War Through Chan's Eyes

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness,” Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. once said.

These words resonate deeply with me because although I was born after the wars were over in Vietnam, their impact remained constant in my life. The memories of war live on not in history books, but in the experiences of my parents, siblings, and neighbors, carrying unspoken pain and struggles of my community.

The experiences of my childhood have never truly faded. Through them, I learned the power of empathy—the ability to listen, to share, and to understand what came before me. The past cannot be changed, but we can learn from it and carry its lessons forward with compassion rather than bitterness. Many stories have been deeply imprinted in my mind from childhood to adult life, and I would love to share them with you.

Lost in Their Own Home

When I was six years old, my neighbors, Uncle Sau and Uncle Nam, came home from a faraway place called Cambodia. Everyone in the village knew them. Even though they weren’t my real uncles, my family loved them like they were. But when they returned, they weren’t the same, according to my parents and neighbors.

I had never met them before because they left Vietnam before I was born. My parents and older siblings used to talk about them like they were heroes. They left when they were just eighteen, young and full of energy.

Uncle Sau would talk in a strange language at night— words that didn’t belong there. My mother whispered that it was Cambodian. I didn’t understand why he spoke it in his sleep, or why his voice trembled between fear and anger. His words drifted through the quiet village like ghosts searching for a way home.

Uncle Nam, on the other hand, was always quiet, like a shadow moving without a sound. If Uncle Sau was fire, burning with something he could never put out, then Uncle Nam was stone, heavy and still.

I was a curious child, always asking questions. One evening, I sat beside Uncle Sau as he stared at the sky. "What happened in Cambodia?” I asked, expecting an adventure story, like the ones my oldest brother told me about heroes and ghosts.

He looked at me for a long time before sighing. “We were lucky, little one. We came home with all our arms and legs. Some never came home at all.” His voice was heavy, like a rock sinking in the water.

As the days passed, I noticed more things that didn’t make sense. My uncles never slept at night. While the rest of the village rested, they sat outside my grandmother’s house, awake in the dark. Uncle Sau started drinking from a glass bottle that smelled sour. “It helps him sleep,” my mother told me. But the more he drank, the louder he became—yelling at the neighbors, at the sky, at the war. He was angry at everything and nothing at the same time.

Uncle Nam didn’t drink. He just sat there, quiet, always staring into the distance, as if his body had returned, but his soul was still somewhere far away.

I didn’t understand why they had no home of their own, or why they couldn’t go back to who they were before. The war was over, but it still clung to them like a shadow that never faded.

One night, as I lay in bed, I listened to Uncle Sau whispering in his strange language, his voice rising and falling like the wind before a storm. Uncle Nam sat beside him, silent as always. I pulled my blanket up to my chin and whispered to myself, “If they are home now, why do they still seem so lost?”

Shadows of the Past

The Vietnam War was already over—or so the adults said. But in our village, whispers of it still clung to the air, like the thick smoke of burning rice fields. The war had taken so much from people’s houses, their land, and their families. But I didn’t understand any of that yet. I was just a child, playing barefoot with my friends in the dusk, when the older kids ran toward us, eyes wide with excitement and fear.

“There’s a dead body at Ba Muoi’s house… it was a murder,” one of them whispered, his voice trembling. “Do you want to see it?”

Ba Muoi worked for the new government at the time, holding the power to decide who could stay in the village and who would be forced to leave for the distant, undeveloped Kinh Te Moi economic zones. Her house was located just fifteen minutes away from ours, up in the neighborhood everyone calls the “upper village.” All the people in our area knew Ba Muoi because of her authority. She was friendly enough to us children, often smiling or nodding as we passed by, but families who had worked for the old government rarely received any warmth from her.

A dead body and murder. I had never seen one before. My heart pounded, not with fear but with curiosity. Death was just a word, a thing from stories my siblings told at night, full of ghosts and shadows.

“Yes,” I said. And we ran.

As we reached Ba Muoi’s house, the air felt wrong. The evening breeze had stopped. The cicadas, usually so loud, had gone silent. The kitchen door was open, swinging slightly as if someone had just

passed through.

Then I smelled it. A mix of something sweet and something sour. Incense smoke. Flowers. And something heavier, something metallic. Something my young mind could not yet name.

The other kids pushed me forward. My feet stepped onto the hard dirt floor, and my eyes landed on the first thing—the blood.

It was dark and thick, pooled near a long knife that gleamed in the dim kitchen yellow light. My stomach twisted and hurt, but I couldn’t look away. Then I saw the white chalk lines.

And inside the white chalk lines, Ba Muoi was lying there.

She wasn’t moving. Her body looked stiff, twisted in a way that didn’t seem real. Her hair was matted to the side of her face; one of her hands held the bloody area, and the other hand was over her head. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I saw what was next to her: green bananas and a bundle of tuberose flowers, their white petals glowing under the flickering candlelight.

The smell of tuberose was too strong. It stuck to my nose and clung to my skin. My chest felt tight. I wanted to turn away, but I couldn’t.

I heard whispers behind me.

“Thang De giet ba ay!”

De. I knew that name. Everyone in the upper village knew that name.

He was young, just a little older than my oldest brother. They sent him away to Kinh Te Moi—the Economic Zone—before I was even born. I didn’t really know what “Kinh Te Moi” meant, but I’d heard grown-ups whisper about it when they thought no kids were listening. They said families who went there didn’t come back the same—if they ever came back at all. There was never enough food to eat, and mosquitoes as big as bees bit people all night. The forest was full of scary animals that made people sick. I imagined snakes hiding under their beds, rats running around their feet when they tried to sleep, and people shivering with fevers they couldn’t escape.

De’s family has been sent there. His father died first, then his little brother, and another sister. Some said it was sickness. Others said it was hunger.

Now, De had returned, but not as the boy who had left—he came back with anger in his chest and a knife in his hand.

I didn’t know what anger that big could feel like. I didn’t understand how grief could turn into something sharp, something deadly. But standing there, staring at the blood on the floor, I knew that whatever had happened to De had followed him home.

I couldn’t breathe. The walls felt too close. The incense smoke curled toward the ceiling, twisting into shapes I didn’t want to see.

Then I ran.

I ran past the darkening houses, past the voices of the village women whispering, past the fields that stretched toward longan trees and large tamarind trees with big branches. I could imagine Ba Muoi’s dead body lying there in my mind. I closed my eyes and ran as fast as I could. I didn’t stop until I was home, throwing myself into bed and yanking the blanket over my head. I squeezed my eyes shut, but I could still see the chalk outline, the blood, the sweet smell of tuberose.

That night, I didn’t eat. I didn’t speak. I didn’t sleep. I kept the window by my bed closed.

Days later, I heard my mother whispering to my father. “Thang De bi bat roi. Ba no chet. Em no chet. No han ba Muoi vi dua nha no di Kinh Te Moi. No ve giet ba.”

The police had taken De away.

I imagined him sitting in a dark cell, the smell of blood still clinging to his hands. He was only twenty-five, but what would happen to his life next? Was it over?

Ba Muoi was gone. De was gone.

The war ended years ago, but it was still taking people—it had taken Ba Muoi’s life and De’s future. I didn’t understand war yet, but I knew one thing: it wasn’t over, just hiding in the hearts of those who had survived it.

And from that night on, I could never look at green bananas or smell the scent of tuberose the same way again.

The Mother Who Chose Love

A sharp crack, the radio buzzed, shattering the afternoon quiet, breaking the stillness like a sudden bolt of electricity. I was just 14 years old, sitting on the floor in a traditional Asian squat, carefully cleaning morning glory—long green stems with hollow interiors and tender, arrow-shaped leaves. My fingers moved methodically, stripping away wilted leaves and snapping each stem into bite-sized pieces, preparing the familiar vegetable for dinner. The radio hummed with static before the voice of an American soldier came through—his words foreign and strange, yet heavy with emotion. He was searching for a woman he called his Mother.

Her name was “Me Co.”

He had come to Vietnam, to my hometown, in search of her. But everything has changed since 1972. The road, the houses, even the people—he could no longer find the place he once knew. It was the first time since the war that Vietnam had opened its doors to American visitors, and I couldn’t understand why this man, with “his blonde hair and blue eyes,” as the radio host described him, was calling an old Vietnamese woman mother.

We were taught in school that De Quoc My la sau—“Đế Quốc Mỹ là xấu”—Imperialist America is bad. But this man’s voice, shaking on the radio, made me wonder if there was more to the story than what we were told.

For three weeks, I listened to it every day, waiting for news. Then one afternoon, the radio host announced that someone had

found Me Co.

The soldier rushed to her house, but when he arrived, all he saw was an altar. A single framed picture of an old woman stared back at him. She was gone.

He fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face. “Me oi, con ve tre roi”— “Mother, I came back too late!”

I imagined the scene as the host described it. The soldier saw a small plate in front of the altar, and inside was a ring. He picked it up, turning it over in his fingers, his breath hitching. It was his. His name and his wife’s name were engraved on the inside.

Turning to the woman who now lived in the house, he asked for a hug. Without hesitation, she embraced him, and they both cried.

Me Co had been a single mother. Her husband had died in the First Indochina War in 1954, leaving her to raise five children—four sons and a daughter. One by one, her sons joined the war, fighting as Viet Cong soldiers. Three never came home. The last one was still somewhere in the jungle, and Me Co was left alive with her young daughter.

By 1972, her daughter was studying in town and couldn’t safely travel back home due to the constant threat of the war, leaving Me Co to live alone.

One evening, she found an American soldier crawling into her yard, bleeding heavily from a wound in his leg. He was barely conscious, his body shaking with pain. She froze.

He was the enemy, the reason her sons had died.

She could have turned him in and reported him to the Viet Cong soldiers who patrolled the village.

But when she looked into his face, she didn’t see an enemy. She saw someone’s son. A young man, no older than her own children, afraid and in pain.

Her heart clenched, but she hid him. She moved him into the rice warehouse, cleaned his wounds, and wiped away his blood where he had crawled. That night, the Viet Cong came through the village, asking about an American soldier. She stayed silent.

The next day, she intentionally cut her own hand, making the wound deep enough to need medicine. This gave her an excuse to visit the doctor, where she secretly gathered the medical supplies she needed to treat him. She nursed him back to health in secret for two weeks, risking her life every day.

When he could finally walk again, she disguised him in her son’s old clothes. Wrapping a scarf around his face, she led him through the village, pretending he was her nephew as she walked toward town. When they reached the edge of the safety area, she pointed him toward the American base.

Before he left, he took off his ring and placed it in her hands.

“To remember me.”

Then, with tears in his eyes, he hugged her tightly one last time.

He never forgot her, but decades later, when he finally returned, he found her too late; instead, he found her daughter.

Holding her hands, he said, “Me Co saved my life. She was my mother. And you—you are her daughter. That makes you my sister.”

The daughter told him that her last brother had died in 1975. Her mother had lived the rest of her life alone, missing her children and holding onto the memories of war.

And the ring, she had never sold it. She had never lost it.

“It was a piece of a life she saved. A reminder of love, even in war.” I sat there, listening to the radio, my heart full.

I had learned about the war in school, but I had never learned about this love, about compassion, about forgiveness. Me Co had lost her own children to war, yet she had still saved the life of a soldier—one who had fought on the other side. She had looked past politics, past hatred, past grief. She had simply seen a person in need.

That day, I realized that war does not make people enemies. It is fear, pain, and loss that divide us. But kindness—kindness has the power to bring us back together.

Sometimes, when we talk about war, we focus on the bombs and the bullets, on everything that’s been destroyed or lost. But what resonates with me most in Me Co’s story isn’t the violence. It’s the warmth of her heart—the way she chose compassion over anger at a moment when most people would have chosen otherwise.

I grew up understanding that Vietnamese mothers embody a special kind of love: it’s patient, unwavering, and, most of all, boundless. Even though Me Co had every reason to hate the soldier—he was, in a way, tied to the tragedy of her own sons—she saw past the uniform. She recognized a human being in pain. In that instant, she was not thinking of sides or politics; she was simply a mother who saw someone’s child in need of help.

That choice to show mercy rather than vengeance taught me something profound: forgiveness isn’t about forgetting what happened; it’s about refusing to let bitterness define us. We can acknowledge the wounds inflicted by war while still reaching out with kindness. Me Co lost her sons, but she saved another mother’s son. In doing so, she proved that even in the midst of unimaginable hardship, our capacity for empathy can overcome our fears and our anger.

This story reminds me of the quiet strength many Vietnamese mothers hold in their hearts: an instinct to protect and nurture life, regardless of who stands before them. It shows how a single act of compassion can bridge the gap between enemies, turning them into family, even if only briefly.

That is what I carry with me: the knowledge that a mother’s love transcends borders, ideologies, and resentments. Rather than dwelling on the violence of war, Me Co chose love—a love that says, “Yes, we have suffered, but we will not pass on the suffering.” I will never forget her story, because it urges us to see beyond labels of “enemy” or “ally” and recognize the humanity underneath.

In a world that so often chooses war, may we learn to choose love.

Letting Go

In 2000, my sister, Minh, decided to travel to Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, and Phnom Penh. She needed a companion, so I joined her on a tour group heading from Vietnam to Cambodia. Only later would we realize that half the people on this tour were veterans of the “forgotten war” in Cambodia. At nineteen, I was the youngest one on the bus, and my life was as uncomplicated as a blank sheet of paper.

We began our journey by crossing the Tay Ninh border gate, and almost at once, everyone on the bus introduced themselves. Some explained they had come on a memorial trip—an opportunity to remember a time gone by and perhaps find closure. My sister and I hadn’t known we were joining what was essentially a commemorative pilgrimage. We simply wanted to see historic sites.

One woman in particular caught my attention: Chi Ha, who looked to be in her early forties. She sat quietly near the front, her expression warm yet tinged with sadness. When she finally spoke, the entire bus fell silent to listen.

“Chay di, chay di, giac Pol pot toi!” (Run, run! The Pol Pot soldiers are here!)

Her voice trembled as she recalled that desperate warning, living near the border between An Giang Province (Vietnam) and Kandal and Takeo Province (Cambodia). One moonlit night, she said, terror swept through her village. People sprinted down the dirt road, bare feet slapping the ground, trying to escape the Khmer Rouge soldiers. The air was thick with panic-rushed whispers, muffled sobs, and the rustling of bodies pushing against each other.

“No time to ask questions. No time to think. We just ran,” she said softly.

She recounted how she and her sisters were separated in the chaos. Hiding in a bush, she cowered under branches that clawed her arms, fearing for her life. At dawn, she returned to unimaginable horror: the bodies of mutilated and dismembered men, women, children lay everywhere. She found her parents and sisters among the dead.

I felt a knot tighten in my throat. My ears burned, and I noticed her polite smile give way to raw, heart-rending pain. My hand started sweating as I tried to absorb the shock of her words. After a long pause, I managed to ask in Vietnamese: “Chi Ha oi, chi bao nhieu tuoi luc do?” (How old were you back then?)

“Muoi tam,” she replied. (Eighteen.)

She was younger than I was at that time. Around us, people on the bus bowed their heads, silently honoring her lost family.

Chi Ha continued the story. After losing her family, she joined the army to protect those living near the border. She had no time to grieve, no time to process what had happened. As she put it: “I was young, and so much had already occurred. I just kept moving forward.”

Six months into her service, her platoon was ambushed by Pol Pot forces. One of her female comrades was captured. When they found this friend, she was lying on the ground—naked and brutally violated. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

“They planted a bomb in her private parts,” Chi Ha said, her voice trembling.

She and her team quickly backed away, horrified. Moments later, the bomb exploded, destroying her friend’s body even further. No one else was hurt physically, but the emotional impact was unforgettable. They stared at each other in numb shock, a coldness filling the air that words could never describe.

I could barely breathe after hearing this. I looked around the bus, and every passenger wore a haunted expression. For a while, no one spoke. Finally, a man named Hung stood up and introduced himself, offering his own wartime experience. Others soon followed, sharing stories that delved deeper and deeper into darkness. Fear and overwhelming sadness welled up inside me until I could no longer listen. I pressed my hands over my ears, seeking some refuge from the horror.

Yet, Minh, my older sister, continued listening intently—she was much braver than I was. We eventually arrived in Phnom Penh, each of us weighed down by what we had just heard.

In the early afternoon, while the group checked into a hotel, I wanted to find Chi Ha. I still had questions about her decision to return to a place filled with such horrific memories. Minh noticed me slipping away and tried to stop me: “Un, em dung hoi nua, se lam chi ay buon.” (Un, don’t ask more questions; it’ll only make her sad.)

But when Minh got distracted, I approached Chi Ha anyway. She was sitting by the lobby window, gazing out at the busy streets of Phnom Penh. I sat next to her and asked quietly: “Chi Ha oi, tai sao chi lai quay lai Campuchia? Chi khong so nhung ky uc kia se tro ve hay sao?” (Why come back here? Aren’t you afraid those terrible memories will haunt you again?)

She gave me a gentle smile. Despite the pain in her past, her face still held an almost radiant kindness—like a white daisy in full bloom.

“Chien tranh do da ket thuc tu lau, nhung voi chi, duong nhu moi hom qua,” she said. “Dem nao chi cung mo thay canh ay. Cang lon tuoi, chi lai cang nho ro moi chuyen. Chi va nhung nguoi dong doi da tham gia vao cuoc chien do- due phai dau tranh voi ky uc. Nhieu dem tui chi khong ngu duoc, nho dong doi, nho gia dinh.”

She paused, then added: “Chi tro de hy vong co the buong bo phan nao. Bang cach nhin dat nuoc cua ho, nhin nguoi dan cua ho, va cam thong cho ho. Ho con kho hon minh nhieu.”

It means: “The war ended a long time ago, but to me, it still feels like yesterday,” she said. “Every night, I dream of those scenes. The older I get, the clearer everything becomes. I—and those who fought alongside me— have to struggle with these memories. Many nights, I can’t sleep, thinking about my comrades, thinking about my family.”

She paused, then added: “I returned here hoping I could let go, even just a little. By seeing their country, seeing their people, and feeling compassion for them, I realize they suffered even more than we did.”

I swallowed hard. “Chi co chac la lam vay se hieu qua khong?”

“Chi khong biet,” she admitted, “nhung chi se thu bat cu cach nao de giam bot nhung ky uc kinh khung ay.”

Just then, she mentioned that some in the group planned a visit to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum that evening: “Em co muon di khong?” (Do you want to come along?)

Before I could answer, Minh stepped up behind me and placed a hand on my shoulder: “Em ay se khong di dau,” she said firmly. “Nhung em thi se di.”

After dinner, I lay on my hotel bed, unable to sleep. Images of the day’s conversations spun in my head: Chi Ha’s story, the bomb trap, the families lost to violence, and the old veterans who bowed in silence. I remembered the words of those who returned home with their bodies intact and how many of them carried pain that words couldn’t express.

It was a pilgrimage of sorts, where survivors confronted their past. As I thought about Chi Ha’s resolve to “face her nightmares,” I wondered if that was the only way to truly move on. Could revisiting the place of trauma help one heal?

Minh returned late from the museum. She sank onto the bed with a long, heavy sigh and didn’t say a word. She hardly slept for months afterward.

Those stories have stayed with me ever since. They were dark and overwhelming, yet they opened my eyes to a reality I’d never known. War leaves scars not just on bodies but on hearts and minds—scars that can last a lifetime.

Seeing how people like Chi Ha and my sister Minh chose to face those memories made me realize that “letting go” isn’t simple. Sometimes, you have to stand right in front of the past—in the very places where it happened—to begin releasing it. Whether it truly works or not, the act of trying is, in itself, a form of courage.

And that, perhaps, is how people carry on.

Chiếc đũa và cây tăm “The Chopstick and the Toothpick”

In 2005, I got a call from Tinh Mahamony, a longtime family friend. He told me to pick him and his friends up at Tan Son Nhat Airport at 6 p.m. Vietnam time. I had no idea who his friends were, what they were doing here, or even that they were coming. Turns out, he had planned this trip with my sister Minh, but, being Tinh, he had given her the wrong arrival date.

Panicked, I grabbed my sister, and we jumped on my motorbike, racing to the airport just ten minutes away from our house. When we got there, Minh darted off to find them, leaving me waiting by the bike, scanning the crowd. That’s when I first saw them.

A tall, skinny high-school-looking boy stood awkwardly with a cowboy-hat-wearing man next to him. The second man looked like he had just stepped out of an American Western movie. Beside them was a beautiful girl with striking blonde hair, and of course, Tinh, short, dark-skinned, and stocky—100 percent unmistakably Vietnamese.

They came back to our house in the Go Vap District to drop off their bags and meet my family. My sister took a taxi with them while I rode my motorbike back home, feeling puzzled and curious about these new guests. I had just graduated from university with an English degree, but within minutes of listening to them talk, I realized something horrifying—I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. Their accents were nothing like my Vietnamese teacher’s English. I forgot their names two minutes after they introduced themselves, so in my head, I labeled them High School Boy, Cowboy, and Blonde Girl—easier to remember.

Tinh and my sister invited me to hang out with them, but I didn’t see the point. I didn’t know what they were doing, and I couldn’t speak English well enough to join their conversations. Not interested.

A few days later, Minh came back laughing about something that had happened. “You should come with us; they’re really fun! Besides, you can practice your English.” She told me about the High School Boy crying after eating a banh mi because he couldn’t handle chili! I knew I had to see this myself. (Vietnamese chili—10 times spicier than American chili.)

Then, she mentioned they needed help with paperwork for the government. Since I had just graduated, this could be a great opportunity for me to gain some practical work experience before finding a permanent job. I agreed immediately.

But I had a plan. I decided I would teach High School Boy all the bad words and trick him into saying them. Cowboy looked too serious to mess with, and Blonde Girl was too sweet. But High School Boy was my target.

It took me a week to remember their names—Lucas, Kate, and Jason. But by then, Lucas and I had already made a funny discovery: we both thought the other was still in high school.

One afternoon, Lucas casually asked, “So, when do you graduate?”

I laughed. “I already did!”

His eyes widened. “Wait…you’re not in high school?!”

I smirked. “Nope. But I thought you were!”

We stared at each other in shock before bursting into laughter. From then on, Lucas became “High School Boy” and I was “Little Kid.”

Before starting our work, we spent a few days traveling together. Everywhere we went, people stared and whispered.

At a market, an old woman laughed and called out, “Chiếc đũa và cây tăm!”

I turned to Lucas, “She called us the Chopstick and the Toothpick!”

Lucas burst out laughing, “Because I’m tall and you’re tiny!”

From that moment, the nickname stuck.

What started as a misunderstanding quickly blossomed into friendship. Over the next four days, we traveled together along dusty roads, explored the Mekong River, wandered through the cool hills of Dalat, and eventually returning to Binh Thuan Province. As we journeyed, laughing and learning about each other, I sensed this trip would change me—I just didn’t yet know how deeply.

Once the real work began, my job was to scout locations for schools and identify families in need of scholarships for their children. The organization aimed to build one or two schools each year, focusing on villages where young children, ages three to five, needed preschool facilities so their parents could work on local farms. Additionally, we provided 30 scholarships annually for promising students from impoverished families who couldn’t afford school fees. Without such assistance, many of these students would have been forced to stop studying and enter the workforce prematurely.

Our first school was built in 2005 in Ma Lam, and we were searching for two more locations in Thien Nghiep, Binh Thuan Province. Lucas and I spent hours on the motorbike, riding through villages, meeting families, and making sure the government had chosen places that actually needed schools.

In 1969, a young man named Ron Brown was drafted into the Vietnam War at the age of 20. His lottery number was called, and just like that, his fate was decided—he would go to war.

They sent him to Da Nang, where he was stationed at Orange Air Base. The experience changed him in ways he never expected. The violence, the fear, the destruction—it was too much. When he finally returned home, he vowed never to set foot in Vietnam again. And yet, a part of him never left. The memories haunted him for decades.

Years later, while attending a conference hosted by Lucas’s company in Chicago, Ron met Tinh-a, a Vietnamese American musician who gave a talk about the Village Foundation School, a project building schools and providing scholarships to rural Vietnamese children. Moved by the mission, Ron made a heartfelt donation to help fund a new school. He wanted to leave behind something good—something that brought healing instead of pain.

But Ron didn’t just send money. He sent something far more personal: his dog tag from the war. It was a small piece of metal, weathered and worn, a reminder of who he had once been. He asked Lucas to bury it at the school site once construction was complete.

The school was built in 2006, in a rural village in Binh Thuan Province. When the construction was done, our team returned to hand over the keys to the local teachers and the government officials. Our job was officially complete.

But before we left, Lucas did something I’ll never forget.

He bent down near the entrance of the school and dug a small hole beneath the first step. Slowly, he took the dog tag from around his neck and placed it gently on the ground. Then, without saying a word, he covered it with sand.

I stared at him. “What are you doing?”

He smiled, but his eyes looked far away. “Leaving something behind,” he said softly.

At that moment, I realized he was burying more than just a small piece of metal. It was the legacy of a soldier, a piece of his mentor’s history, quietly becoming part of the foundation for a

new beginning.

Later, Ron received photos of the finished school: the painted walls, the children laughing, the teachers smiling as they opened classrooms doors. He never stepped foot in Vietnam again, but in that moment, seeing what had been built, he found a small kind

of peace.

A few years later, Lucas received another message, this time from Ron’s family. Ron had passed away after a battle with cancer, which was caused by exposure to Agent Orange at the very base where he had once served. The war had taken him, not with bullets, but with the silent poison that lingered long after the last shot was fired.

When Lucas told me Ron’s story, I sat in silence for a long time. I had always seen war from my own side—the suffering of my people, the loss, the pain. But for the first time, I understood that the pain of war had reached far beyond my country’s borders. Ron had suffered, too.

And yet, he chose to turn his pain into purpose. He planted something in the soil of a country he once feared and helped bring education, laughter, and hope to the next generation. His final act was not one of destruction, but of healing.

That is the legacy of a soldier.

Over the next few years, we built five more schools and expanded our scholarship program, helping even more students from poor families continue their education. During that time, something else quietly blossomed between us. The Chopstick and the Toothpick—as everyone jokingly called us—slowly began to fall in love.

Even though Lucas returned to the U.S. after each visit, he came back to Vietnam every three months, staying for one to two weeks each time. With every visit, our connection grew stronger. We explored dusty villages by motorbike, laughed over roadside meals, and shared quiet moments watching the sun set over rice fields and the ocean. What started as a funny nickname became something much deeper: partnership, trust, and love.

In December 2007, on Christmas Eve, we were married in a small but deeply meaningful ceremony in Vietnam. Lucas’s family and longtime friends flew in from the U.S. to be part of it, and they joined hands with my own family in a celebration where West met East, American warmth blending with the beauty of a traditional Vietnamese wedding. We wore ao dai and suits and shared laughter over tea and rice wine. It wasn’t just a wedding; it was a promise, rooted in two cultures, to build something bigger than ourselves.

A few months later, I moved to the United States—not just to start a new life with Lucas, but to carry forward the mission we had come to share: to keep building hope, one school at a time.

In 2008, I moved from Vietnam to Bend, Oregon. After settling in for a couple of months, I decided to host a dinner and invite my neighbors over to introduce myself to the community. That night, I met Noah and Lisa, a couple around Ron Brown’s age.

Throughout the meal, Noah asked me many questions about Vietnam. Near the end, he stood up and bowed to me, a polite gesture that took me by surprise, considering I was much younger.

“I am very sorry for what we did to your country,” he said, voice sincere. “I was studying at a naval school when the war in Vietnam started. They wanted me to go, but I refused. I thought the war was wrong—it didn’t benefit my country or its people. So I ran away and hid in the forests between Canada and the U.S. for two years. Of course, my reputation suffered. Eventually, I changed my career and became a lawyer. But still, I’m sorry for what we did.”

I was stunned. First, he was a successful lawyer; second, he hadn’t actually gone to war; and third, he was apologizing even though he never personally fought in Vietnam. It happened so fast that I didn’t know how to respond at first.

Yet in that moment, I saw another side to this complicated history—people who refused to fight because they believed the war was unjust, people who bore social consequences for that choice, and people who still feel regret about what happened.

Between Ron Brown’s story of healing and Noah’s admission of guilt for a war he never fought, my perspective on Vietnam’s past continued to broaden. War scars everyone in different ways—those who fight, those who choose not to, and those born into its aftermath. Each person’s story weaves into a larger tapestry of suffering, regret, compassion, and ultimately, hope.

For me, building schools in Vietnam and hearing heartfelt apologies in Oregon are two sides of the same goal: to move forward—not by forgetting the past, but by transforming it into lessons for a more peaceful future. Yet, woven through the sorrows and horrors were acts of extraordinary compassion: a Vietnamese mother risking her life to save a wounded American soldier, a simple ring that became a bridge between enemies-turned-family, and the heartfelt apology from someone who once refused to fight in an unjust war. Each story reminded me that we are not bound to repeat the tragedies of the past. We can choose empathy over anger, forgiveness over resentment.

I hold onto these stories because they show that, even when fear and suffering feel overwhelming, love can still triumph. For every bomb that was dropped, there was also someone who offered a meal to a stranger. For every lost son, there was a mother like Me Co who saw beyond politics and chose to rescue a life instead of turning it away.

We need more peace in this world. We can’t erase the tragedies that shaped our families or the scars left behind, but we can break the cycle. We can look at those once called “enemies” and recognize our shared humanity. We can remember that a single act of kindness, like hiding a wounded stranger or building a school, can begin to mend what war has torn apart.

So I invite you to carry these lessons forward with me. Let us plant the seeds of understanding wherever we can, choosing empathy instead of hatred. That is how we honor the past—not by letting bitterness define us, but by turning pain into the courage to love more boldly. Peace is not just an ideal—it’s a decision made one act of compassion at a time. And if enough of us choose it, perhaps we can give future generations something truly priceless: a world where the echoes of war are replaced by the sound of hearts that refuse to harden.