Vietnamese Slighted in Vietnam War Exhibit

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Vietnamese Slighted in Vietnam War Exhibit
CaliToday, News Report,
Compiled by Pueng Vongs, Nov 04, 2003

A Smithsonian exhibit of the World War II bomber the Enola Gay is
being criticized for its failure to mention the destruction the plane
caused when it dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Vietnamese Americans in
California say an Oakland exhibit on the Vietnam War commits a similar
crime.

California's many Vietnamese refugees are incensed, claiming that the
exhibit at the Oakland Art Museum scheduled for 2004 does not give
them adequate representation. They are also protesting the firing of a
Vietnamese American employee at the museum who spoke out against the
exhibit.

The museum received a National Endowment grant for a retrospective
exhibit on the Vietnam War and its impact on California. The grant
stipulates that the Next Stop Vietnam exhibit should engage in a
dialogue with the community, but very little of that has happened,
according to Mimi Nguyen, who says she was fired after repeated
efforts to call the museum's attention to the cursory representation
of Vietnamese voices and experience. Instead, she says, the exhibit
focuses on the experience of "the U.S. veteran community and aging
hippies and is not representative of the immense diversity of
California."

In a letter to the museum's administration which was leaked to
Vietnamese language press, Nguyen wrote, "Fifty-eight thousand
American GIs died in the war. Some four million Vietnamese perished,
and an entire nation collapsed. Shouldn't Vietnamese Californians have
equal stake and voice in this exhibit?"

She wrote that initial agreements to interview Vietnamese living in
California on their reaction to U.S. troops arriving in Vietnam were
retracted and eliminated from the exhibit.

"Thanh was eight when American troops tossed a grenade into his
family's bomb shelter. The grenade ruptured his vocal cords and
disfigured his face. Duong was eleven when strayed bullets ruptured
his spinal cord, leaving him paraplegic; he overcame many obstacles to
become an Assistant Professor of Education at UCLA today," she wrote.

She says Vietnamese are portrayed as refugees at the end of the war
without struggle, heritage, history and past.

She wonders if the stories were neglected because the public cannot
handle the realities of the Vietnam War. "Or are we uncomfortable with
the truth because Vietnam reminds Americans of our discomforting role
in transforming the Persian Gulf? Wouldn't this reality shake people
out of their comfort zone to deal with 'collateral damage' in Iraq and
Afghanistan?"

The exhibit will showcase the widely known My Lai massacre where
American forces attacked a Vietnamese village, but she says other
atrocities like the Hue Massacre deserve to be shown. The memories
still haunt survivors living in California. During the Hue massacre,
some 4,000 students, professors, doctors, government officials and
their families were buried alive by the Vietnamese Communist soldiers
in mass graves.

Some 21 U.S. veterans were interviewed for the exhibit compared to
only one or two South Vietnamese soldiers, she wrote. "Over one
million South Vietnamese men were under arms, and many are now
Californians whose stories deserve our attention and a better history
than the United States allows."

She says Vietnamese play a valuable part of the California landscape
and deserve an exhibit that speaks to them. "Refugees include sons,
daughters, nieces, nephews and grandchildren of former South
Vietnamese officials, who are transforming California and the nation
as well. Vietnamese engineers and assembly line laborers helped build
Silicon Valley, the engine of California's economy that was generating
wealth and income, making California the richest state in the
country."

The largest overseas Vietnamese population resides in California,
numbering some half a million, and yet their views are not well
represented, Nguyen says. The Vietnamese community, from Oakland to
San Jose to Orange County, plan to circulate petitions and protest the
museum's actions. Last week the deputy mayor of Garden Grove held a
townhall meeting on the issue. Other Southeast Asian groups as well as
a cross-cultural mix of immigrant and advocacy groups plan to join the
Vietnamese in their protests. They include the American Civil
Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People and PUEBLO, a local activist organization.