Thread by @Joshua_Luna

CW: Anti-Asian racism, war

When I was a teen, I worked as a summer hire filing Vietnam War records. I couldn't articulate it then, but as a Fil-Am, working there deeply affected me.

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Imagery of the Vietnam War is so one-sided that many have been desensitized to the trauma & suffering of Vietnamese people—even AsAms ourselves. By that age I had already long been taught to identify as an un-hypenated American & root for Rambo & other violent white saviors. 2/

So that's why, when an older white co-worker—a Vietnam War veteran—suggested my Asian presence was triggering to him, I internalized it by learning to walk on egg shells around him & make myself smaller. It didn't matter that I was Filipino. To him, I was just another g**k. 3/

The US now recognizes the suffering of the 58k soldiers who died & vets who returned with ailments & PTSD—so common that the term “Nam flashback” is ubiquitous—but that empathy hasn't extended towards the innocent SEA lives that were also affected, both during the war & after. 4/

The US dropped more bombs on Vietnam than it did in all of WW2, but didn't stop there—it also dropped 2 million+ tons of ordnance on Laos for 9 straight years (making Laos the most bombed country per capita in history) & 2.7 million in Cambodia as part of its "Secret War." 5/

2/3 of Vietnam's 3 million+ deaths were civilians. If that wasn't enough, they're still dying today. Since the war ended, nearly 40k have died from unexploded bombs & landmines left behind, & 67K more blinded or maimed—together that's double the number of US war deaths. 6/

While PTSD is a serious issue, "Nam flashback" suggests the pain of war for US vets lives in the mind & the physical threat is buried in the past. But for Vietnamese, Lao, & Khmer victims of America's relentless bombing, the threat remains buried in the ground they live on. 7/

International law requires the US to clean up unexploded ordnance in SEA but the US is skirting responsibility. As a result, cleanup is estimated to take 100s of years at the current rate. (It's worth noting the US war in Afghanistan is creating similar conditions as we speak) 8/

Similarly, the US largely ignores the 20-30k Ameriasians fathered & abandoned by US soldiers in Vietnam—legacies of US sexual plunder—& the enduring impact of Agent Orange, which is so destructive it altered Vietnamese survivors' DNA & gave their kids debilitating deformities. 9/

It's not hard to understand why Filipinx have an affinity for our SEA neighbors—we also experienced war & genocide at the hands of the US in 1899, which is sometimes called "The First Vietnam" because it set a precedent for US intervention/exploitation in the SEA region. 10/

But on a personal level, I saw the inherited legacies of war in SEA refugees—whose AsAm kids were my high school classmates. Their existence was all but criminalized, pushing them towards teen pregnancies & gangs & putting them on the school to prison to deportation pipeline. 11/

So in discussing the Vietnam War, it's not enough to talk about US vets. We must also recognize the PTSD & continued terror that Vietnamese & other SEA victims experience, & acknowledge America's racist institutional animosity towards SEA (abroad & in US) that persists today. 12/

Note: All of the information and stats talked about here are from publicly available sources. Also, please be respectful to Vietnamese people and remember to call the war by its full name ("Vietnam War") and not shorthand it as "Vietnam." 13/

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