4B
Monday, May 1, 1995
NATION/WORLD
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Vietnam celebrates new era
The Associated Press
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — Twenty years ago, Communist tanks rolled down a broad avenue and smashed through the gates of the South Vietnamese presidential palace to seize power and reunite the country.
Yesterday, more than 10,000 soldiers, students and children paraded down the same broad, leaf boulevard carrying flowers and balloons and posing for pictures with their former enemies — Americans
— to celebrate the anniversary of the war's end.
No recriminations were heard against the United States, which Vietnam now wants diplomatic and trade ties with. Mayor Truong Tan Sang opened the ceremonies by praising the patriotism that led so many to their death, but never even mentioned the United States.
North Vietnam seized power from the last remaining officials of the U.S.-allied government on April 30, 1975, ending a war that cost more than 3 million lives. Most Americans had fled the city only hours earlier in a desperate helicopter evacuation.
Yesterday, Vietnamese scrambled to have their pictures taken with American journalists and tourists, and once past the reviewing stand, soldiers flashed peace signs and thumbs-up at an American veteran with a camera.
"It was like they were happy just to see me," said Jeff Fredrick of Tallahassee, Fla., who had part of his right leg blown away in 1968 by a mine. "I look at it detached, as a celebration of their independence. How could I hold a grudge?"
The friendliness is more than just official policy. To many Vietnamese, Americans coming back represents the return of commerce and tourism and revival of normal ties with the West after years of relative isolation.
Behind the smiles, however, Vietnamese emotions run deep about a war that set brother against brother.
"This celebration is for the winners," said a former southern army officer surnamed Tran, one of many still angry over the punishment meted out to them by the victorious North after 1975.
Even some Communists question whether their leaders threw away lives needlessly in open attacks against the mighty U.S. military machine, attacks such as the 1968 Tet offensive. A teacher burst into tears when asked about her memories of the war, explaining that many relatives fought in the war and not all came back.
Unlike in the United States, where the war has been openly and hotly debated, the Vietnamese have never been allowed such catharsis.
But across the spectrum of political views, Vietnamese young and old were emphatic in agreement that they never want another war.
"Never — never," said Tran, 54. "No one dares to say that terrible word."
Nguyen Van Xich, 60, used to set booby traps for American soldiers as a Communist guerrilla. "My sole wish is to keep the peace in this land," he said yesterday. "I'm so afraid that one day my son and daughter will have to fight a war again. I would do anything to prevent that."
Mayor Sang's speech emphasized the achievements of peace, especially the new burst of economic development in Ho Chi Minh City, called Saigon before 1975. Vietnam's economy stagnated for the first decade after reunification, but free-market reforms since the late 1980s have brought marked new prosperity.
That was reflected in the lavishness of the anniversary celebrations, which residents said were the biggest and most lighthearted ever.
militia marched in the parade, there were no tanks or other armaments, and most of the marchers were civilians who waved tiny paper Vietnam flags, flowers or balloons.
Although hundreds of soldiers and
The emphasis was on youth — the parade included 1,000 young men and women born in that year of peace, 1975. Elementary school children danced with stuffed animals and teens in track suits performed a bouncy disco number under a banner reading, "Healthy, young and beautiful."
Most of the city's 5 million residents could only watch the parade on television. As is common for such events in Vietnam, the parade route stretched only three long blocks and the sidelines were completely filled with participants awaiting their turn to march.
Security cordons kept out the general public. For them, a second parade was held last night with dozens of brightly lit floats, including a popular one featuring a large mechanical dinosaur that roared and swayed.
Merrymakers rode beside the floats on motorbikes, jamming the city center and creating a blue haze of exhaust fumes. Other Saigonese strolled through parks to watch magic shows and listen to crooners perform jazzy versions of war-era songs. Music poured from crowded sidewalk restaurants.
In the capital of Hanoi, meanwhile, people lined up for a mule to pay respects at the mausoleum of former revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh. Outdoor loudspeakers throughout the city played patriotic and revolutionary songs.
Ho Chi Minh City officials gave about 70 convicted criminals early jail releases in honor of the day, part of a nationwide amnesty program that is to include 4,000 prisoners by year's end. Authorities refuse to say if people failed for criticizing Communist rule will be among those released.
KENT, Ohio — Thirteen seconds of gunfire. Thirteen students dead or wounded.
The Associated Press
Kent State remembers shooting
Twenty-five years later, Kent State University still remembers the four students killed and nine others wounded by National Guard troops during an anti-war protest on May 4, 1970, with ceremonies and symposiums.
This year, as it has every year, Kent State will memorialize and moralize, hoping to extract something positive from 25 years of tears.
But now, with a generation of students who weren't even alive when Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandy Scheuer and Bill Schroeder were killed, undergraduates exploring the shootings must search for a link to a generation they know best as their parents.
"It's almost impossible to imagine what it was like, even if you heard the stories and even if you know all the different sides," said Stephanie Campbell, 20.
A junior majoring in biological anthropology, Campbell is co-chair of the May 4th Task Force student group. No student member of the group had been born when the shootings took place, and none were on campus in 1990 for the 20th anniversary of the shootings.
"It is difficult to even imagine a government that would bring soldiers onto the campus, let alone shoot at the citizens," Campbell said. "For some of us, it's like trying to imagine the Civil War — you can come up with definitions, but no real meaning."
"But I have never met anyone on this campus who doesn't feel something, even when talking about the barest facts."
Former Gov. James A. Rhodes had ordered the National Guard to restore order in Kent after student protests against the invasion of Cambodia spilled into the streets. Shop windows were broken. Bottles were thrown at police and at firefighters battling an arson fire at the campus ROTC building.
The shootings — and the deaths of two more students 10 days later at Jackson State University in Mississippi — galvanized the anti-war movement and stunned the nation.
On the morning of May 4, as student protests raged around them, a group of about 100 guardsmen opened fire.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning image of 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio, her arms raised in horror as she knelt over the body of Jeffrey Miller, is seared into the national memory.
Rhodes and 27 guardsmen signed a statement in
1979 expressing regret, but he will not discuss the subject now and declined to be interviewed.
In Professor Tim Smith's class on government affairs reporting the journalism students agree the shootings were a watershed event. But for most of them, Kent State is a history lesson.
"The way I feel about it is, I need to know what happened May 4, the same way I need to know about what happened in the Revolutionary War," said Jim Llewellyn, 24.
"You learn history, maybe so you don't repeat it. Just because I'm a Kent State student, that doesn't mean I need to know more than anyone else about it. I really think they jam it down your throat."
But to a graduate student who introduces himself as "Don Fred, relic," the answers to May 4 are still undiscovered, and the lingering doubts create their own relevance.
"I heard the shots on May 4. And on that day I was very conservative. I believed in my government very strongly," said Fred, 45. "Now, I very strongly believe the shootings were ordered by President Nixon. The question is, when are we going to dig up the proof?"
In 1990, the university dedicated a $100,000 memorial, a granite plaza designed by Chicago architect Bruno Ast. The memorial did little to quiet critics, including Alan Canfora of Barberton, who was wounded in the wrist in the shootings.
Canfora still attends May 4 Task Force meetings and runs a private educational foundation devoted to the shootings.
"I think it's true that because most students weren't born in 1970 that they look at the war and the Kent State incident as strictly historical information," Canfora said. "But, at the same time, I found that many of today's students remain concerned about the war and the Kent State murders."
Canfora said students remain committed to social change.
"Times have changed and the issues have changed, but students remain just as idealistic, just as principled and just as motivated as we were in the 1960s," he said. "The environment, women's rights and freedoms, racism, tuition increases and the current attacks by the Republican Congress on student aid — I think these are the issues of the 1990s that are going to provoke a student movement which may well surpass the 1960s."
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