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11 Anguish on the Home Front
- University of Nebraska Press
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11 ANGUISH ON THE HOME FRONT TIPPED OFF IN ADVANCE BY THE NETWORKS, THE FAMILY bunched expectantly around the TV in Chole and Lalo's home on Bohannon Drive, Santa Clara, to watch the film of the Hanoi parade. They were unprepared for the fury of the crowds and the physical threat to the Americans . They could barely distinguishEverett in the melee of flailing arms and kicking legs. Unwilling to watch him beaten yet unable to avert their eyes, the family watched transfixed. It was the first live-action film they had seen of him in almost ayear-and-ahalf , when NBC had shown clips from a propaganda movie prepared by North Vietnamese and Japanese photographers. Then they had seen Everett prodded along a road by an armed Vietnamese until he was later "interrogated " by a military officer. They could not have known that this was staged by the Vietnamese, nor that Everett had lost his temper during the charade and tried to outdistance himself from the armed man in a pith helmet. Nevertheless, the family was cheered by Everett's photographic image because it showed him alert and uninjured. Now, however, as they watched the throngs of crazed Vietnamese chanting and bashing the stragglingline of captive pilots, their spirits plummeted. An ocean apart, they could only pray for his safety. Their delight in seeing him living and breathing was so brief that it left no feeling of joy.When the black and white clip was through, they were again left on the outside of their aviator's tomb of silence. Only this time their dread was heightened because of what they had just witnessed. Two full years of waiting and hoping had gradually changed all of them. It wasas if they had been seasoned by the years. They had steeped themselves 152 ANGUISH ON THE HOME FRONT 153 in the history of that distant land, scouring the public libraries and seizing on any recommended book or magazine article. There was not much in print but it was enough to advance them far beyond their initial concept of Indochina as just another geographical blip somewhere in the East. Neither of Everett's parents was handicapped by their lack of formal education. The material had such compelling relevance. They turned the pages of Vietnamese history not so much out of curiosity as from a compulsion to learn. It taught them about the ancient land of their son's captivity and its strange natives who could so easily snuff out his young life. In time, their new knowledge gave them the confidence to articulate uncommon views. But they weren't ready yet to express them outside the home. Forever conscious of the boundaries between private license and public constraints, they dared not expose the family free-for-alls to the watchful and critical eye of the public. Chole had always been the most curiousabout the broad sweep of historical events. Her romance with history began in childhood when she played among the ruins of a Christian mission at Lompoc, California. The faded glory of her surroundings made her think about her roots and her ancestors. Where did they come from? Why were some in her family light-complected and blue-eyed while others resembled burnished, copper-colored Aztecs? The more Chole researched the more she wanted to get out and see the legacy of Mexico in California. She took the initiativewhen Everett was still in high school and by the time of his capture had visited allbut one of the twenty-one Christian missions. Chole brought the same keen inquiry to her studies of Vietnamese history. Though eager to learn, she was a slow, plodding reader who dimmed her bedside lamp with a newspaper so her husband could sleep undisturbed while she held her book open late into the night. As she read about the millenium of subjugation by the Chinese, followed by a century of French colonial rule, she began to doubt the wisdom of the American presence in Vietnam. No people of another culture had ever triumphed permanently over the Vietnamese . How, then, did Americans believe they could influence or squelch what other empires, with closer links and historical ties had failed to do? The politicians said they were containing communism. They spoke of a domino theory: if South Vietnam fell then neighboring countries would follow suit. Chole began to ask herself why, if the battle was against communism, the fight was not taken to the heart of the conspiracy...