The American War

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In Hanoi, Vietnam we went to The American War Museum and in Saigon aka Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam we went to The War Remnants Museum. I have learned two things: 1. I don't know shit about history and 2. there are two sides to every story.

It's amazing how seeing the remnants of history makes it interesting. History has never been something that grabbed my attention and it all seemed like boy-stuff growing up..guns and wars and fighting. I usually like to live my life under the notion of 'what you don't know can't hurt you,' but I am grateful for the time I spent in these museums and tomorrow we plan to go to the tunnels that the Vietnamese dug and survived in during the war. I plan to learn more about this war both while I am here and when I get home to better understand everything I am seeing.

The hardest hitting point of it all though, is the effect of Agent Orange, which is the code name for a powerful herbicide and defoliant used by the U.S. military in its Herbicidal Warfare program during the Vietnam War. An estimated 21,136,000 gallons of Agent Orange was sprayed across South Vietnam. Both U.S. military and Vietnamese people in general were affected by Agent Orange so immensely that we see, on a daily basis, Vietnamese people with bodily deformations, because so many children were born to Agent Orange affected parents. They are on the streets in every city begging and until today I'd had no idea why so many people had these deformities. I may be nieve, but seeing is both realizing and then yearning to learn. And I am and I will.

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