I.

"The sound of one hand clapping" - Zen Koan

Our next door neighbor's oldest son was in the military. But he deserted and hid in the in the attic for months. One day, the military police came and took him away. A few months later, he was killed in action. His family was very poor and his mom was a single mother. His father had died from tuberculosis.

When his younger brother became close to eighteen years old, his mother didn't want the younger brother to get drafted into the military. One night, she borrowed a butcher knife from our family and chopped the younger son's right index finger off.

II.

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning" - Apocalypse Now

Since I lived in Saigon, the capital city of South Vietnam, I didn't see the destructions that were happening all around us. We were kept in the dark about the atrocities of the war. The school I went to didn't teach us about the war at the time, and the media was controlled by the South Vietnamese government.

I didn't know
about My Lai
or napalm
or anti-personnel
cluster bombs

I didn't know
about B-52s
and carpetbombings
or huey helicopters
shooting farmers
working in the fields

I didn't know
about Agent Orange

I didn't know
they thought of us as "Gooks"
to be added to the body counts
and I didn't know
they killed over 5 million "Gooks"
of which 4 million were civilians

One of the many "My Lai" Massacres	Kim Phuc - a napalm victim
B-52 Carpetbombing

Note: According to the official statistics released by the Vietnamese government, three million Vietnamese were killed during the war, including one million soldiers. An additional two million Vietnamese were affected by Agent Orange.

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