Memorial Day Event: Vietnam

Letters In Support Of Vietnam Full Disclosure

 

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of the landing of U.S. ground troops in Da Nang, Vietnam.  Many consider this to be the beginning of the American War in Vietnam. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the war the Pentagon is undertaking a ten-year, $65-million campaign to rewrite and whitewash the history of the war in Southeast Asia.
In response, Veterans for Peace has announced the Vietnam War Full Disclosure project to offer a more truthful history of the war.  As part of the project, Veterans for Peace is asking all who were affected, directly or indirectly, by the war to write letters addressed to “The Wall” (the Vietnam War Memorial) describing their experiences and sharing their grief over its devastating consequences. The project welcomes letters from both soldiers and civilians.

Letters can be emailed, but snail mail letters in hand-addressed envelopes are encouraged.  The letters will be gathered and placed at the Vietnam War Memorial on Memorial Day 2015.

For more information, go to www.vietnamfulldisclosure.org.
To send a letter by email: vncom50@gmail.com. 
To send in a hand written envelope: Full Disclosure; Veterans for Peace; 409 Ferguson Rd.; Chapel Hill, NC  27516 by May 1, 2015.

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HERE ARE SOME LETTERS WE HAVE RECEIVED SO FAR

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TO THOSE WHO CALL FOR FULL DISCLOSURE FROM

THE VIETNAM MEMORIAL WALL

Louis J. Geneseo

Captain
DET A-414 (MOC HOA), A CO, 5TH SF GROUP, USARV
Army of the United States
Harrison, Maine
September 18, 1936 to July 24, 1969
Panel W20, Line 39

by

Jerry Genesio

Nothing can be said about the Vietnam War that will ever fill the empty holes left in the chests of those you left behind, regardless of their race, color, nationality or religion. The war you fought was motivated by greed, obsessive power, false premises, lies, ideological arrogance, religious intolerance and self-serving propaganda. It was not worth even one of your lives, let alone the tens of thousands of other American, Korean, Australian, New Zealand, Thai and Laotian Hmong lives, or the millions of Vietnamese lives that were mercilessly wasted, the countless limbs torn from bodies, the eyes permanently closed to the light of the world, the sanity lost forever, and the tangled, knotted and garbled genetic instructions of generations of living organisms exposed to Agent Orange and similar poisons provided by Dow, Monsanto, Bayer and other corporations whose stockholders profited from the carnage.

The war mongers are now busily engaged in revising the history of our war in Vietnam, but there was absolutely nothing gained by this obscenity short of financial profits and electoral votes. You were all expendable, and they offered your lives without shame or remorse as others similarly motivated have done since the dawn of human reason and will go on doing if most good people continue to do nothing to stop them. Your parents did nothing to stop them. But can you imagine the magnitude of the rebellion if the government had taken their televisions instead of their children?

I personally knew only one of you. He was my brother. And the hole that is left in the middle of my chest can never be filled. Yet, we who were left behind are the lucky ones. You lost your lives. Time and every meaningful event that your family has shared since your death was taken from you. Financial profits and electoral votes were far more important than the lives you could have helped to create, cure or save; the amazing inventions you might have patented; the books, poems or music you might have written; the buildings or bridges you might have designed or built; the young minds you would have helped to shape as a role model, parent, or teacher; the pride in and pleasure of contributing in so many ways to your family, friends, community, society, profession or team.

I’m sorry I did not raise my voice in protest sooner, and I’m sorry that when I finally did it was not as loud as it could and should have been. You all did what is considered the honorable thing to do. I understand, for I also served, though the price I paid was insignificant compared to yours. Now it is for those of us who were spared to persuade the corporate stockholders and politicians that they too must do what is considered honorable or be held accountable. That is the least we can do to hopefully one day be able to attribute some measure of meaning to your sacrifice.

You died to protect your country, though it has never been established that your country was at risk. You died for your constitution, though as a member of the military you were denied many of its rights. You died for the principles of democracy, though the United States opposed elections in Vietnam when it was learned that Ho Chi Minh would easily win. You died for personal and cultural values commonly held by the working and fighting class, though they are values seldom found in the circles of the ruling class. You died for me, though every god in the heavens knows I wanted you all to come home alive and in one piece. But you died nevertheless. And I’m sorry. I will never forget you. And I will do everything in my power to remind those who would revise history of the shockingly horrible toll the Vietnam War took on those who had nothing to gain and everything to lose. I will do everything in my power to prevent your names from disappearing beneath the surface of the black granite that will forever silently hold the truth of your collective sacrifice.

find more letters here