Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Remembering Vietnam
This weekend I paid a visit to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. As we approached the memorial, the person with me asked, "How many people died in the Vietnam War?" I answered, "A couple million." My guest was confused. I went on. "The memorial holds the names of the 58,000 Americans killed in the war. It would take about 34 memorials of the same size to include all the Vietnamese killed."
While even 2 million killed in such a small country seems almost unfathomable, apparently the actual number is much larger. In addition to Americans killed, there were also 223,748 South Vietnamese soldiers killed, as well as 5,282 of other nationalities.
According to the Agence France Presse, "the true civilian casualties of the Vietnam War were 2,000,000 in the North, and 2,000,000 in the South. Military casualties were 1.1 million killed and 600,000 wounded in 21 years of war. These figures were deliberately falsified during the war by the North Vietnamese Communists to avoid demoralizing the population."
That results in a total of approximately 5.4 million killed in the war. And that doesn't include the deaths in neighboring Laos and Cambodia.
A helpful summary of all this can be found on this "Google Answers" page.
A footnote: 11,465 of the Americans killed in Vietnam were teenagers.
While even 2 million killed in such a small country seems almost unfathomable, apparently the actual number is much larger. In addition to Americans killed, there were also 223,748 South Vietnamese soldiers killed, as well as 5,282 of other nationalities.
According to the Agence France Presse, "the true civilian casualties of the Vietnam War were 2,000,000 in the North, and 2,000,000 in the South. Military casualties were 1.1 million killed and 600,000 wounded in 21 years of war. These figures were deliberately falsified during the war by the North Vietnamese Communists to avoid demoralizing the population."
That results in a total of approximately 5.4 million killed in the war. And that doesn't include the deaths in neighboring Laos and Cambodia.
A helpful summary of all this can be found on this "Google Answers" page.
A footnote: 11,465 of the Americans killed in Vietnam were teenagers.
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I saw this memorial two weeks ago and it is a powerful testament to the true cost of war. It is set into a hill like an enormous black granite headstone, and it takes several minutes to walk by it. As I looked over the thousands of names, I was almost in tears.
# posted by 
: June 16, 2005 9:40 PM
: June 16, 2005 9:40 PM
It seems to have that effect on almost everyone, regardless of their political persuasion or their thoughts and feelings about the war. It's a pretty incredible place -- especially at night.
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