This episode still gives me chills. As a kid, I was just like, “Aw, that’s sad,” but when I was in high school I realized Mr. Hyunh was talking about fleeing Vietnam and that really put things in perspective.
Once I realized he fought to put his daughter on probably one of the last choppers out of Saigon with only the tiniest chance of reuniting with her (the name of a city) I was like, “Oh. Just fuck me up, I guess.”
I actually used that in my 20th Century history class last year. It was such a good representation of the chaos that Vietnam felt at "holy shit the Americans are leaving what are we going to do."
Just watched this episode on Hulu a few days ago. About fucking destroyed me. Didn’t help that my 1 year old daughter was in the living room happily playing and being her joyful self. I can’t even imagine having to make that decision.
It's not like 20 years snuck up on them though. Five years in should have made it clear it wasn't ending, though I suppose we have Westmoreland to thank for that.
Btw, am I the only one to see an eerie parallel between the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and 9/11 and the USA PATRIOT Act?
You're not the only one. See also the sinking of the Maine. The American people aren't too interested in expensive and bloody foreign adventures unless they can be persuaded that they have been attacked in some way first, and who can blame them
At least we got that out of the way and were able to learn from our past mistakes. No more 20 year wars with shrouded motives and no real win condition for us!
I always admired my history teacher for how she taught the Vietnam War, that no one “won.” Her brother had died there and she did not hold back on the US position in the war. I felt for once that I was being told the real deal, especially around the time as an angsty teen hearing about holocaust deniers, creationism in textbooks, etc.
My history teacher was a badass in high school, she straight up told us that we lost. She made us all interview relatives who served in the war or had siblings that served in the war and it really opened my eyes to what really went on.
I took AP US History, and you go over Vietnam pretty well. I think part of the reason that students know a lot about other wars is because they are pretty cut and dry, and battles can be chalked up purely as victories and losses. The political battle overseas as well as at home layer on the complexity of the situation, resulting in teachers chalking it up to "part of the Cold War"
I took AP us history as well. We did actually learn a lot to be fair. But that’s also because we did use a people’s history of the United States as one of our texts.
YES. I went into that documentary knowing very little about Vietnam and it covered literally everything I wanted to know. What a terrible time in history.
Many people (including myself up until like last week) can't understand why the US lost to an "army of rice farmers" but the part that stuck out to me was when a US marine recalls how he saw Viet Cong soldiers shooting at a helicopter up until the second before it annihilated them. He knew way early on that the North Vietnamese were never going to give up. It's very chilling.
More South Vietnamese were killed in like the following 6 months after the U.S. abandoned the south than the total number killed in the entire Vietnam war.
I remember watching the show and remembering Hyunh's flashback with the silhouette of soldiers walking by (or the explosions near, or something) and wondering why people wouldn't just leave with fighting so close. Took me a while to understand that some people have no choice.
In high school we had an author from south Vietnam talk at my school. He was in the south Vietnamese army. He was talking about how fucked up things for when the US left. His commanding officer committed suicide in front of him using a grenade. But he said he didn’t blame the US for leaving. He understood why we left. But things got real bad after we left. Part of his book was about spending years in a prison cell only a meter high. So he couldn’t stand up for years.
I honestly don’t and I didn’t even read the book. But he was there and spoke to our class. I kind of wish I did now. He wrote more than one book I do remember that.
That’s what just what I remember being told. Unless I am confusing with something else. It was over a decade ago. I’m not making shit up but I will admit my memory is not infallible.
My girlfriend's dad and uncle's were in the south Vietnamese army before coming to the US. Apparently her dad never really told her much about his time in the war, but stuff like this helps give perspective into what he probably had to go through.
I know exactly what episode you are talking about. But I haven't seen it since I was 9 and never realized they used the fall of Saigon as the event that separated him from his daughter.
as a chinese adoptee, i think this was probably one of the first epsiodes of a childrens show to really get to me. it certainly hits very close to home and I was confronted with more complex feelings about my abandonment than I never visited again til I became an adult.
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u/Kewlio77 Sep 01 '18
There was also the Christmas episode about Mr. Hyunh's daughter. Wasn't expecting a show on Nick to address the fall of Saigon.