in a field of aircraft debris, dead
and dying infants and children, a Vietnamese officer was quoted as saying "Some
of your souvenirs have broken". In war children suffer and die. That should
be all the reason we need not to engage in one.
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