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Moments in Time with Suzanne Lee

Learning from the Vietnam War

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 tragedy, Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) community groups are rallying together for peace. A look at APIA activism that arose out of the Vietnam War gives perspective to the present, growing military activity.

In the period between 1968-1978, the Vietnam War was a major factor that brought APIAs into heightened political action. Questioning U.S. foreign policy, movements rose out of the college campuses across America, where young APIAs identified with the victims of the highly racialized war.

The majority of the U.S. population opposed the war for the military’s problematic deficit spending and for the many human lives lost in battle. However, APIAs in particular saw the mistreatment of Asians in Asia by the United States, and they turned the looking glass inward.

“It [made] us conscious about policies, about the use of certain types of armaments and munitions on Vietnam, [and] leveling the country into a parking lot,” photographer and activist Bob Hsiang wrote in his essay Growing up in Turmoil: Thoughts on the Asian American Movement. “The war also became symptomatic of a wider domestic problem that could partially explain the fundamental racism and disregard for the poor and the disenfranchised.”

The war was brought back to the communities, as politicized APIAs fought to improve the largely neglected APIA ghettoes. Basic human rights issues — such as housing, jobs, education, healthcare and racism — were all brought to forum as activists struggled for change.

The social climate resulting from the tragedy of Sept. 11 is also bringing the APIA community together in cries for peace.

“The United States was attacked, so there is a lot of emotions here because of the tremendous loss of innocent lives. These emotions have naturally tied in with calls for super-patriotism which, in turn, have become pulls for conformity and have led to increased scapegoating against South Asians and Middle Easterners,” Harvey Dong, of UC Berkeley’s Department of Ethnic Studies, said.

Today, history repeats itself under very different circumstances as APIA groups come to action to help stop the attacks against immigrants, particularly Middle Eastern and Muslim immigrants.

“Where there was much sympathy for the ‘enemy’ during the Vietnam War, there are very few people who identify with the perpetrators of the terrible bombings today,” Gordon Chang, professor of history at Stanford University, said. “However, there is widespread anxiety and fear that many innocent people will be hurt.”

APIA groups are rallying behind geopolitics, which have quickly transferred into a local issue.

“If we can learn anything from the past, it would be that international crisis can awaken peoples’ critical thinking and consciousness, encouraging them to ask why things are that way, “ Dong said. “Because people began to understand the agendas of all sides involved in the Vietnam War, a separate American voice emerged, which is how the anti-war movement started in the ’60s.

“APIAs were part of this and connected it with their particular conditions, status and history in the United States. Most important of all, they took this understanding to change the conditions within their respective communities.”