 Good morning, aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I'm an attorney in Honolulu, Hawaii. I've been an attorney for four decades, and I'm the host of the show Law Across the Sea. And one of my feelings about lawyers is that they can help people by being a bridge across cultures and learning and explaining to other people both their clients and humanity. Other people about various cultures. We have a great number of attorneys here in Hawaii who know about law across the sea. Today I called my program Good Afternoon Vietnam because it's about Vietnam. It's the start, perhaps, of talking about Vietnam in the present, in the day, in the light of day now. And my guest, Chuck Crumpton, Jao, is that correct, or how would I say welcome to Vietnamese? Well, if you were Chinese, you might say it that way. But in Vietnamese, if you wanted to say good afternoon, it would be Jao Bujil. Jao Bujil. Bujil. Okay. Chuck. Bujil meaning afternoon. Chuck is a very experienced mediator, although he's also an attorney. I was. Here in Hawaii. I'm a reformed attorney. And he's very experienced about Vietnam. Spent a lot of time there, knows a lot about it. And I've asked him to come and talk about what's the afternoon like in Vietnam now. What are we getting into? First, tell me a little bit about how you got involved in Vietnam and what your experiences have been. And then we can perhaps move ahead into what the present day Vietnam is like. Well, I was getting ready to graduate from Carleton College in Minnesota in 1968, which was a fairly active time. A lot of stuff going on. The 60s, yeah. And we did sit-ins a little bit before Columbia. Didn't get the attention they did, but a friend of mine came up from Madison, Wisconsin, where I grew up and said, you need to join this group called International Voluntary Services, which is the prototype after which the Peace Corps domestically was modeled, had international volunteers. So he recommended Laos. I did sign up for Laos, but a number of the volunteers in Vietnam quit in protest of U.S. policy, so I wound up getting assigned to Vietnam, which is the best thing probably ever happened to me. And I wound up going to Central Vietnam to teach for two years. It worked some with street kids and out in the countryside with scouts and farmers and stuff like that. And then went down and taught in the Delta for another three years. One with International Voluntary Services and two later with Fulbright. So I had five years to learn Vietnamese and people and customs and culture, read novels and newspapers in Vietnamese, learn Vietnamese music and songs and sayings and proverbs and stuff like that. It's an incredibly rich, rich culture. My first wife is from there. We're still best friends. She's a fabulous lady. My kids are Vietnamese-American. My grandkids are Vietnamese-American. Some of my best friends in the world are Vietnamese-Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American and French-Vietnamese and other. And this was in the late, late sixties that you went to Vietnam for the first time. There was a war going on, right? There was. I went over about six months after the Lunar Offensive. I actually wound up staying in a house that had been taken over by the NLF National Liberation Front during the Tet Offensive. And it was close to the Boys High School where I was teaching, also taught in some of the other schools there. And as I recall, I mean in 1968 I had registered for the draft. It was never called, but there was certainly a lot of danger and a lot of anxiety about Vietnam. And a lot of poison was being dropped on Vietnam. And a lot of people were being killed over there. What was the atmosphere like for you when you were there, when you started out in Vietnam? At least, you know, that's what we heard in the news. Now you were actually there. Right. Well, I was a college kid. I was 22 years old. I loved languages. And so learning Vietnamese was a treat. The first person who introduced it to me in Vietnam was an exceptionally lovely young Vietnamese university student. So I got a very motivated head start and just took off from there. I mean, people were trying to survive the war as well as possible, as intact as possible. It wasn't always easy. I didn't really have a lot of direct contact with it. There was one time when I was up in Da Nang, I had just come into the country. We saw tracer bullets going by outside the window, but that was just the guards were playing around. So scared the heck out of the Filipino volunteer in the bed next to me. He was in a cot. He rolled over onto the floor, pulled the cot over on top of him. And I explained to him, Rodrigo, that is not a bulletproof cot. We need to go into the hallway where there are walls between us and those tracer bullets. So actually, when you live there within the culture, the war was still outside, a bit outside of where you... I mean, it was there, part of the country, but you didn't experience it firsthand per se. Well, it kind of depends on what you mean by firsthand. When I went out to the countryside on my little motorbike as I was going up the hills, I did see US planes dropping rolling balls of orange flame decimating the vegetation in the countryside. That's something that we've never taken the responsibility that we should and that Vietnam deserves for. You mean the United States, when you're saying we, right? I think we, any of us who are part of that effort, but yes, the US was the war leadership. But we export war. It's what we do. And we do it to other countries. We usually tend to pick countries where we feel people don't look like us or live or act like us, as if that were going to give us some feeling that we're a little less comfortable about what we're exporting to their country. So tell me why we are like Vietnamese. Tell us how we're the same. Tell us what you've discovered based upon your experience there. Well, if you remember, I went as an anti-war student. I had no problem connecting with other anti-war students. In fact, when I met the first Japanese volunteer out in the countryside, he looked at me. He was a Tokyo demonstrator said, who do you want to win the war? And I said to Vietnamese and he smiled shook hands and said, we're going to be fine. And they did. And we knew they would. There was never any doubt that the Vietnamese were going to outlast the war effort. That's the reality on the ground. It was. In having students, the idea of failing a student and exposing them to their draft was outside of my realm of consideration. I would have never done it. I did lose some students, but that happens. Okay. So you're in Vietnam. You were there for five years. Then you left Vietnam. The war is still going at that time. Is that right? Or what's the status of the war? It was almost over. We were on the second to last commercial flight out on Pan Am for those who remember that airline. We went to Singapore to see friends and then to Geneva to sign up with the Red Cross, just in case we might be able to make contact with the family, which we were not able to do. And then went back home to Hawaii after that. We had our daughter who spent most of her first two years in Vietnam. Well, that was her first language. She hasn't kept it, but if she went back, she could get it back, I think. Okay. All right. So what I want to do is I want to focus on that time. And I've been to Vietnam a couple of times, mostly in a tourist-type position, although I did some law-related things while I was there, met some lawyers. My reception in Vietnam has been really good. People have been very friendly, very nice towards Americans. Of course. But what is that? I mean, we had a bloody war in my memory from TV. I saw it on TV. What allowed that rapprochement to happen so that we were able to meet again and be friends and move on? Okay. Well, first it's not rapprochement. The movement was virtually entirely unilateral on the part of the Vietnamese because of who they are and what they are. They are Confucian. They are Buddhist. They are one of the most forgiving and hospitable people in the world. They were able to distinguish between the people of America and the military and political leadership of America, just as they were able to distinguish between their own people and their own political and military leadership. I think the connection between the people as people, as students, as working people, as people just trying to get through life as well as possible has always enabled people in Vietnam to offer a connection that's based on kindness, on compassion, on respect and understanding. And I think to the extent that there has been that connection, it's been because there have been Americans who have responded to that in kind. Let me go on with that a little bit. So it looks to me like we're moving into more connections with Vietnam. And Howard, are you still connected? What's your relationship? What type of things are you doing, both law-related and non-law-related with Vietnam? Okay. We are, and that's a good thing. Bill Clinton got us past the embargo, took a while. What people forget, however, is that right after the termination of the military part of the war in 1975, one of the first things that Nixon, Kissinger and McNamara did was to send McNamara out, as Secretary of State, to every country and every financial and world institution he could to boycott Vietnam, no humanitarian aid, no assistance, no support, no nothing. And he was very successful. You don't see that in his apology. Somebody asked me one time what I thought of Henry Kissinger, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. And I thought then, and I still think now, the greatest threat to peace, health and safety Vietnam has ever seen. There are things he deserved, a Nobel Prize was not one of them, at least in my experience. So what keeps you connected with Vietnam? What type of activities are you doing that brings you into Vietnam now? Well, as a mediator and one who believes that human conflict is best resolved, among the people involved in the conflict because those who make the choices are the ones who will live with the consequences and that's where the decision-making should be made. We recognize sometimes it has to be assisted by outsiders, traditionally in Vietnam, that would be a family elder or a community elder. That was true in much of Asia, still is. We haven't really adopted that. We've gotten away from that here as we've urbanized and industrialized and those connections and that level of respect and understanding within family and community units has broken down quite a bit and that's regrettable. But I do work with friends, professionals, colleagues in Vietnam on trying to understand how we might design a collaborative problem-solving system, a conflict resolution system that would be responsive to both the cultural priorities and strengths of Vietnam and the realities of dealing with outsiders, whether it be Japanese or New Zealanders or Americans or Canadians or British or French or whoever, Taiwanese. And it's interesting to see that the older folks tend to resist moving the authority and control of that dialogue away from the control figures. The younger ones recognize that's the requirement and the culture of other countries and of the global community. So really, here you are, a lawyer, you know both of our cultures. You've obviously expressed your feelings too about the historical events. And so you know both sides. You know where Vietnam has been, where it's going and we're looking forward. And I want to talk a little bit more about that after our break. All right. Good. Welcome to SaintTechHawaii.com. This is Johnson Choi, your host. The topic is Asian Reveal. We do it on a monthly basis on Thursday at 11 o'clock. Be sure to check the schedule. See you. Aloha. I'm Kauai Lucas, host of Hawaii Is My Mainland here on Think Tech Hawaii every Friday at 3 p.m. We address issues and importance for those of us who live here on the most isolated landmass on the planet. Please come join me Fridays at 3 p.m. Mahalo. Hello. And I'm Patrick Bratton. Please join me for Global Connections every Thursday at 1 p.m. where we talk with a variety of guests about various international issues, historical issues, both here in Hawaii and abroad, range from security, human rights, ethics and all sorts of other things. So please join me. I look forward to talking with you and seeing some of my guests. Okay. We are back with Good Afternoon Vietnam. And we're talking with Chuck Crumpton, who has a lot of experience in Vietnam. He was there as a college student. He's learned about the culture and has been explaining it to us. And we're looking forward in Vietnam. We're looking at what's happening now. We're moving out of the morning into the afternoon of Vietnam. And Chuck, what is happening now? It seems to me like Vietnamese are coming out of Vietnam. And perhaps that has to do with a lot of the changes that have taken a long time to happen that you've talked about. But what's happening now? Where are Vietnamese business and the people coming? What's going on there in Vietnam? Different facets of fantastic, wonderful, constructive growth happening among young people, young leaders in Vietnam, business leaders who are Vietnamese, Vietnamese, and some of the ex-patriot Vietnamese, young Vietnamese who are starting to connect with and do business in and with Vietnam. And their youth has always been their greatest potential. Ho Chi Minh side, we've all seen it. The Vietnamese MBA students that I have taught since 2009 are the best students I've ever had. And I've had the pleasure at the Hoi Pacific University of having students from Western Europe, from East Asia, from all over the world. But the MBA students in Vietnam who have the experience of being young execs and managers are the best. They get it. No, one thing, I'm sorry, but you mentioned ex-pats. And that's also a result of the war in my mind. Right? I mean, a lot of these young kids left Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam war that the U.S. What do you call that war? Do you call it the U.S. war? Do you call it the Vietnam war? Everybody but the U.S. calls it the American war because that's what it was. It was an imported war. It wasn't theirs. They didn't ask for it. In fact, De Gaul, when he left after losing at Diem Ben Phu in 1954, gave a speech in Cambodia where he said, you don't want to do that. That would be a mistake. We did not listen. All right, so you have these ex-path kids coming back to Vietnam. Is that what's happening? Some. I mean, most go back as tourists, but there is a growing nucleus of really good young ex-patriot Vietnamese businessmen and women who are connecting with the fantastic cadre of young Vietnamese business women and men. So there's kind of an economic transformation taking on or going on in Vietnam? What's interesting is the leadership and the strength and the greatest abilities are actually among the young business professionals in Vietnam. The ones coming from here have far more to learn from and with those in Vietnam than vice versa, which is good because the ones in Vietnam are very hospitable. They're very welcoming. If you meet them a fraction of the way, they're happy to go the rest of the distance to make the connection work, but you have to earn the trust. You can't go in there for short-term profit to turn it around. Right, right, right. And you have to go in for the long-term. You asked what I'm doing now. One of the things that I'm doing now, I've been approached by a group who has the estimable, if extremely idealistic goal of addressing soil toxicity in the agriculture of Vietnam. And there are a lot of things on that target. The bullseye would be Agent Orange Dioxin, which is the nastiest chemical warfare agent ever. And that's a result of the war? It absolutely is. I have never seen a justification or excuse for it. It has a carbon life of hundreds of years. It attaches to soil particles, so it gets into the soil, to the water, to the air, blown as dust by the wind. It's in everything. It is still causing birth defects, deformities and disabilities, as we speak. And what is your project aimed at, or what's the goal of your project? We're working with natural substances and things to detoxify toxicity, whether it be heavy metal, or pesticides, or hopefully eventually dioxin. But that's the hardest one for lots and lots of reasons. You can't take dioxin out unless you literally remove all the soil it's had any contact with. But there are steps toward detoxifying, degrading and neutralizing toxic substances in soils, heavy metals and other things. You can use microbial solutions, you can use plants, you can use other things. The only soil decontamination work that's actually being done, and has been done the last few years in Vietnam, has been under the Danang runway, a military site. And that was really not designed to make it agriculturally feasible. It was designed to try and reduce the health and safety airborne risk of it, which didn't do a very good job of. Okay, now let me just kind of go back and talk a little bit about the economy. What do you see as Vietnamese prospects or endeavors that they're trying to do within Vietnam and maybe outside of Vietnam to enhance their economy or make money? In the larger kind of the macro view, Vietnam, up until a few years ago in the big slowdown in Asia and the Hong Kong and Japanese markets, was one of the fastest growing economies in the world. And their biggest problem was their inflation, was just huge. In the last four or five years, the dollar exchange rate with the Vietnamese dong has stayed almost exactly the same. There's been very little movement. That's a really good sign of economic stability. It's not the fast growth that they had before, but Vietnamese people are extremely patient. It can take generations to achieve something. They certainly will to get Agent Orange and Dioxin out of there. But to get the toxic effects of the war out of the economy, out of the education, to their credit, the Americans really didn't, I think, cause harm to the educational system of Vietnam. The Russians, on the other hand, heavily politicized it. A lot of the people in our family, my wife's and my family, quit because they were not going to teach that propaganda. That's inconsistent with the history and culture of Vietnam. They have enough heroes of their own, male and female. So is there a reaching out from Vietnam to other countries, especially the United States and Hawaii, for projects and opportunities in business? Yeah, I think probably a more accurate way to perceive it would be to call it a receptivity. Vietnam doesn't have the resources to go out and market itself worldwide, as the U.S. or Britain or Canada or other more financially developed and more marketing developed economies do. But they're extremely receptive to responsible development and business partnering. They are not receptive to irresponsible business development and partnering. So for example, the U.S. airlines tried for decades to get privileges at the airfields in Vietnam and did not get them because they could not demonstrate that there would be trustworthy long-term business partners that may offend some of the people with the U.S. airlines. Sorry, that's not my job. That's the fact of life. It is. The cultural understanding also. The same thing happened with the Japanese automotive industry. They came in with a multi-volume, several-feet high stack of plans for developing an automotive and vehicular industry in Vietnam. And Vietnam's reaction, which draws upon a sense of humor that helps it to survive, was, if you had to boil that down to two or three pages, what would it look like? Not something within the capability of the people who brought the multi-volume tones. We did the same thing with the trade agreement when we insisted that Vietnam adopt the entire multi-volume trade agreement in order for us to agree for them to enter the World Trade Organization. Vietnamese came out very well on the negotiations. They did enter and they did it a few pages at a time. The interesting one is going to be on what most of Asia calls the East Sea, the U.S. and China have tended to call the South China Sea, how those negotiations will go. The Vietnamese negotiating team has had the wisdom to look at unification, bridge building, relationship building, and resource development as a responsible approach to come to the negotiating table. Lest people forget, it was not Henry Kissinger who got the Paris Peace Talk negotiations unstuck in 1973. It was Madame Wien Thi Binh, North Vietnamese, and a woman who said, you know, rather than something hierarchical and structured, what if we had a round table where everyone is looking at each other and everyone's position has equal height, stature, and authority? Well, I hear you telling me a lot about the culture of Vietnam and a lot about the willingness to forgive, the willingness to let life go on, perhaps with the philosophy like we should be friends and not be fighting. We should look for a solution. Is that an accurate? Vietnam is an extremely relationship-based culture. Relationships are the priority. They are the survival tool. When Secretary Clinton said it takes a village, that's a phrase that resonates with people all over the world and it should with us. They are not into quantifying measurements of human transactions. They're in a qualitative relationship-based understanding that's based on respect. If people bring that, they will find what they look for. If they bring something quantifiable to try and get a fast return and they're looking for somebody whose pocket to line or grease, they will find that. And now I want to ask you questions that are only going to have a yes or no answer. Okay, just a couple, alright? Good luck. Well, and I'm going to force you to see yes or no. Are the Vietnamese going out into the United States to develop business in the United States on behalf of Vietnam? Have you seen that? Yes, very limited and gradual. Alright, you went beyond the yes. Are they coming to Hawaii? A little bit, even more limited and more gradual. Are we in a good place in Hawaii to help develop that relationship? We're in a wonderful place because whether you're from Japan, Taiwan or Vietnam, if you get up in the morning, you put on your slippers, your t-shirt and your shorts and you take a beach walk, you look just like everybody else. Everybody thinks you're part of the culture and you belong. And that's our cultural advantage. It is totally our cultural advantage. People are welcome here. They feel welcome. We're a salad bowl. We're going to come back and talk about more about Vietnam in the future. Can you do that? Right now, we are in Hawaii. And how do you say that in the Philippines? Sam Roy, finished. Sam Roy, thank you very much. I appreciate you being here. Thank you brother.