A Son's Journey One Year Later

It was a year ago that I embarked on my famous journey to participate in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund's Memory Day Ceremony held across from "The Wall" in Washington D.C. I had never been on a more significant journey filled with both awe and sorrow. It was there on that hot steamy Saturday morning that I inducted my late father Luis Eduardo Rosas-Luca Sr. into the VVMF Virtual Honor Roll. As the sole family representative and only son, it was a duty of utmost importance that I attend and bestow this honor for my late father who had served in Vietnam from 1965 to 1966.

It has been year this weekend since I stood on that grass when I took this photo of the 300 families that were in attendance. It was very hot & humid with rain appearing here and there. In a sense, the overcast during the ceremony was fitting for in a sense it reflected both my happiest times and the complicated relationship I had with my father. The war in Vietnam had long passed yet the echoes of the war lived on through him and in unexpected ways through me.By accepting the connection to Agent Orange linking my father's death and my own health problems and thus further by extension that of my children's complications, the truth has set us free. There is no longer blame or the "Why Me?" or the fists waving at some unseen god's indifference to our sufferings. Both the problem and the responsibility is entirely man made and man owned. The important thing to know is that it was not our fault nor our fathers who were exposed to this toxin that damaged their genes before they brought us into the world after their tours ended. For the time being, there is no medical help or proper way to connect the toxin to our own complications that any government agency or medical insurance company will validate thus we are on our own. And while there is nothing that can be done for those of us carrying the multitude of ailments inherited by Agent Orange, we must all find our way to soldier on. In one sense I am grateful to know this community of sorts comprised of Vietnam Veterans and their families. I am grateful to know that I was not the only one who had a complex relationship with a war we did not fight that raged within our father's psyche. Knowing the truth has given me the freedom to learn, and to respect the man like I never knew before while he was alive. While much of the war may be never truly understood and its lessons lost on future generations, it is up to us the children of this war to carry on the legacy and honor our fathers who fought bravely on behalf of the unqualified against the unfortunate for an ungrateful nation. In this task, we shall never waiver nor shall we ever forget. 

Remembering My Father

It was three years ago that I got the call that my father had passed away in the night. He went quickly from Pulmonary Fibrosis which doctors link to a scarring of his lungs from a "toxic substance" at the ages of 25-26. It was during the ages of 25-26 that my father Luis Eduardo Rosas-Luca was then an Avionics Specialist 4th Class serving in the United States Army in Vietnam where he had been repeatedly been exposed to the toxic defoliant Agent Orange in an effort to deprive the Viet Cong of the sanctuary of the jungle for cover. My father lived an extraordinary life despite being shortened by ten years, he left large shoes to fill which to this day I continue to struggle to fill.

Since that time I had attempted to unite the surviving family in vain. No one can say I didn't try. But in that time I did accomplish one mission he never completed and that was to return of W.O. Douglas Niles's dog tags which I took to the Vietnam Memorial Wall when I went there this last June to induct my father into the Vietnam Memorial Fund's Virtual Honor Roll. And while some of my efforts bore no lasting fruit, the work continues as we work on a screen play dramatizing the story of his tour in Vietnam and continue to sell copies of his book MY FATHERS WAR IN VIETNAM AND THE LONG SHADOW OF THE HON CONG MOUNTAIN. And as we hold a private memorial service for him today at our Koyasan Buddhist Temple (for which he was given the honor of being presented a posthumous Buddhist name) we continue to remember all that he had taught us and the example by which he chose to live by. We hope somewhere out there he's pleased with our efforts. But there is much more to do and we must be ever mindful that as we continue to carry on his legacy, we too are creating our own legacy and must never forget those who came before us and showed us how to live. Until we meet again, smile from heaven dad because we are thinking of you.

Just as my fingernails are stained with the pigment from balsam flowers,
my heart is painted with the teachings of my parents.
Although the stars in the sky are countable,
the teachings of my parents are not.
Just as ships that run in the night are guided to safety by the North star,
I am guided by my parents who gave birth to me and watch over me. 

-Chinsagu No Hana

Reflections on the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Memorial Service 2015

This year marks the 70th year since the A-bomb attacks that devastated the cities of Hiroshima & Nagasaki Japan during the closing days of World War II. As done for the previous 35 years, a solemn memorial service was conducted in Little Tokyo at the Koyasan Temple hosted by photo journalist Darrell Miho in association with the ASA American Society of Hiroshima-Nagasaki A-Bomb Survivors which included guest speaker Mr. Junji Sarashina (ASA Director, Hiroshima Survivor & Korean War Veteran) who we have had the pleasure of speaking with in years past. (See below 2014 photo)

With each year, prayers and candles are offered to the over 100,000 civilians who were killed in these twin bombings and for those Hibakusha who are still suffering. Each year we hear a survivors account of what it was like to see so many people dead and dying in graphic detail. Such accounts are important to understand what took place there for as Mr. Miho had reminded us that there are many Hibakusha left who still can not or will not speak of the horrors they experienced 70 years ago. In this years closing speech of appreciation, Mr. Sarashina took us by surprise when he altered his planned speech and mentioned our little girl Mia who could be seen running around the Temple. He had over heard how her birth defects and developmental delays are linked to my father's exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. In a heartfelt moment, Mr Sarashina had connected the suffering of our family to that of his own family to illustrate the negative lasting effects of war that continue on long after the last bomb had dropped. We've always been asked by Japanese people what was our connection. For the last six years it had been to pray for the souls lost but since learning of our own war legacy, we've come to understand the legacy of our war had deeply connected us to their war. We are all victims of events that happened beyond our control and at the same time we are all advocates for peace. We wish Mr. Sarashina and the rest of the surviving Hibakusha and their families peace. 

To find out about the ASA please visit Hibakushas Legacy