Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday recalled several images from his time as a young lieutenant in the Navy during the Vietnam War and remarked on the extraordinary changes that have taken place in the country since that time.
“I first came here in 1968 and I can still remember securing a short pass to come up from the Mekong Delta to then Saigon, and sitting on the deck of this hotel in a momentary pause from all the craziness,” he said at the Rex Hotel in Vietnam.
From that vantage point, he said, he could look out at the city and “in the evening … I could see flares popping around the city, lighting up the night and the perimeter. And in the distance, you could even hear the burst of gunfire occasionally, a C-130 with something called Puff the Magic Dragon shooting in the distance.”
“It was literally surreal, an oasis of sorts, but still a war zone,” he continued.
But standing here today, at the same hotel, same rooftop, he said, he has a very different view.
“[It’s] a very different country, a very different time,” he said. “The traffic outside, the remarkable amount of energy, is just bursting.”
“The sounds you hear are of people today energetically joining together peacefully going about the business of their lives,” he recalled.
Kerry made the observations while delivering a speech in Ho Chi Minh City at a ceremony establishing a Fulbright University, a project of Harvard University’s Vietnam program that is being established with $20 million in assistance from the U.S. government.
Ho Chi Minh City has donated more than 60 acres of land in the Saigon High Tech Park for the university.
Former Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., another Vietnam veteran who was on hand for the ceremony, will serve as chairman of the university’s Board of Trustees. Kerrey served as a Navy SEAL while in Vietnam and was awarded the Medal of Honor for leading a SEAL team mission in which he was severely wounded by a grenade.
Recognizing Kerrey, his former Senate colleague, at the event, Kerry went on to call the war an “indelible but an increasingly distant memory.”
“And for most it’s not a memory at all,” he said. “Certainly, the students who are gong to enroll at this university are far more interested in plugging into the world economy than in being stuck in the past or reliving memories of events that took place long before they were born.”
That’s a reality, he said, that is “clearly” reflected in the changing relationship between Vietnam and the United States.
“So my friends we have come a long way together,” he said. “And we also know that to foster real economic opportunity for the Vietnamese people … to have a free market and a free marketplace of ideas … the freedom starts with education.”
Kerry received several combat medals during his Navy tours in Vietnam, including the Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts.
During his 2004 run against President George W. Bush, Kerry came under fire for throwing his service ribbons but not his medals over a fence at the U.S. Capitol during a 1971 anti-war rally.
Critics also questioned how he attained at least some of the medals, especially during his time as the officer in charge of a Swift Boat in 1969. A group of pro-Bush Vietnam Veterans formed the group Swift boat Veterans for Truth to question his service record. Defenders of his record, including 10 crewmen who served under his command, said the accusations were false and politically motivated.
