Capitalism has triumphed over the ‘domino theory’

Michael Moriarty
Posted 1/15/15

Editor’s note: For 12 days in March of 2013, Michael Moriarty – who served with the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam – returned to the country with Gus Marsella to visit Michael Cull, a wartime buddy …

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Capitalism has triumphed over the ‘domino theory’

Posted

Editor’s note: For 12 days in March of 2013, Michael Moriarty – who served with the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam – returned to the country with Gus Marsella to visit Michael Cull, a wartime buddy who now lives and works there. We asked Mike to share his experiences and thoughts from the journey. This is the second in a series of his reports.

The Vietnam War, as we call it, actually began with the end of World War II in the Pacific.

The French were allowed to return to control of their colonial possessions in French Indochina, which included Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. So in 1946, France reestablished its control in Vietnam.

Shortly thereafter, the Viet Minh, who fought against the Japanese in World War II, began fighting against the French. Amazingly, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the previous American president, believed in de-colonization and wanted the French out of Indochina, so Ho Chi Minh had hoped that the U.S. would support Vietnamese independence.

The conflict – the French refer to it as the Indochina War, and the Vietnamese refer to it as the Anti-French Resistance War – lasted from December 1946 until August 1954. Of interest, America provided 70 percent of the French defense budget by 1954, the year that the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu by Ho’s forces.

After the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the French departed, the 1954 Geneva Accords partitioned Vietnam into North and South Vietnam, and the U.S. drifted into what now would become our war in Southeast Asia.

The Geneva Conference (Accords) of 1954 divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel, and among the provisions directed a unification election in July 1956. These elections were never held, as the United States and South Vietnam never signed the accords. Surprisingly, the North Vietnamese were also skeptical of the accords, and they also did not want to align too closely with either Moscow or Beijing at that time. They wanted to be in charge of their own destiny as one country. It was a strange agreement, bound to failure, and in the end North Vietnam was deemed by the United States to be within the communist world. Thus the “domino theory” was born during an April 7, 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower news conference on events unfolding in Southeast Asia. This began an ever-increasing U.S. involvement in what we call the Vietnam War, and the Vietnamese call the American War.

By 1963, there were 16,000 American military personnel in South Vietnam, up from the 900 military advisors Eisenhower had sent in the 1950s. Eventually, 2,594,000 American military personnel served within the borders of South Vietnam, and over 3.4 million men and women served in the South East Asia theater of operations from Jan. 1, 1965, to March 28, 1973. There are 58,196 names of Americans killed listed on the Vietnam Wall memorial.

Yet, I digress. Outside the terminal in Saigon, Mike hailed a cab and directed the driver to take us to the Renaissance Riverside Hotel. We checked in around midnight, and Gus and I stayed at this hotel while Mike made other accommodations for himself. We stayed in Saigon for three days, and on the first morning, March 20, I awoke, opened the curtain to the balcony and was amazed. I was on the 12th floor and had a wonderful view of the Saigon River, and below on the street I could see what looked like thousands of motorcycles speeding around a traffic circle during the morning rush hour and then racing from one traffic light to another in a mob-type drag race.

The population of Vietnam in 1970 was 42.5 million, and today it is 92.5 million. Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) alone has nearly 6 million people, and apparently most of them have motorcycles.

One of my first obligations was to contact Jack Howell, the son of John Howell, publisher of the Warwick Beacon. Jack was the CEO of Prudential Vietnam Assurance Private Ltd., and he and his wife Jen and their children lived in Ho Chi Minh City. John had given me a present for Jen that was from him and his wife Carol. I spoke with Jack on the phone and he offered to take Mike, Gus and myself out to lunch, accompanied by Jen.

Jack and Jen met us at the hotel in the early afternoon. I gave her the present, and after getting to know one another for 30 minutes or so, they took us to a Vietnamese restaurant that I believe was located in an old converted munitions factory.

Anyway, it was an interesting ride through the city to get to this exemplary eating establishment, and the sights and smells of the inner city told me that this trip was going to be much different from what I had expected.

To begin with, Jack has a high-powered job in Vietnam and had a personal driver. During my first trip to Vietnam, I had to hitch rides with GIs in military jeeps or trucks to get anywhere. Now, I was being driven in a large, air-conditioned SUV, and there were no American GIs to be seen. Indeed, I saw very few military personnel, even when I was near Vietnamese military installations.

The sights and vibrant sounds of the city indicated that I was in the biggest capitalistic communistic country on earth. It seemed that all the businesses were privately owned and everything was for sale in this so-called communist country. Was I missing something, or was the hoax continuing?

Once seated in the restaurant, Jen did the ordering for us all, and shortly our table was filled with numerous plates of outstanding local cuisine. We stayed for two or more hours having our fill of delicious food and wonderful conversation with Jack and Jen, and then all too soon it was time to go. Jack had to get back to work, and Jen had to get home as their children were getting out of school. They took us back to our hotel in that nice, air-conditioned SUV, and that wonderful meeting came to a close.

Later on that afternoon, Gus and I walked over to the historic, five-star Rex Hotel. Mike had told us that Vietnam was a high priority tourist destination for Russians on vacation – and to be aware that they were not very sociable to anyone but other Russians.

Well, Gus is an extremely sociable person. He always enjoys entering into conversation with strangers, and this means anyone he meets. His first encounter with a Caucasian stranger was when he politely asked a tourist, who looked like an American, if he was lost as the man was looking around trying to get his bearings. However, the American-looking man was a Russian, and his response to Gus was an abrupt wave off and some incoherent Russian slang. Mike and I joked about that with Gus the entire trip, reminding him that he was not walking the streets of Warwick, he was in Vietnam. We still joke about this American/Russian interaction. Next: Following in the footsteps of the past and getting lost today.

Michael Moriarty, a native of Warwick, graduated from Providence College in 1967 and went into the U.S. Air Force. He completed Officers Candidate School in September 1967 and Undergraduate Pilot Training at Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas, in November 1968, and was assigned to EC-47s in Vietnam. During his career, he flew approximately 140 combat missions, receiving several awards including the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medals. He also served as an air traffic controller and air weapons director with the Air Force. He retired from the Air Force and Rhode Island Air National Guard, where he was on active-duty status, in December 1989. He has also served as the NCIC specialist for the Warwick Police Department, and as a volunteer with the Disabled American Veterans, previously as the commander of the Rhode Island chapter and presently as its treasurer.

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