Grainy Photographs

Like most of us who watched the news during the Vietnam War, my images of the conflicts, battles and torn lives on both sides consisted mostly of grainy, black and white photos transmitted by wire to the U.S. Even thinking of friends I lost there, or friends of friends, the images in my mind were always low-resolution B&W.

How different to be there, to see the Viet Cong tunnels at Cu Chi, to tour the American War Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, and to begin to understand, for the first time, the perspectives of the Vietnamese people who resisted and fought and killed my friends, and died. Dominated by the Chinese for a thousand years, colonized by the French for 90 years, these were people who had had enough control from outside interests, thank you, and who willingly gave their lives for independence. Kind of like their own Revolutionary War, which they won in 1975.