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| Yung Krall, A Thousand Tears Falling |
Krall grew up in the Mekong Delta where her father was a leader in the Viet Minh which ultimately became the Viet Cong. Some of her earliest memories were of ducking for cover when her village was being strafed by French aircraft. Her village was described as a “liberated zone” which meant that the French no longer controlled it.
When she was a small girl, her father left to represent the South with the Viet Minh in the North. She didn’t see him for 18 years. Ultimately, Hanoi’s fight shifted from the French to the Americans. Krall and her sisters were raised by their mother. A brother followed his father north to Hanoi. It is a classic story of how families get ripped apart in a civil war. A hundred and fifty years ago, had she lived in a border state like Kentucky, the same kind of thing was happening in this country.
To make a long story short, she couldn’t support the communist approach to governing and the dictatorial way they approached those who lived in the Delta. She eventually moved to Saigon, worked for the Americans, married an American and eventually moved to the United States. Though she loved her father, she couldn’t accept his political decision to leave the family and move to the North. She met him finally in Paris after the war was over, where he was serving as a diplomat for the new Vietnamese government.
When we think about Vietnam and the sacrifices made by those who served there in the U.S. military, we sometimes forget about what happened to the Vietnamese who supported our efforts. This is a good book about that. It was written in 1995 and can be purchased “used” online. I found it to be a compelling and powerful narrative, and would recommend it to Vietnam veterans. It helps “fill in the gaps” of what our own experience was all about.
Rolland Kidder
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