The End of an American Hero

When I think of #JohnMcCain's passing, I recall his bravery in the USS Forestal incident during the Vietnam War and horrors he endured as an American POW in the infamous Hanoi Hilton. I can not say I have always agreed with his politics or how he split from his first wife but at this time of his passing, I am left with a sense of emptiness and sorrow for an American Hero who has left us behind. I will always respect his service to our country. If I could offer one thing to surmise his sense of duty, loyalty, and service to this country, it is this final clip from The Bridges of Toko Ri.

Godspeed John McCain. 

Godspeed, Fair Winds, and Following Seas.
#RIPJohnMccain #JohnMcCain

A Hard Look at Ken Burns Vietnam

Those who had fought in Vietnam recalled the Thousand Yard Stare of the traumatised soldier as he returned from the field of battle carrying the emotional scars of those lost deep within him. While this author will never know this experience first hand, I can suffice to say that in the three episodes I have viewed thus far have left me emotionally spent. This has been a hard thing to watch every hurtful morsel of truth that has come out. I'm sickened, saddened, even mortified, and just plain shocked that this happened. Worse, knowing fully that those at the highest levels of the American government including LBJ knew this was a disaster before he made his famous speech of July 1965 that sent my late father to Vietnam to fight a war that was already lost. Had the US Marines and Air Mobile Division not arrived in 1965, Saigon would have fell to the North by early 1966. All good intentions aside, the American Government knew as early as 1963 particularly after the coup & assassinations of Diem and Nhu that further American involvement would only delay the inevitable. But those above them kept this from the public. To Burns credit, he shared candid interviews with former NVA & Viet Cong fighters who fought our troops. It is safe to say they controlled over 50% of the countryside. It was with every wrongful death we contributed to, ten volunteers to fight for the VC would emerge. Our vast superior firepower could not account for the terrain nor the climate. Not knowing the culture or the history of Vietnam did not help either. France had left a mess in thier wake. Cold War tensions, threats of Soviet World Domination, and pressure from the French led the Americans to drop our early support for Ho Chi Minh (who we helped his fight against the Japanese) and back the French setting the stage for the greater tragedy to come. After a series of operations where American Advisors were left with ARVN troops ccommanded by Diem Cronies who refused to fight or on occassion cough on patrol to deliberately reveal their locations to the enemy, it was clear to those Americans on the ground that this was a lost cause yet stubborn Texas pride of LBJ went in anyways knowing fully he was betting on a bad horse. And there the American President went on to lie to the nation and justified a commitment to fight Communist aggression in South East Asia on a scale that would kill millions of Vietnamese on both sides and some 58,300+ Americans. By taking charge with American Combat Troops, we essentially took the fight away from ARVN and took full ownership of this debacle thus leading to what the NVA so rightfully called "The American War."

I can not imagine what many of you who were there are going through watching this. Even more so for our Vietnamese friends who must feel betrayed by Saigon's ineffective corrupt leaders who contributed to this human catastrophe and ultimate capitulation. They had an opportunity to build a nation. Instead, those who could make the most difference made out for themselves. Sooner or later the truth had to come out. I am certain there are some truths Ken Burns could not cover but from my perspective I feel he deserves an Emmy for this if not a Kennedy Honors for this arduous task of compiling the heroic struggles, the lies, and the human cost of the war. It is clear that America has not learned from the painful lessons of Vietnam. It is my hope that this documentary is shown to young people so that they will learn the mistakes of this tragic era and work to ensure that such endevors no matter how well intentioned are not repeated again. Every heartbreaking moment should be watched, discussed, and studied. It is only though confronting this past that ghosts of Vietnam can begin to find peace. In the end we will look back to Vietnam and take a hard look at where we are now. If you do not have access to PBS toview this, please check listing on the internet. The Truth is yours.

Gentleman Warrior Lt. General Hal Moore Passes Away at 94

As many of you may now have already heard, a true American Hero has left us. Lt. General Hal Moore (who commanded the 7th Cavalry during the Battle of the Ia Drange Valley of Tears November 1965) has quietly passed away just shy of his 95th birthday. He has now boarded the last chopper for a final flight out of the LZ with his beloved wife Julia and his trusted friend CSM Basil Plumley to a better place where he will be greeted by formations of his former Sky Troopers who stand at attention awaiting to salute his arrival. He represented the best of us during the worst of times.He was a true Gentleman warrior. He will forever bear a special place in the heart of this proud son of a former 1st Air Cavalry Sky Trooper and many others who descend from them. Like his best friend Joe Galloway, many of us owe Lt. General Hal Moore a debt of gratitude. For if he had not told his story many of us whose fathers served there and could not speak while they were alive we would never have known of the sacrifice and bravery of the American Soldier at the base of the Chu Pong Massif. For now that he is gone, there will never be another Gentlemen Warrior like him. Godspeed General and thank you for a lifetime of service and the example you set of which we could only dream of emulating. God Bless & Godspeed.

 

Garry Owen

A Tale of Two Propagandists

Earlier this month we had learned that the infamous Vietnam War Communist Propagandist Trịnh Thị Ngọ better known to former American GI's as "Hanoi Hannah" had passed away in the former Saigon at the age of 87. There has been much said among many American Veterans who many found her choices in music and outrageous exaggerations of the Communist efforts to be entertaining and infuriating. Her broadcasts were largely heard in what was formally known as I-Corps and largely heard by the US Marines who fought in Quang Tri Province along the former DMZ that separated the north from the Republic of Vietnam.

It has been said by those who do not harbor hard feelings that she did her job to incite mistrust through her Communist propaganda. As the son of a Vietnam Veteran I have little sympathy for her. She is said she believed in the NVA written statements she broadcast. It is not believed that anyone deserted by her broadcasts but it has been said that many Marines would often toast beer cans when she would mention their exact unit names as being destroyed or captured. Her broadcasts ran for 8 years and ended at the end of the American Withdrawal from Vietnam. She died on October 2nd 2016 at the age of 87.

Moving back a bit earlier, we at American Mishima had set out to write about American & Japanese interaction and in doing so we are able to tie this article to a better known Japanese Propagandist named Iva Toguri better known as "Tokyo Rose." Often we hear comparisons of Hanoi Hannah to Tokyo Rose but here in lies the difference. Where as Trịnh Thị Ngọ was an unapologetic die hard Communist who believed in what she was doing, Ms. Toguri was in an entirely different situation. You see Ms. Toguri was an American born Nisei from Los Angeles who in 1941 left for Japan to visit an ailing relative. Once war broke out she was pressured by the military government of Hideki Tojo to renounce her American Citizenship and participate in broadcasts denouncing the United States. She refused their demands and subsequently was denied a ration card for food. By 1943 she was forced to broadcast the "Zero Hour" show where she called herself "Orphan Annie" often referring to her "fellow Orphans" aka Americans. She along with captured Americans who smuggled her food made these broadcasts but never denounced the United States. 

After the war Ms. Toguri was charged with 8 counts of treason based on some shaky prejudiced evidence. They convicted her on one count and she served 6 years of a ten year prison sentence. Talk about a raw deal! She was later granted a full pardon by President Gerald Ford in 1977. She ran a small grocery store in Chicago and died there in 2006 at the age of 90. By evidence, there is no real comparison between Trịnh Thị Ngọ and Iva Toguri. Some would say Ngo's broadcasts were a cheap imitation of Toguri but that would not accurate or even close. Both women had a job to do but their motivations were entirely different. While we do feel sympathetic to the indignities of Ms. Toguri, In regards to Ms. Ngo I would best quote my late father in who once spoke of his Vietnam experience as leaving him feeling nothing. The war is long over and hard feelings do subside over time. Perhaps in time, so will ours. All we can wish for these two ladies is that "May they both have found peace."

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

50 Years Ago This Week: America Enters The Vietnam War

It was 50 years ago this week in 1965 that then Resident Lyndon Baines Johnson announced on American Television that he would be sending the Air Mobile Division to Vietnam thus embarking our nation to a war few people understood yet wanted to fight that tore our nation apart. 

Here is an excerpt from that famous speech:

"We intend to convince the Communists that we cannot be defeated by force of arms or by superior power. They are not easily convinced. In recent months they have greatly increased their fighting forces and their attacks and the number of incidents. I have asked the Commanding General, General Westmoreland, what more he needs to meet this mounting aggression. He has told me. We will meet his needs.

I have today ordered to Viet-Nam the Air Mobile Division and certain other forces which will raise our fighting strength from 75,000 to 125,000 men almost immediately. Additional forces will be needed later, and they will be sent as requested."

Among the many men of the 1st Air Cavalry Air Mobile Division that would be sent halfway around the world to Vietnam was my late father Luis E. Rosas-Luca seen here from his bunk aboard the troop ship that took him to the war zone.

Memory Day 2015

This year as in many years passed, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund honored 165 former servicemen who died from service related illnesses connected to the Vietnam War in Washington n D.C. at the Vietnam Memorial. Better known to many as “The Wall,” the Vietnam memorial served as a backdrop for a ceremony that had over 1400people in attendance among them yours truly the son of former 146^th TAW Alumni Luis E. Rosas who had made the journey to honor his father and induct him into the VVMF Virtual Honor Roll which contains the names and pictures of some 2000 Vietnam Veterans who largely died from complications related to their exposure to Agent Orange during their tours of Vietnam. 

Luis’s surviving son American Mishima author Louis Edward Rosas Jr. was accompanied by former U.S. Army Sergeant Jim Beaver who served with Luis Rosas at Fort Benning and at An Khe Vietnam as members of the 1^st Air Cavalry Division, 15^th Transportation Corps Battalion, Delta Company to pay tribute to his service during 1965-1966 as a member of the Avionics Shop which paved the way for a lifetime career in both civilian and military aviation maintenance. This was a deep emotional journey which we plan to write about in a future book titled "A SON'S JOURNEY TO THE WALL."

The Memory Day Service is an annual event. If you have a family member who has passed away from a service related illness from the Vietnam War, you may apply to have them inducted into the Virtual Honor Roll whose names and photos will one day go on display at a future planned VVMF museum set to be constructed adjacent to the Vietnam Memorial Wall. Selected non-perishable items left at The Wall will one day go on display there. 

Since the Wall's construction, people have left everything from teddy bears to dog tags at the base of the Wall. For Louis Rosas Jr. he left the dog tags of his father’s friend he had kept and a newly released paperback copy of his father’s book MY FATHER’S WAR IN VIETNAM AND THE LONG SHADOW OF THE HON CONG MOUNTAIN. He did this so that in his own words as he refers’ to his father gracing the cover:”We did this so long after I am gone, my father’s smile will still be here to greet visitors and in doing do live on.”

To Read about Luis E. Rosas life and service in Vietnam please visit:

MY FATHER'S WAR IN VIETNAM AND THE LONG SHADOW OF THE HON CONG MOUNTAIN

To find out more about the VVMF Memory Day please visit:

VVMF MEMORY DAY