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Change Your Life! |
25 years after a bitter war, Vietnam beckons American tourists |
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News
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April 23, 2000 HANOI, APR 22 (AP) - With tousled blond hair and several days worth of stubble, young John McCain wears a look of stoic determination in the grainy black-and-white photo hanging in the "Hanoi Hilton," the infamous prison-turned-war museum.
McCain's prisoner-of-war ordeal, which sent him home with a battered body and an iron will, helped frame his recent presidential quest. Here, it's made him the poster boy for a tourist landmark in a country now actively wooing Western visitors to the most poignant sites of the Vietnam War, which ended 25 years ago this month. From young backpackers to war veterans, a growing number of Americans feels compelled to make the pilgrimage.
"Vietnam was the most profound experience of our lives," said Chuck Searcy, an American veteran who's grown so attached to the country he's spent the past five years in Hanoi heading the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. "When something has that much impact on your life, there's this compulsion to come back and make some sense of it."
For years after the communist triumph on April 30, 1975, Vietnam's rulers invoked the war for anti-American propaganda value, not tourist dollars. Westerners were not welcome, and the history of the conflict was on ideological display at the American War Crimes Museum.
Fast-forward a quarter-century. Vietnam's leaders now are preaching forgiveness of wartime hatreds, erecting luxury hotels to pamper rich visitors - including a real Hilton hotel just a few blocks from the old prison - and transforming bits of the country's tortured history into a niche market for war tourists.
In southern Vietnam, the labyrinth of underground tunnels used by the communist guerrillas has been broadened to permit wide-bodied Westerners a hands-and-knees firsthand view.
Drawing about a million visitors a year, mostly Vietnamese, the Cu Chi tunnels have taken on a surreal atmosphere, complete with mannequins of Viet Cong soldiers, a simulated minefield and a shooting range where visitors can fire an M-16 or an AK-47 at dlrs 1 per round.
Then there's the B-52 Museum in Hanoi, a graveyard of mangled metal from downed American bombers. Tours are on offer in the former Demilitarized Zone that split the country into the communist North and the U.S.-backed South. There's even a tour and a memorial at the haunted village of My Lai, where U.S. troops killed 504 Vietnamese civilians.
The old American War Crimes Museum still includes an occasional reference to "American devils." But in today's toned-down rhetoric, the site is now known simply as the War Remnants Museum.
A similar museum in Ho Chi Minh City will be the site of an exhibit next month of work by photographers from both sides who were killed during the war. About 200,000 Americans toured Vietnam last year - only China sent more visitors - according to the Vietnamese government. Most American visitors are Vietnamese natives who fled in the mass exodus at the end of the war, and have returned to see the land of their birth. Still, there also are thousands of first-time visitors or former U.S. soldiers.
"During the war, we saw scenes from Vietnam every night on television from the American perspective - but we never saw it from the Vietnamese viewpoint," said Carol Stuhr, 61, of Grand Forks, North Dakota. "It was all quite confusing at the time. Even today, I still don't know why we were here."
Stuhr and her husband traveled halfway around the world for their daughter's wedding in Thailand. But they couldn't resist a side trip to Vietnam. On their first morning in the country, they were touring the Hanoi Hilton, formally known as Hoa Lo prison, a faded yellow fortress in downtown Hanoi.
Most of the prison was razed in 1993 to make way for an upscale Hanoi Towers residential and business center that caters to foreign businessmen. However, one wing has been preserved, with a cell devoted to the 300 American pilots detained in 1964-73.
Despite government claims to the contrary, McCain says he twice tried to commit suicide while suffering from torture, solitary confinement and a lack of food. "I couldn't control my despair," he wrote of his most painful moments. "Nothing could save me."
In the Vietnamese rendering, McCain and his fellow pilots appeared to have been on an extended stay at summer camp.
"Though having committed untold crimes on our people, American pilots suffered no revenge once they were captured and detained," says the exhibit. "Instead, they were well-treated with adequate food, clothing and shelter."
The exhibit includes a volleyball net used by the prisoners. One photo shows an American prisoner clinking glasses at a meeting with Vietnamese journalists, and another features Americans cheerfully cleaning a chicken while preparing a meal.
Vietnam's past may still be subject to dispute, but there's a consensus that Americans are welcome today. Indeed, Americans marvel at their warm treatment.
"The Vietnamese have an expression, `Close the past, open the future,' " said Searcy, the former soldier. "I have been overwhelmed by their sense of generosity and forgiveness."
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