[jjr69] Vietnam's Women Of War
- From: Dat Duthinh <dduthinh@xxxxxxxx>
- To: jjr69@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 10:12:45 -0500
Dear Dzung:
Thank you for a most poignant article. It is particularly fitting that
you, a former officer of the ARVN and re-ed camp "student" would choose to
distribute it. We look at the enemy, and they are us. We are all VN, our
heroes, our values are the same. We are all humans, and war is horror for
winners and losers alike.
In reading the story, I kept thinking of the black and white picture of a
young teenage girl, in a broad-brimmed guerilla hat, playing the guitar on
the Ho Chi Minh trail, by a camp fire. I saw this photograph at one of the
photo exhibits in Washington DC last year. She was beautiful, innocent,
full of promise. The caption says that a few days after the photo was
taken, she stepped on a land mine, and there was no piece of her left that
could not fit in the palm of one hand.
The situation in VN is not different from that found in many other
countries. Eritrea fought a war with Ethiopia that lasted several decades
and involved many women fighters. Although women achieved a certain parity
with men in war, when peace came, they had to come back to more traditional
and subservient roles. Another similarity is the black soldiers returning
to the US after WW2 to second class citizenship. In VN, at least
officially, the revolution that these women fought for advocates the
emancipation of women and equality of the sexes.
I did not see any reference to Duong Thu Huong in the article. Also the
ratio of women to men is in fact lower, not higher than normal. Overall,
there are 52 girls born to 48 boys worldwide.
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