The Longest Rescue: The Life and Legacy of Vietnam POW William A. Robinson

6. An Iconic Image

185 6 An Iconic Image in october 1994 bill Robinson unexpectedly received a letter from Le manh Thich, a documentary film director at the central science documentary film studio in hanoi. Thich explained that “ever since the sounds of guns and bombs” had ceased in his country, he, as a filmmaker, had “met many people from both sides who fought in the war,” including “some former american soldiers who were visiting the battlefields again.” Thich then made a startling revelation: i had a chance to visit a small town in ha Tinh on the central coast the other day. on september 20, 1965 when the Vietnam War was getting fiercer, you were in huon Khe, ha Tinh. The first Vietnamese you met there was a little girl who was a guerrilla. i would like to tell you that the girl is still alive. she is currently working at a hospital in ha Tinh as a medical examiner. she has a dog and three children. her name is nguyen Kim Lai and lives at 1 dong hai-putong bao ha, ha Tinh. she is not wealthy, and her life is still hard for her but, her family is very close. she agreed to meet with me. We enjoyed talking and she talked about you a lot to me. you must have made a strong impression on her. she told me that she would be very happy if she could meet you again. if it happened, she said, it would mean a lot to her and also to other people.1 nguyen Kim Lai was the young Vietnamese militia girl who escorted Robinson in the staged propaganda photo take shortly after his capture on 20 september 1965. Thich proposed that Robinson come to Vietnam and meet with nguyen Kim Lai, while he, as a documentary filmmaker, recorded the important reunion. Thich had already enlisted the assistance of nhK, the Japan broadcast- 186 THE LONGEST RESCUE ing corporation, and informed Robinson that a representative from the company, based in Washington, d.c., would contact him soon.2 Two weeks later Robinson received a letter from Rumiko sakai, the Washington-based representative of nhK. she, too, encouraged Robinson to accept the invitation to return to Vietnam and meet nguyen Kim Lai; she predicted that “it would be a wonderful opportunity for everyone to look back [on] the history and think about the meaning of it.”3 nhK’s interest in the relatively unknown former PoW certainly came as a surprise to Robinson, but he accepted their overtures as “legitimate” and never considered the letter a “hoax.” Their emphasis on the capture photo and consistent references to a “human interest” story made sense to Robinson, who was aware that Vietnam was reaching out internationally for new allies following the collapse of the soviet union. and Japan would be the documentary ’s primary target audience, though there was the possibility of a future release in the united states. nevertheless, this was not an easy decision for Robinson. ora mae supported her husband’s increased involvement in PoW organizations and backed his regular attendance at PoW reunions. Returning to Vietnam to face his former captors, however, required Robinson to make a bold, perhaps dangerous, and potentially painful step. aside from any personal risks to Robinson, the issue of missing-in-action servicemen was an ongoing point of contention between the two countries, and he was sensitive to the concerns of such groups as the national League of families, which opposed normalizing relations with Vietnam until it was satisfied with the levels of access to and cooperation by the Vietnamese government in its accounting for missing service personnel.4 The lack of a precedent also complicated the matter for Robinson . he did not know a single former prisoner who had made the return trip to Vietnam. additionally, he knew how many of his close PoW friends would respond to this type of invitation: “fuck ’em. nothing has changed.” such conversations would, in effect, be a waste of time. in the end, what concerned Robinson most was the “bigger diplomatic picture.” he did not want to do anything to create an incident between the united states and Vietnam that An Iconic Image 187 could interfere with the ongoing dialogue between the two countries . before he made a final decision, Robinson contacted another former Vietnam PoW, douglas (Pete) Peterson. held for six and a half years in north...