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Vietnamese American Reaction Divided
By Janet Dang

“I call them murderers and shit-heads,” said Joe Tran, referring to the North Vietnamese soldiers whom he fought against during the Vietnam War.

Tran, a Southern California resident and a former police colonel for the South Vietnamese army, wasn’t among the many Asian Americans who were stunned and offended when Arizona senator and presidential candidate John McCain defended his use of the word “gook” to describe the North Vietnamese prison guards who tortured him in a POW camp from 1967 to 1973.

“When McCain referred to the Vietcong interrogators who were cruel to him, who tortured him, who starved him, I can understand how he feels when he called them ‘gooks.’

“He’s not calling all Asians or all Vietnamese ‘gooks,’” Tran added.

Though reports of McCain’s use of the word “gook” had been reported over two months ago, McCain came under fire last week when he justified the racial slur.

“I’ll call, right now, my interrogator that tortured me and my friends a ‘gook,’ OK and you can quote me,” McCain was quoted as saying in several national news publications. “Every single one of my POW friends, that’s what we called them,” he said, referring to his captors. “In case it escaped somebody’s notice, they were cruel, mean vicious, sometimes sadistic people. And ‘gook’ is the kindest description I can give them, the most printable.”

Though the candidate said that he only directed those comments at his captors during his 5-year imprisonment at a North Vietnamese camp, he nevertheless offended and infuriated many Asian Americans. Indeed, when the news broke, national Asian American groups across the country -- including the National Asian American Pacific American Legal Consortium and the Organization of Chinese Americans -- faxed out joint statements condemning McCain’s use of “gook.”

However, reactions from Vietnamese Americans, many of whom are political refugees, were mixed.

“Given his war background and his personal record, it’s understandable,” said attorney Van Thai Tran of Westminster, Calif. “In fact, South Vietnamese officers and soldiers during the war have used [terms] much worse.”

Van Thai Tran said that many Vietnamese Americans have close ties with McCain because he is viewed as a heroic war figure, risking his life to fight for South Vietnam.

And for the most part, first-generation Vietnamese Americans, including Joe Tran, admitted that they are likely to support the candidate who “sacrifices their life for our country,” Tran said, though he himself has not finalized his decision on whom he will support for president.

McCain’s support of the Vietnamese communities is evident, particularly in Arizona and California. He was instrumental in normalizing diplomatic relations with Vietnam and has helped reunify Vietnamese political prisoners with their families in the United States, making him popular among many Vietnamese Americans.

Before the United States became involved in the conflict in Vietnam, the northern and southern regions of the country were embattled in a bitter fight for the country. In 1954, France ended its 100 years of colonial rule after loses to Vietnamese forces, according to Robert Brigham, a professor at Vassar College. That same year, France and Vietnam signed the Geneva Peace Accords, which created the partition of the country at the 17th parallel.

By 1957, the U.S.-funded South Vietnamese forces had launched pre-emptive attacks against the communist North Vietnam, driven by fears that the revolutionary state wanted to take the South by force. Two years later, the North Vietnamese Communist Party, led by Ho Chi Minh, approved plans to violently overthrow South Vietnam.

The largest wave of Vietnamese immigration occurred when the country’s capital, Saigon, fell to the communist regime in April 30, 1975, thus ending the war. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese fled the country, with many immigrating to the United States, Canada and France.

The still-fresh emotional and political turmoil among the refugee community was evident last spring when thousands of Vietnamese Americans in Westminster, Calif., Texas, and other parts of the country protested the displaying of a Ho Chi Minh poster and the Vietnamese communist flag in a Southern California video store.

Members of the émigré community, the largest of which reside in the Westminster, Calif., and its vicinity, still carry an affection for politicians like McCain, who epitomize the Vietnam war hero, said Van Thai Tran.

“There is an emotional tie,” Tran said. While McCain’s comments would have been inappropriate in any other context, the fact that the veteran and many Vietnamese Americans have the same intense hatred for the North Vietnamese soldiers made it “understandable,” he said.

Not everyone in the community agrees, however. Luan Tran, an attorney and political activist, doesn’t see that as a reason to accept McCain’s use of the word, saying, “Obviously there is a lot of sympathy from a large number of the Vietnamese community, based on his suffering. But he should not have done what he did.

“It sends a message that he’s saying, ‘I suffer a lot at the hands of the Vietcong, I have the right to use the word,’” he said.

“He should be more sensitive. This goes beyond the Vietnamese. It touches the Asian American community at large,” he added.