Literature and life.

    It was the spring of 1962. With my USMC enlistment winding down I was aboard the USS Princeton, (LPH 5), an aircraft carrier built during WW II to replace the one sunk by the Japanese. The Princeton had been retrofitted as a helicopter carrier which is why it was carrying a battalion of Marines.  On the flight deck was a squadron of Marine helicopters being ferried  to Vietnam.  One bright sunny day the helicopters lifted off off, one by one, and flew to Vietnam, too far to be seen. They were the first Marine helicopters deployed there and they relieved Army  helicopters that had been ferrying South Vietnamese troops.
     In June I was discharged but, though I had been released from active duty, three years of inactive duty remained of my enlistment. During that time I could have been recalled to duty at any time at the discretion of the Marine Corps. As the fighting in Vietnam intensified involving increasing number of American troops I fully expected a recall that never came.
    As the conflict grew I became convinced that our involvement was a mistake. When one of my classmate's, from the safety of his seminary enrollment, argued for increasing U.S. involvement in the fighting I said "Then why don't you enlist?"  With American incursion into Cambodia, the "secret war" in Laos and the intense bombing of the North, my opinion of the immorality of the whole war intensified.
     In the mid-90's, when I visited Lisa in Cambodia, my interest in SE Asia re-ignited. One of the factors in that interest was the guilt I felt as an American over what was done by my country to that region. Over the years I've read much about the war, S.E. Asia, and our complicity in the destruction caused by the fighting.
    Now, fresh on the literary scene, is a debut novel, The Sympathizer, by a Vietnamese American, Viet Thanh Nguyen, which received the Pulitzer Prize.  Nguyen came to America as a four-year-old refugee. The book was published in 2016. The book begins with the fall of South Vietnam and continues in the years following.  In his own words:
“I wanted to write a novel that was entertaining, that people would actually want to read because I knew I would be dealing with a lot of very serious political and literary matters.”  Nguyen on NPR.
    He succeed on both accounts. It is a very well written novel, a 'page turner', which carries profound reflection on literature but especially on politics.  It is gratifying to me that it has reached a wide audience.  On my recent Road Scholar trip I was surprised to discover two of the participants who had never heard, either of the "secret war" in Laos, or of the Hmong.  With Nguyen's novel he has struck a blow for a more informed American populace.

Takk for alt,

Al