Ho Chi Minh - A Journal Entry

The soft-spoken man brushes the ground, and underneath disheveled brown forsaken leaves, lies the faint outline of a rectangle. He bends down solemnly and steadily lifts what now appears to be the entrance to a tunnel.

Other foreigners around me join me in this strange scene of tourism- families and couples are each accompanied by their own local guide. Everyone, as if in a synchronized act, fawns over this magic trick and whips out their camera. The guides demonstrate how to enter the tunnel and tells us to follow. 

Besides the claustrophobia accompanied by crawling through the tunnels, it was an awe-inspiring experience for my dad and me. 

During the Vietnam War,  the U.S. relied heavily on aerial bombing, while local troops went underground in order to survive and continue their "guerrilla" tactics against the much better-supplied enemy. The tunnels of Củ Chi are small, but nonetheless a historical part of an immense network underlying much of the country. 

I flash back to the highlighted term in a high school world history class: guerrilla warfare. We empathized with American soldiers who wrote letters home about great loss and wartime struggles. But we missed the striking reality of what it means to have war on your own soil. 

Even for a progressive California public high school, history was taught to us with bias. Terms were firmly bolded and highlight accompanied by matching definitions to be found in Appendix A. Exams tested our knowledge of these terms, training us to view them as facts of life. 

The Trail of Tears was only referred to as an act of genocide if the teacher felt especially obliged to- see Manifest Destiny. Our Eurocentric curriculum downplayed the role that conquest played in the spread of Christianity- see Father Junipero Serra. Most of the Indian history I learned dwelled on customs rarely observed today, like sati- widows sacrificing themselves in the flames of their deceased husbands' funeral pyres. 

Like all stories, history reflects its teller. And it permeates our books, brains, and bodies.

Small Saigon Moments