McCain's as Pow Remembered in Vietnam Book

Simple humanity converts a foe
13:24' 15/08/2007 (GMT+7)

VietNamNet Bridge – Human kindness can be found wherever people are, despite the geographical, language, cultural and ideological barriers between them.

That is what an American pilot came to understand after 20 hours in "enemy territory". And it is also the message Le Lan Anh, a 54-year-old writer, wanted to communicate with her first book, which has just been published by the Literature Publishing House.

Entitled O Dat Ke Thu (In Enemy Territory), the short story was inspired by the author's experiences during the American War, when she was evacuated to a northern rural village.

The life of the farmers there would have remained calm, if in 1967, in the midst of the American military's bombing campaign to destroy the north of Vietnam, the villagers did not catch "an important" enemy.

The "important" prisoner, a US bomber pilot, turned out to be John McCain, who went on to become a Republican Party Senator, and now a candidate in the US 2008 presidential election.

"I had no intention of writing something strange about the war," Anh said, "I just wrote because of my obsession. I wrote what I know and what I experienced."

Anh said she might have forgotten John McCain, had he not returned to Vietnam in 2000, visited Hoa Lo Prison in central Hanoi and spared no effort in trying to improve relations between Vietnam and the US.

When she came across him in the media, she immediately recognised him as the "important" prisoner from the village.

"I was moved by his friendliness, and I realised that I had to write about him," she said.

Before she started writing, Anh said she gathered as much information as she could from articles, books and films created by Americans on the Viet cong (the name the Americans gave to Vietnamese liberation fighters).

Through her research, Anh came to know that the Americans had a very poor understanding of, and even distorted information about, the liberation fighters.

In films and books, the Americans described the liberation fighters in an insulting way. She pointed to the films Deer Hunter and We Were Soldiers as prime examples.

Her book O Dat Ke Thu tells of the relationship that develops between a farmer named Bi, his daughter Na and a captured American pilot, Jim.

During the 20 hours they spend together in Ha Village, the prisoner experiences the cruelty of war, the hardships faced by the local people and is moved by the simple humanity inside the little girl, Na.

Despite the hardships of her own life, in an area bearing continuous bombing from the Americans, Na puts all her efforts into taking care of the prisoner, and even saves his life, sheltering him from a bomb that falls nearby.

Na's kindness, and witnessing the misery of the people on the ground, changes Jim's mind about "returning to the sky" to continue bombing northern Vietnam.

"Alluring and moving," that's the best phrase to describe the book, said military writer Chu Lai. "Her book is a fairly soft blend between literature, poetry and cinema; between description and stylisation.

She has helped to create a new perspective on the war. This topic should be written about with great care, otherwise one risks stepping in one's predecessor's footprints."

(Source: Viet Nam News)