The Spirit of War - Chau Ta

The Vietnam War inflicted pain on many Vietnamese and American families. Over 300,000 people died during this tragic 20-year conflict. Despite the international treaties established during the Geneva Convention of 1949 against the inhumane treatment of prisoners of war and wartime civilians, the Vietnam War did not abide by these terms. There are many accounts regarding the torture of war captives that were beat with fists, clubs, and rifle butts. This brutality caused the death of many soldiers in prison. Although many bodies were identified after the end of the war, the bodies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers have not been accounted for and given the proper burial. In the Vietnamese culture, it is important to provide a proper burial for deceased family members in order to give the spirit peace. It is thought that wandering spirits that are not given the proper burial will stay to haunt the living. Therefore, Vietnamese culture is deeply rooted with superstitions that dictate the appropriate treatment of the body after death.

My father was a soldier of the Southern Vietnamese army and my mother was a high school student in Saigon during the war. Regardless of their role during this time, it is apparent that the war left permanent and ineradicable marks on my parents. My parents often retold many stories about the war as I was growing up; however, one story in particular embraced the ongoing impact of the war.

My mother recently told me about a friend that she had reconnected with though our social network at temple. This friend was married to one of the soldiers that never returned home from the war, which was very common for many families. As my mother retold the story, she noted the difficult times that her friend must have endured as a single mother after the war. The widowed friend had raised her child alone and never remarried.

Despite the child’s search efforts since the war, there had been no indication of her father’s survival. As such, a proper burial was never performed. His only “existence” came from her mother’s stories. Now an adult in her 30s, the child continued to stay close by her mother’s side. The mother had no other family; her only family was her child and her “husband.” Regardless of what others said and the speculation over the soldier’s death, the friend said that she never stopped seeing or speaking to her “husband.” To her, he was still alive. He had never left her side, but no one else could see or hear him. My mother remembered asking her friend to describe her husband, but the image that she portrayed was of the man that my mother remembered over 30 years ago. The husband had not aged and had not changed from the day he left for war; he remained dressed in uniform and was still optimistic about serving for his country.

My mother and others close to the family often witnessed the friend wandering around aimlessly. No one, even her child, understood what she was doing. The friend claimed that her husband and his whisperings were guiding her, telling her where to go and what to do. No one could pull her from this part of her life. He was “real” to her.

My mother also remembered asking the child about her encounters with her father. She never saw or heard from him like her mother did. The only images of her father came from old photographs and what she saw in her dreams. But he never looked the way that her mother described. He was always drenched in blood and screaming in pain. The child said that this dream never changed for her; it was a recurring nightmare. She could never feel the warm presence that her mother did.

Stories of soldiers that remained missing in action and the spirit that stayed were very common in the aftermath of the war. For many families, the search never ended and for some, the “soldier” never left. The Vietnam landscape remains covered with bodies awaiting the proper burial to give peace to these spirits.