Ricardo Chavira Chicano

Vietnam Up Close

By Ricardo Chavira, May 20, 2025

Vietnam has been in my head since 1964. That year, as a 14-year-old, I began reading Life Magazine. It regularly published powerful, stark photos of the Vietnam War, conveying the unvarnished realities of combat. One photo showed a wounded Marine reaching out to another stricken comrade. I had never seen war photos in such poignant detail.

I studied the photos through my sturdy anti-communism lens. For years, teachers had portrayed communism as a global cancer that threatened America. I did not question the propaganda. The Cuban Missile Crisis dramatically underscored the dangers of this foreign ideology. Communists were capable of destroying us, I concluded.

In my senior year of high school, I got into my head the unshakable goal of enlisting in the army. I eagerly anticipated my certain posting to Vietnam. My upbringing in a tough Los Angeles neighborhood, too many war movies, and my anti-communism fervor convinced me that combat would be a thrilling experience, one that I would easily survive.

Only Army and Marine recruiters came to my academically moribund high school. They reaffirmed my decision and strengthened my resolve by touting the financial benefits after my soldiering ended. No college recruiters visited. Their absence sent me a message: We are not interested in you.

My close friend Buster Scott and I talked about joining the army together. He shared my sentiments and saw the financial benefits of doing one tour of duty. We became friends in the sixth grade and went through all the rites of passage for young men together. I most vividly recall that my white friend, who lived in a notorious Pacoima housing project, never allowed much bigger Black or Latino bullies to intimidate him. When required, he battled with his fists.

With the summer of 1968 ending, my father convinced me that going to Vietnam was a frightfully bad choice. At his constant urging, I decided at the last minute to try my hand at college. I started my first year at a community college in the fall of 1968. By summer break, I was no longer an anti-communist and opposed the war.

Buster, meanwhile, enlisted in the army and was posted to Vietnam. He was killed in Quang Tin Province when his helicopter was shot down. My friend was 20 years old. I dreamt of Buster for months after his funeral. He spoke to me. The dreams were his way of saying goodbye.

Thirty-nine years after Buster’s death, I entered the Tan Son Nhat Airport terminal in Ho Chi Minh City, expecting to be received by stern, sharply inquisitive officials. I was not mistaken. Every communist country I had visited had a grim, no-nonsense atmosphere in its airports. They reflected the nations’ subdued capitals, downtrodden, subjugated cities.  

I went to Vietnam in 1999 as part of my journalistic work. I was a newspaper editor and planned to have reporters write about the country. News accounts described an economically blossoming place that communists tightly controlled. 

Unavoidably, I remembered my friend’s tragic death. He was not a fallen hero, as we nowadays call any soldier killed in combat. Buster, in 1969, was arrested for driving while intoxicated. It was his second offense.

Stangely, the judge presented Buster with a choice. He could do some time and pay a fine, or enlist. Just after he signed up, Buster was jubilant. As a singing bonus, he would not be sent to Vietnam. Instead, he would be posted in Germany and trained as a truck mechanic. Buster now saw the extreme perils of combat. Recruiters lied and made him another victim of a wicked war.

As I neared the capital, I was not entering Saigon, a famous city that had disappeared with the communist triumph. In the late afternoon, Ho Chi Minh City was bustling. Thousands of motorbikes buzzed by the iconic Hotel Majestic, where I was staying. The bikes were squeezed together, with only a couple of feet separating one from the other. Their movement seemed choreographed.

The sidewalks were jammed with people in a rush, and lined with long rows of small shops and restaurants. Some of the eateries had child-sized plastic tables and chairs on the sidewalk. Pedestrians walked around the outdoor facilities. No one complained about the obstacles.

For a moment, I thought of Havana. Once famously known as “The Pearl of the Caribbean,” the Cuban capital is dotted with hundreds of homes in such disrepair that they are uninhabitable. It’s unimaginably littered. Store shelves are nearly bare, a symptom of perennial shortages of consumer goods. Havana is a grim city befitting a hardened communist dictatorship.

 By contrast, although a bit down at the heels, Ho Chi Minh City was vibrant. Like Cuba, Vietnam is ruled by the communist party, and political opposition is scarcely tolerated. “Abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state” is a serious crime in Vietnam. Criticism of the government could be considered a violation of this law.

But I felt no sense of oppression. A few people stopped to chat and were pleased to learn I was American. One discerned my ethnic identity and told me how well he got along with Mexican American soldiers. So many Vietnamese had worked for Americans during the war, he said, they remained grateful and not resentful that the United States abandoned them.

A surreal sense of awe struck me in my first few hours. This version of Vietnam was not a death trap, but a place where Americans were welcome. Being dispatched to Vietnam during the war, many Americans fled to Canada, went to prison, or committed suicide rather than work as combat soldiers.

 All the good cheer I encountered, however, did not mean the war had been forgotten.

The War Remnants Museum portrays the South Vietnamese government’s cruelty. So-called “tiger cages” to hold prisoners were constructed as small wire boxes, too confined for prisoners to stretch out or lie down. The thin wire mesh would cut into the prisoners’ skin. The replicas drew visitors.

These cramped spaces reportedly held up to 14 people simultaneously under inhumane conditions for “stubborn political prisoners” who faced additional persecution. There are also photographs of war atrocities, such as the My Lai massacre.

In my native California, it seemed hardly a day passed in the 1960s and early 1970s when Vietnam was not in the news. Of course, the nation was consumed with anti-war unrest. It seemed, however, that the government was in no way affected by this unrelenting, mass opposition.

Suddenly, economic hardship hit me in the fall of 1970. I had to earn more, so I worked 25 hours a week, up from fifteen. The full-time student workload and more hours on the job were more than I could handle.

I became a part-time student. I planned to continue in this fashion for just one semester, then reduce work hours and return to full-time student status. I was going to do that next semester.

As a part-time student, I lost my student deferment from the draft. The Selective Service in 1970 used a lottery based on someone’s birthdate. For the 1970 draft year, men with lottery numbers 195 or lower were called to report for physical examinations.

I was 102, which put me among the most likely to be summoned. And a few weeks after losing my student deferment, I got a letter from the Selective Service that I had been re-classified 1-A. My number and the new classification meant I likely would be ordered to the induction center in downtown Los Angeles.

The federal government, which was notoriously slow, would not take notice of me for months, I thought. But it moved with cat-like speed in my case.

It was not known at the time that Latinos made up approximately 4.5% of the U.S. population in 1970, but accounted for 5.5% of Vietnam War casualties. Knowing that would have exacerbated my fear. I knew I was on the verge of being drafted.

For weeks, my future flashed before me many times. I imagined myself as a soldier or Marine, cowering in Vietnam. Forced employment—not service- in the military for two years would permanently derail my pursuit of a college degree. Assuming I survived a 13-month ordeal in Vietnam, I couldn’t imagine myself picking up my studies where I left off.

Fucking Vietnam. My ideological opposition was supplanted by a desperate need to slip the noose. Having Uncle Sam reach out and make you live as he wished was terrifying. I felt this to be the denial of my right to self-determination. It was unbelievable that dropping a single class put me in this precarious position.

Since early childhood, I suffered from asthma. In adolescence, attacks were less frequent. If I were going to be in combat, I believed I ought to inform the medical examiners. My doctor wrote a letter affirming that I had occasional asthmatic bouts. I reported to the induction center and was slightly taken aback that many young men were carrying letters similar to mine. At the end of my medical examination, a doctor gruffly told me I was now classified 1Y, meaning I was unfit for service “at this time.” Theoretically, I could be summoned for another examination to determine my condition. But the odds of that happening were remote.

In the evening, I strolled through Ho Chi Minh City to meet with a man identified only as a low-level bureaucrat. A fellow journalist arranged the meeting.

We had a fascinating conversation. Relaxed and smiling, the man, who appeared to be in his early 40s, was intrigued by my brush with the draft. He said it surprised him that the American government would aggressively pursue me.

My host was resentful and disliked his government. His parents were among the thousands of South Vietnamese sent to “re-education camps” to be “rehabilitated.” They had worked for the American military. His parents suffered terribly.

America criminally abandoned South Vietnam, the man contended. He argued that the United States could have prevailed, but instead cut and ran. Yet, he hoped to settle in America.

I wished him luck in moving to the States and headed to the hotel. Touts were arrayed on the sidewalk. They invited me to dine and enjoy a festive night in restaurants and bars.

Instead, I went to bed early.

The tiny Southeast Asian country changed me. I shed my youthful rabid anti-communism stance. I learned that the American government, regardless of who was president, could remorselessly send Americans to die in a war that was never possible to win. Nearly 60,000 fellow Americans died, and 75,000 were permanently disabled.

Vietnam and its people were brutalized. No fewer than 400,000 and as many as two million civilians were killed.

Nearly 30 years after my trip, I learned that my brother David was a Vietnam vet, a fact that neither he nor the government disclosed. He fought in the “Secret War” in Laos aimed at debilitating North Vietnam and its armed forces. Officially, my brother was an Air Force sergeant and communications specialist who worked entirely on base.

I continue to piece together his activities while based at Udorn, Thailand AFB. There is no official confirmation, but there is no doubt that David was in Laos in 1968. What I have assembled tells me David lived through hell alongside CIA operatives. Yet, our government says Vietnam was not part of his experience.

Vietnam was all too real for us Chavira brothers. It still is for me.