 Thank you everyone so much for coming today. My name is Kimi Vo, Vietnam Society's Director of Communications and Outreach, and I'm privileged to welcome you all today to our penultimate event of Vietnam Week 2023. This conversation really embodies our theme of authentic voices, bridging generations, and it's my honor to introduce our Executive Director and Co-Founder of Vietnam Society, Erin Fluengstein-Hauer, to say a few words about our event tonight, past and future bridging generations. Distinguished guests, esteemed panelists, and friends, welcome to this momentous gathering co-hosted by the US Institute of Peace and Vietnam Society, an evening that embodies the spirit of dialogue, reflection, and reconciliation. We have come together under the roof of the US Institute of Peace to embark upon a journey of understanding, compassion, and healing. Tonight, we unite the voices of the past and the present, aiming to eliminate the shared histories and complex narratives that have shaped the Vietnamese American and Vietnamese national experiences. Our purpose of tonight is twofold. It is to honor the past and the toll that the Vietnam War extracted on individuals, families, land, environment, and communities. At the same time, we gather to acknowledge the progress that has been made since the end of the war, recognizing the resilience, unity, and tireless efforts that were put in to rebuild and forge ahead. This event is the opening cord of symphony of conversations on reconciliation, and introduce a series of discussions that seek to bridge divides, eliminate perspectives, and heal generational wounds. Through these authentic conversations, we hope to empower all of our participants here, as well as watching online, to be part of the solution for identifying pathways forward towards a united and stronger global Vietnamese community. Thank you very much for coming tonight, and please enjoy our event. Zin Kamilunchi, Aaron, Bacabu, and Terka Kakuyi. Welcome to the United States Institute of Peace. USIP is a independent nonpartisan public institution, founded by the US Congress in 1984, and the formation of the Institute was due in large part to the efforts of US veterans from World War II, Korea, and the Vietnam War, who wanted to put peace building into the center of US policy and practice overseas. So USIP works to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflicts around the world. Our work on Vietnam is mostly in that third category, now almost 50 years after the end of the war. We started several years ago with a Vietnam War Legacies and Reconciliation Initiative, aiming to work both on the physical legacies of war, missing people from all sides of the war, Agent Orange, landmines, and unexploded ordinance, and also on the issues of reconciliation between Americans and Vietnamese and within each of our countries. So it's with that focus that we are delighted to be partnering with the Vietnam Society and Vietnam Week for tonight's event, which is a discussion about reconciliation from different Vietnamese perspectives. And it's my honor to moderate this, along with Lili Haeslip, Kenneth Nguyen, and Lung Chan. And I'd like to ask each of you all to briefly introduce yourselves and share about your connection to Vietnamese communities. Go Lili. Thank you. Well, first of all, I wanna say thank you so much for having us here. I mean, with an honor at the Vietnamese, we can be right here in the capitals of United States and in the building, that peace that we wanted so much to have. And secondly, I'm not just very happy to see so many people involved with it because it's a long journey, but we're all here. So my name is Lili Haeslip, nicknamed Trouble Maker. So I got my trouble and I'm able to look in for the healing and move on for the next generation as well. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Kenneth Nguyen, I'm the host of the Vietnamese podcast. Thank you so much, Aaron and Peter, Steinhauer, and Vietnam Society for inviting us all here. And thank you to the US Institute of Peace and Andrew, thank you. I started the podcast because I was very unsure of where I fit in into the whole picture and the shame that I had coming into the legacy of war and the position that the people in my generation had, it's sometimes we just don't have this firm ground to walk on. So I just began to develop this question of who we are and that's my connection to the community. All right, hello everyone. I'm Long Tran, I'm currently a professor at the John Plain College of Public Affairs at the Ohio State University. And first of all, just like Go Lili, and again, I would like to say thanks to Vietnam Society as well at USIP for this great opportunity. It's such an honor for me to be here in this room with so many people that I've admired for a long time, like Go Lili, I can, Erin, Peter, and Ted and many others for your great work and contributions to Vietnam. To answer your questions, Andrew, I think I have a pretty deep connection to Vietnam because I was born and raised in Hanoi, Vietnam and I spent the first 20 plus years of my life there. And after that, I just had this opportunity to come to the US to study and then one thing led to another and now I'm a US permanent resident working and even starting a family in Ohio. But most of my family members still in Vietnam and I'm still a Vietnamese citizen. So I do try to travel to Vietnam pretty often. In fact, I'm going there in just a few weeks for a research conference. So yeah, so that's all to say that I still have a pretty deep connection to the country. Great, thanks a lot. So the format of our discussion will be first, I will ask and we'll discuss some with our panelists and then we will open up for questions from the audience. So please prepare for that in about half an hour. But let me start with you, Go Lili. Several days ago, my wife and I had the chance to watch Heaven and Earth and hear you speak along with Ambassador Osius at the Kennedy Center and we knew the story but we were struck by how much you experienced at a young age in the war and the trauma from all sides. It seemed like everything possible happened to you. And yet after the war, you forgave and worked with people from all sides. So how do you understand reconciliation and what made it possible for you to understand and forgive in that way? Well first, I am Vietnamese but I'm married to American. My two sons, it's a half and half. And so that is God create man and woman or create light carry forward. And if I not forgiving or not really moving on, who would I again? I mean, everybody come to Vietnam, it tries to do what they think they did the right thing. They tried their very best to steal a life, a Vietnamese. We didn't want them there. If they would add us, we want them there or not. We would say, no, go home with your family and leave her alone, but nobody asked. So therefore, we just live with it and we get along with everybody so that we can have another day of life and a ball of rice. So when I get to know to American and overcome my scarcity, what they look and all those things, I marry to them and come here. Educated myself here. The US gave me a lot of opportunity for me and my children. This country offers not only Vietnamese, but many, many different people from around the world. It's a good Maryland Park for us to come here and be who we want to be. This country gives us freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of relations and be whatever that you want to become. This to me, if I don't forgive and if I don't move on and if I don't take advantage of this, I would lose. I need to move on. I need to forgive myself and everybody around me helped me create who I am today. So forgiveness is Vietnamese. Forgiveness is a part of Buddhism. Forgiveness that we thought by the Confucius, Taoism, Buddhism, and a family tradition. And you know, so it's just nothing new or it's nothing that you cannot do. If I hate somebody, who would I hate? Everybody is human being, just like I said the other day. And the war, it happened. People like myself or my family or villagers, we don't know who started. We don't know who signed the agreement. We don't know what's going on. We just had a wisdom. And every man and woman come to our land is also a war wisdom. So we look at that point of view. We can able to easy to let it be and move on and do our best and turn around and help others. Before I work in for a nonprofit or get to involve in health Vietnamese. For people in Vietnam. I know nothing about politics. I know nothing about embargoes. I know nothing about what I can and cannot do because of the U.S. and Vietnam have no normalization. But when I started to apply the visa or apply the paperwork and apply the right paperwork to carry the money from the U.S. to work in Vietnam back in 1989. That is when I learned about we have to reconcile. There are a story just like this is every time I try to, you know about, we have to have three licenses to work in Vietnam back on the day. And so one day I carry $50,000 cash in my purse and I come into the Los Angeles airport and when, you know, I have all the paperwork and everything so I'm okay. But then when you tap one foot on the round and note the foot in the airplane, that is when I've been stopped by the security. And first question is, where are you going? I say, Vietnam, are you taking any money with you? Yes, how much? It's $50,000. And she just, she said, you know, you cannot take this money to the commoner country. And this money has to be here in the United States. But then I reach in my purse and I give her all the licenses that I had from State Department, from Commerce Department, and Affair, Foreign Affairs Office, all of those things. But then she just so happy, she stood up and she said, did women do a right thing? She's legal. The third woman, third person, legal. I mean, you know, the whole airplane have to sit there and wait for them to count everything, I hear it. But that is, I say, okay. So everything have to do legally this way. So that is, it starts to learn as I go. And for, before I went back to Vietnam in 1986, I called State Department three times. They said, no, you cannot go to Vietnam. We have no diplomatic with Vietnam. If you stuck there and commoner put you in jail, nowhere we can get you out from Vietnam. So no, you cannot go to Vietnam. But at the hand of the phone, I keep asking, who come out with this law? Why is it that I cannot go to see my mom? It's so easy. Everybody can come here, but why can't I not go there? I mean, you know, just very stupid, thinking about law, thinking about love, thinking about home sick, thinking about meet my mom and want to go to see her. But after I left and API come and I come back and my children pick me up at the airport and they say, mom, the API want you to call them. And I thought they're just kidding. And so I call and they say, we want to talk to you. And I say, okay, so I own a restaurant. I brought home some fortune cookie and tea for API. And so we had tea and cookie and we talked. And so again, three questions. Where you been? Vietnam, why? Why not Vietnam? Who do you see there? My mom, my sister. And I don't need to say, I have a brother. And I told him, oh, I want to go back to help Vietnamese people because they are so poor and they need help. And he just said, oh, if you want to go and help Vietnamese people, we can help you. You have no idea how happy I was. And he just said, yeah, we can help you. Two of them, very handsome, young and good looking. And so I'm more cookie, more tea, okay? And so he said, okay, we help you to go to Vietnam but you have to bring back something for us. And other what, okay, love letter. I thought first thing is love letter from beauty and man and woman, you know? And okay, oh yeah, I do anything. And so first, if you bring back for us and tell us what the country is like today and how the commoners run the country. Add one, two, tell us what happened on the military supply and equipment that U.S. left behind. And three, tell us how the, how many Russians would run Vietnam. And I look at him and I say, I can't do that. I don't know how to read and write that well. I can't do that. He said, oh, you don't have to do it. Tell your family and friends do it. They give it to you and you bring it back to us. And I was thinking, oh, so what do you want me to do? And he said, just do that. And I say, you ask me to be spy. One say, no, no, the one say, yes, something like that. So now we have a comprehensive strategic partnership and it's all based on your experiences. Then that is when I thought I said, you know what? You want me to be spy and you want me to create a war but I want peace. You know, you American, I'm Vietnamese, you men, I'm a woman. You want hatred, I'd like to have compassion. So let me bring Vietnam and U.S. to get there without doing or being spy for you. So here's a more cookie and go. And so that is when they laugh and they're very unhappy with me. But that is what makes me think about how to bring the two nations together and how we can live with one another without so much hatred. And what I'm so proud to say that Vietnam brought so many U.S. Vietnam veterans and their family back to Vietnam for the last 35 years. And Vietnamese opened up their arms and welcomed them in their home for tea and no matter how poor or no matter how hard life they had, they still show very happy and very generous to the veterans. And the veteran on the other way, I'm just so surprised. How can these people forgive us? How can these people not have any again us? I mean, all these, it makes me very proud to be Vietnamese and very proud of what we try to build the role and the past so people can walk on there so that can connect and be here to concrete. Let me turn to Lam. You grew up in Vietnam at a time that these changes were happening and the country was opening and starting to have relations with the U.S. How have your perceptions changed over time now that you're in the U.S., both the Vietnam and this country? Yeah, it's an interesting question, Andrew. So I guess as someone who spent the first 20 plus years of my life in Vietnam and then the last, the most recent 10 years here in the U.S., I think my perceptions of both Vietnam and the U.S. have evolved quite a lot. So back when I was in Vietnam, well, I definitely thought of Vietnam obviously as my homeland and I think I kind of thought of the U.S. as this far away dreamland at the time. So tied to what Colette Lee just shared when I grew up in the 90s and the 2000s, the war already seemed like such a distant past and almost everyone around me talked about the U.S. with such excitement and admiration sometimes and without any resentment. And it was not just my family, it was really almost everyone around me, which kind of makes sense because I later learned through a survey that people in Vietnam, they turned out to have the most favorable view of the U.S. among almost any other countries. And I'm not sure if there are any other countries out there where a lot of people seem to love President Trump and President Obama like equally. Definitely not the case here as I have experienced. But anyways, because of that, I had a very favorable view of the U.S. as well. And then I was just really lucky to be offered a full scholarship to be able to come to the U.S. to do my masters. And then I was just really lucky again and again to receive a PhD offer and then eventually a job offer for a faculty position at Ohio State where I'm working these days. And Ohio has given me not just a really good job but also a new family because I was lucky to meet my wife soon after I moved to Ohio. And I think my wife Paige, she's a really good example actually of U.S. Vietnam reconciliation because she's an Ohio girl who knew almost nothing about Vietnam except for some horrible stories about the Vietnam War. But then after she met me, she has come to learn a lot and to love so much about Vietnam. So she loves traveling to Vietnam. She loves my family in Vietnam. She's a big fan of Vietnamese music, including the very recently popular rap shows. She absolutely loves Vietnamese food. She wants to go to Hung Viet, which is our favorite local Vietnamese restaurant all the time. And she even makes her own chicken pho ga almost every month. So I guess because of all of that, these days I kind of see the U.S. and Vietnam as both kind of home-ish. And I guess I had to say ish because although I love both countries as an immigrant who has been here for 10 years, I think I've changed enough that I can no longer feel truly at home whether I'm in Vietnam or the U.S. But having said that, I think it's okay and it's normal. It's a case for many immigrants, I think, especially first-gen immigrants. But yeah, that's kind of a story of how my perceptions of the two countries have, I guess, evolved over time. Thanks. Kenneth, you work in media. You have a podcast that gives you the opportunity to interview many people and learn about their identity, like one recently with Aaron Steinhauer from Vietnam Society. How has that helped your own identity to grow and change? And how is that connected with the Vietnamese community in the U.S.? You know, I was born in Pennsylvania and growing up I always had this narrative that Vietnam is bad, the government is bad, and the people, the Vietnamese-American first-generation is good. And I just continued that narrative, right? That programming kept going. And then I joined the Marine Corps in 1993. I served in the Marines for four years and when I got out, I realized the narratives inside the military just didn't sit well with me as well. And so I started to question so I got to USC, studied anthropology and film. I started to question my position. Do I sit on the side of my parents or do I sit on the side of this emerging homeland? And I still couldn't figure it out. But I started to think about my grandfather who was killed by the Viet Minh. And we had four or five, my dad's cousins and brothers did time in the reeducation camp. My father was also in the military. But why am I not feeling the emotions that these people are feeling? Why do I not feel the hatred and the anger towards the people who did this too? And I thought about my time in the military. There are no black and white answers. And so I started to figure out that maybe there's no black and white narratives in the Vietnamese community. So let's start with just one person at a time and getting to know people at a time. So my base is in the film business, in the Vietnamese film business. In the late 90s, I was friends with all of the big filmmakers, the big directors today. And they took me under their wing and we partied a lot and we hung out together. And I got a glimpse of how writers, directors, actors in the Vietnamese space lived. So they let me in and tell stories and they're such good storytellers, obviously. And I thought to myself, one day I'm going to write biographies for all the directors. In Vietnam. In the US. In the US. At USC, UCLA, and Loyola Marymount. The three big universities that produced these filmmakers. And I said, I'm friends with all of them. I'm gonna write their biographies one day. And that was just in the back of my mind. I'm so curious about how these visions of these artists become. So I said to myself, one day when I'm able to record this, I'm gonna record it. And the podcast thing emerged. And I said, I will start within the film community because they're storytellers. So I started there and then branched out slowly. And everybody started to make introductions for me. And that's how I got started with getting to know the Vietnamese stories throughout the world. And how does the podcast then bring out stories of trauma and healing? And how do you see that changing since you started? Some people cannot let go. Some people, and young people too. I'm talking in their 20s and 30s. Some people cannot let go. And some older people in their 80s have never had pain. It's really contextual. And I think everybody's different. And so I've no longer held on to this belief that the older generation needs to die off or the younger generation is gonna step up and change the world. I think it's really a case by case. It's very nuanced. And I think the stories that come out of each individual's ideas and creativity is actually the force of change. Like Aaron and Peter, the way this is all unfolding this week, I'm beginning to see the story that Peter told me about the churches in Ninh Binh is mind blowing because I'm now softer as it comes to issues that deal with the French and colonialism and Catholicism. Because I really hate those things. I hate the idea of being colonized at one point. But now I'm softening up because I get to interact with the stories that come from our communities. And I think the more stories we are able to hear, the more reconciliation we can have in our hearts. So there are different views generationally, politically, and culturally within Vietnamese communities. Ko Le Le, how do you interact with people who have different views from yours who might even protest when you're speaking? For the last 45 years now, it was a lonely role. Wherever I go, I'll be in protest, call name. Every six people put a sit, they have a flyer, call me commoner, how many Americans I kill and all that stuff. But what can I do? Many of them, only one of me. And only thing I can do is be smile very friendly, sing them some song, tell the good story about countries growing up. And let them take it home with them and think about it. But nothing I can, you know. However, it's a very sad, some story is very sad for example, in San Diego, we have that big, big park called Baobo Park. And in there they had international houses for people of different country, have a different house so that they can show their culture. And so 1993, 94, because the more we come out and everything and I just walk in there and I say I would like to have a house for Vietnam, for Vietnamese community can come and see the culture. Right away I get the permission, yes you can have a house for Vietnam because we need it. So I'm so happy. And as soon as they give it to me everything, I've been on a newspaper. And then they know the group of Vietnamese come and stop saying no, you cannot help her, help their house because then she gonna bring commoners here and then she gonna have a commoner flat here so therefore no. So we have a big debate on then I just walk away. So that is 30 years ago. Last month I just wanted to do something for 2025. It's gonna be 50 years, anniversary of the Vietnam War and so now we're gonna do something nice for the community, for the Vietnamese. So here I live in San Diego for 53 years. I work in the Nen for the last 35 years. I want to bring the two cities together. And so first I want the University of San Diego and the Nen University to be to get to working together then the post in San Diego post and Nen post should be also a friendship. Then we're gonna have a friendship, relationship then we're gonna have a city three, five years from now. So I signed up a young Vietnamese named Dan who helped me and who organized all this call and meeting and get everything going. But then about two weeks ago and he called and he said, go, I cannot talk to you anymore. I cannot see you anymore and I cannot help you anymore because the community tell me that I am communist now and they don't want me to get involved with you or anything to do with Vietnam. And so they come to my boss and they tell my boss that now I am communist and my boss call me up and say, ask me, did I want a job? I want to live here in San Diego or I want to go with any history. And now he said, I cannot talk to you. I cannot see you because I want my job and I want to live here in San Diego. You talk about here in 1966. That is how I remember it, how it was like. Now here I am 53 years in San Diego, 2023. And yet it's still same. After 1966 in my village, back in the old days they have a word to call it togam and now it's called chomgam, it's the same thing. But so everywhere I go this year, twice. My lecture, it's been protected and still have a lot of the hydrate and carry around. So I am only saying that everybody have their own mission to do. Everyone have their own path to walk on and how they walk it up to them. I just only ask, leave me alone so I can do my walk. I can work on my mission and I do whatever that I need to do while I'm on this earth. I don't bother them and they don't bother me and just that all I'm asking. And if they can give me that I will be happy to do more for the community and for the two countries. Well, how does that look from your perspective in Ohio? Do you see Vietnamese nationals and Vietnamese Americans working together? How is the community have a shared understanding and vision? I would say not so much in Ohio as I can see. Mainly because we don't really have a large Vietnamese community in Ohio in the first place. But I could really relate to what Kul Lely just said just now. I think it's very important, also really challenging. And I think that the answer might also vary a lot by individuals like I can hint at. I feel like for a lot of people it just, the main challenge is just a lack of opportunities for interactions and for mutual learning. And I think this applies a lot to places again without a large Vietnamese community like Ohio where I'm working at. So for many people I think just having more opportunities for more interactions and learning would make a big difference. So for the Vietnamese national side then so many Vietnamese students including myself have had the privilege of coming here and studying here in the US and through the process so many ties have been created. And I'm sure that's the same story applies to the Vietnamese American side as well. So actually for example, I'm a good friend of mine in the DMV area recently told me about this amazing summer camp that allowed one of his daughters to, along with hundreds of other young adults with Vietnamese origins for all of the world to come to Vietnam and to visit Vietnam and to interact with Vietnamese people and to reconnect with the heritage. And I think that's a great example of how to connect people. Having said that I would also say that it's not always that easy. I think for many people, especially those who have been directly hurt in some way by the war, the process of healing and reconciliation and collaboration could be a lot more challenging. And I think it's not easy at all to be someone like Colette Lee who managed to overcome her personal pain and losses and managed to contribute so much to reconciliation through her novels as well as through her humanitarian work. So I mean, if someone could learn from Colette Lee and see her as a good example, then that's wonderful. But I think if someone just can't move on from a painful past, I think it's also okay for us to try to understand and to respect their decision as long as they don't do anything to hurt other people's efforts to heal and to reconcile. And I guess as for advice for those people who really trying to move on from a painful past and to contribute and to start this process of reconciliation is challenging, but I think there's a lot of great lessons to be learned from a book that actually read recently entitled Nothing is Impossible in author by Ambassador Ted Osius which I believe is gonna share with us some great remarks later today. But I myself, for example, learned so much from that book. For example, in terms of how much work, how much patience, how much empathy it takes for really former enemies to rebuild their relationship to regain trust. So yeah, so some of my thoughts on this very challenging topic. Thank you. My last question is for Kenneth and that's our theme here is bridging the past and the future and how do you see young people in the Vietnamese diaspora and in Vietnam making that bridge and what are your aspirations for what that could become? The first answer that I have is a very practical answer which is young Vietnamese Americans are traveling to Vietnam to do business and to live abroad by the thousands. So there's a lot of that going on. If you go into Orange County, you begin to listen to the wait staff at the Vietnamese restaurants. They're young Vietnamese that come from very successful families. What are they doing there? There's a lot of them. It's like, wait a minute. If you were born here then you probably wouldn't be working or your parents were okay to not have you work at a Vietnamese restaurant. But many of them are very bright, brilliant, faces very sensual, as we say in Vietnamese. And you're like, oh, so they're coming from Vietnam as students to, and these are part-time jobs that they have. So there's a lot of them. There's thousands and thousands of them on a practical level that are here. So I think that exchange is happening on a very practical and it's changing the fabric of Vietnamese Americans in Vietnam and it's changing. My brother's been in Vietnam for 20 years. So he was also a US Marine, went to USC, studied film with the whole nine and he's back in Vietnam doing work. So there is a really good bridge that's happening. My aspirations is a little bit complicated because I view Vietnam, the motherland as my mother and I view the United States as my father. They had a divorce in 1975 and it's complicated sometimes. But the love that I have for both of them is something that I want to share with the entire Vietnamese diaspora as well as Vietnamese in Vietnam is that our mother is in Vietnam and our father is around the world. And if we can reconcile that we are one big family that has a lot of issues and a lot of arguments and it's healthy to do that. It's healthy to have dialogue. It's healthy to talk about communism. It's healthy to talk about pain and it's also healthy to have Viet Joy. It's healthy to have the plenitude, as Viet Thanh Nguyen says, the plenitude of storytelling. We should have all of it. Why not? And that's my aspiration for the Vietnamese worldwide is to have an openness to have the discussions all over. So that's a great note to end on and now we can open it up to the big family. There are a couple of mics that volunteers will pass around. If you'd like to ask a question, please raise your hand and we'll get a mic to you. Hi, thank you very much. Do I have to identify myself? Please. Dean Rho Dan, I work on the Hill. I have a question for Dr. Tran. So you mentioned changes in opinions of people from Vietnam about the US and I was wondering in your research, have you been able to identify causes? Like whether it was education, was it media exposure? I'd like to hear thoughts. Thank you. All right, thank you very much for your question. I honestly cannot give you a scientific answer because that's not something I study, but I guess just from my personal experience that I think is a function of so many factors that led to Vietnamese people's really favorable view of the US. The media definitely play a big role. I remember growing up watching so many Hollywood blockbusters and being fascinated with life in the US, which I become a little bit disillusioned with after I moved to the US. It's not as exciting as it's portrayed by Hollywood. And then there's also this factor that I think completely explained really well. I think it's also, I would say part of our DNA too, it's kind of, I guess it's Buddhist influences that led a lot of Vietnamese people more easily towards the side of forgiveness and reconciliation. I know that there's also other factors like earlier, I mentioned this idea of admiration. So I think a lot of people in Vietnam just see the US for a long time as like the always the front runner when it comes to so many things, all of the exciting innovations, economic development and so on. So there are a lot of reasons for people to admire the US. And I can go on and on, but I guess my point is that there's so many factors there. There was one on this side, down to you. So my name is Giao Nguyen. I grew up in this area, this community. So on the concept of reconciliation, Ken, thank you for your story. Mine kind of mimicked yours pretty much. So I think within the community itself, within the Vietnamese community in Vietnam and here, there is a lack of a national reconciliation movement within ourself. Can we forgive ourselves? Can the leadership actually stand up and say, I have policy screwed up, but can we move on? Can we work together to bring a better Vietnam for tomorrow? I mean, my story is way out there, but still when I was younger, I was out there, that outcome saying you name it, I was there. But then I still took the heart to say, I still love Vietnam. I still love the people. I have teams going back there to help the people all the time. I have students getting scholarship, because once they improve, our country improves, Vietnam improves. So I think the dialogue that we should initiate is a national reconciliation. From which side? No, it's just from us. From the Vietnamese Americans, yes? From us, because there's a lot of pain and suffering that I've seen at all, I've seen a lot. But we still can't jump in there and say, what can we do better? How can we come together and shake hands? As simple as a freaking hello, sometimes they will need to do it. So it's just a comment. And I think maybe see Ken within your broadcast podcast. Maybe bring that subject up. Let's really initiate this conversation for everybody. I would like to address that on a practical level. I feel like the people that have moved on or needs to move on or it's in the machine, it's really already has happened. It started many, many years ago. And I think within our own families, we don't get the national memo. But the reality is families like mine have been going back since the 90s. And my family was knee deep in the military. And although there's no talk formally of reconciliation at the dinner table, but they've sent their sons back to do business. So there's thousands of us that have been going back. So the idea of reconciliation has happened on a very practical level. And it's almost, they've moved on in reality. They've moved on, they don't question. And they're very supportive of the work that we do. And many other families that I know that had parents that are at the upper levels all fine with it. So I feel like it really has, the engine has started 20 years ago as people like have been going back for a long time now. Hello, my name is Tybin Elston. I work for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. My question is for anyone on the panel, how do we know when we're reconciled? Is that like a magic number or a goal that we're shooting for? Or is it kind of an endless process that generation after generation we're gonna have to strive for? Thank you. Would like to take that on. I mean, at USIP we talk about reconciliation as a process. Yeah, it's not an end state. It's not something that can just be declared. But yeah, there are ways of looking at how far along we are in that process. Personal relationships, like Ken is saying, is one of the elements, right? Having a shared vision, talking about the past and the trauma that people experienced. What do you think? I think there's a very multi-layered answer because the people that are in power or that are making things happen don't need that reconciliation conversation. But it's the ones that are the downtrodden, the ones that in their minds lost everything and couldn't rebuild. Those are the people that feel like they haven't been in reconciliation mode. But the ones that have moved on are regularly going back and have been doing business in Vietnam for the last two decades and have been able to create legal infrastructures, bring big lawyers back, dig for oil. If you name it, they bring technology back, make movies. It's endless. So on one side you could see how there is not even a need for reconciliation talk. And on the other side is the people that are powerless. The old men that came back broken and into the United States that were once powerful, that have lost everything. Their social construct comes from a completely different place. And that's what we're experiencing, I think, at home at the dinner table. All of this anger, it's really the powerless. But the men who have moved on and were able to switch their mindset, and there are many of them that came from officers of the war that came here and went to Berkeley within four years after arriving. There's many stories like that of them not even thinking about the word reconciliation. They've already moved on once they got into a big university or Ivy League as a 35, 40-year-old man or went to medical school right after. There's a lot of stories of that. So it just depends where in the social strata you belong. Coley Lee, what do you think? Where are we in the process of reconciliation? You ever see your daddy and mommy fight? So when they fight, they're all killed, they're upset, everything. You, the person in the middle, you have a right, you have opinion, you have feelings, and you, the one that brings them to calm down and drive your back to mindfulness, peacefulness in the house, in the family. And only thing you can do is offer yourself. And you'll be the model, and you'll be the best, the citizen on both sides, you can. And that is, you can, if you can take care of yourself and everyone around you, you can see that and do that. And the society can do that little by little, everyone can have the same flow and through with the waters. I hope. Time for several more, back row. My name's Joe, and I'm in the local Vietnamese community. I've been organizing for a while, and so I actually know along from before when he was at American University, and I can empathize with co-lea, a slip about what you're saying about the pain, about some folks, they want to keep the past and they don't want to move on. And I guess I'm fortunate that my parents were low level, so I think what you just said, Kenny, about it's the high level folks who couldn't move on. So my dad was literally just a foot soldier. He got on the boat, and I'm here. I was born here. So as far as organizing goes, it started pretty hard. I mean, I had a lot of folks who, they kind of just want to talk about the past and they just want to like, da-da, I want all that kind of stuff, but they kind of neglected the local community needs as far as organizing community for a chamber of commerce or economic or political benefit for all of us in the local community. But it's starting to change, and I see now that the older generation is going on, not by choice, time doesn't stop. I was at a USIP event here and actually shook hands with John McCain in 2015 during the 20 year anniversary. But I feel your pain. Sometimes I go to the local events out here, say like an Eden Center, and I see there's just less of the older generation there. Though the future does look bright. It's a little bit tough, but I'm kind of happy like things are moving on. America has moved on, and I'm just happy like the folks now we can do it together. At least for the younger folks who want to move on. Thanks, would anyone like to respond? Make sure that the mic is on. He let you understand everything we say. Is this on? Yes. Okay. Oh, I hate my voice and this. So I want to thank you all for coming down here. It's truly an honor to hear your conversation. I want to ask a question about, so this is completely a philosophical question. So I want your opinion on this. I had to actually write my question down. So in 2021, Vietnam unfortunately is known for limiting freedom of speech often. So in 2021, the government further limited internet freedom during that year. They pushed toward the draft in July that would restrict live streaming and launching a national code of conduct for people using social media in June. So the right group, Vietnamese Human Rights Network, which actually follow, there's a website that I follow, that basically said Facebook, Google and YouTube basically are compliant with this new law that just basically the government is escalating demands to censor descendants. So I want to ask all you four up here, do you feel like your voices are much stronger outside of Vietnam? Because unfortunately, if there's conversations like this in Vietnam, I don't appreciate anyone censoring what I have to say. And from someone who's a big fan of Vietnam and I have visited Vietnam, I don't feel comfortable as a millennial when my Facebook was limited. And I tried to go on TikTok and I was trying to do TikTok live just browsing down the street and getting oranges and I was blocked. And Instagram also. So of course you don't want to stir the pod and you want to of course be respectful to society and everything around you. But I feel like that's a big challenge nowadays in 2022 and going forward because I appreciate that we can have conversation like this in the United States Institute of Peace of Washington, D.C. But I just wish it wasn't like that back there in Vietnam. So just what's your opinion on this? I have a very simplistic answer. And this is very simplistic. Going to Vietnam is like going to my two uncle's house where I do not agree with their politics. I do not agree with their viewpoints. I think some things that they do are wrong. But for the future of my family, I'm going to take it easy one step at a time. I can still do things that I want in my house. I can write my own book. I can broadcast my own podcast. I can do whatever I want in my own house and I will continue to do that strongly. But I'm not going to bash my uncle's house. I will slowly work within going back to my uncle and just listening and slowly the change will happen. Other people are more fierce about it. I have friends who are just more militant about it. That's their style. But my very simplistic answer is when I go to my uncle's house, I respect my uncle. I don't agree with my uncle, but I respect it. But hopefully by me being there over time, my uncles would change their mind by my presence. And that's a very simple way to look at it. Remind me of when I've been on CNN to talk about the normalized relation with Vietnam and live in boycotts or not. And one group would say, no, we wouldn't do that on that. We had human rights. Myself, I am in humanitarian right. I don't understand about human rights too much, but I understand that if people die, I come in boy with noodles. If they're sick, they need medicines. I'm able to help them. That is what is all about just life on the earth. And therefore, if you can't say, we cannot tell other people what to do, that is what politics does, politicians does. This is what people like ambassadors does. Our job is to do what is to help others, the better we couldn't, and let them be who they are. We can't change them or let them have to change themselves. If we cannot change over here, how can we change there? So... Yeah, I may. There are a lot of conversations going on in Vietnam all the time about every issue, right? People are very interested and involved in politics and society. It's not all public. But in one sense, the fact that authorities feel that they need to take steps to limit it shows how far it's gone and what the potential is for that conversation to continue. I'd like to add two more points. I recently discovered a guest that I had on the podcast and she said it in the 90s, the 94. She worked for the Canadian government, was sent back, a delegation was sent back from Canada, to figure out how to create a capitalist system for the communist government. The communists welcomed them in 1994 to figure out how capitalism can play side by side with the communist system. That is happening in 94 and we're not even aware that that's happening. So these changes are happening inside. Another prime example is Fulbright University. Fulbright University, they set the delegation also a good, I'm not sure how many years ago but maybe 10 years ago to the East Coast, the Ivy League schools and they toured around and they figured how can we introduce academic freedom without disrupting too much the society. So Fulbright sits inside of Saigon as an academic freedom place. So where it can create. But these changes are so slow that we're not gonna see it right away. So these things are being worked on when we're not seeing it. So I think be rest assured, Vietnam wants to catch up and be part of the world game but it's gonna take them their own way without completely disrupting society so they still have to find their balance. So my uncle's house is my uncle's house and I will allow my uncle to do his business and I'll do my business here in the US. Time for one more. They're very back. Well, two more. We can take two more. Hello, thank you. It's really informative hearing you all's perspectives. I work for Peace Corps and Peace Corps just recently opened our post in Vietnam and I wanted to know what role can individuals that might not know have an extensive understanding of Vietnam and American history? How can we contribute to reconciliation, especially working in remote areas in Vietnam? Pass that to Lam first. Sure. Well, first, thank you very much for your interest in serving for Peace Corps, especially in Vietnam. I think it's very simple. Just going there, doing your job, showing the people that you're really there to help and with many, many individuals like you, the process of reconciliation will just accelerate. So a bit of, thank you. First of all, thank you for all of the introductions and discussion on the past and future and the reconciliation of Vietnam. Very grateful for that. A little bit of introduction to my background. I'm Phu Hien. I am currently a fellow of YCLE Change Program funded by State Department. So I'm currently staying here, working with one government agencies of Washington for one month. And I'm also currently a student of Phun Pray University in Vietnam for the Master of Public Policy. So there's a lot of discussions in Vietnam that I can participate in and hear of about the relationship between Vietnam and U.S. And like you said, it's very active. It may be not official, but people are free to discuss on a lot of subjects. And people in Vietnam, they care a lot about the relationship, the image of Vietnam in international politics. It's sometimes, like for example, alumni of Phun Pray, they can be everywhere. They are involved in politics. The previous prime minister and president of Vietnam are Phun Pray alumni, but no one know about that. So we as people, Vietnamese, we are practical, but also we are very weak on promoting our image and we have some fear on pushing out to people what we are. And thus as a nation, I observe that we are also hesitant to push our image, our world. And some of the time, most of the time, problem between nations arise from misunderstanding from isolation of information. So from your point of view, for us, for degeneration, new generation, for the future, what we can do to make for Vietnamese to make U.S. understand Vietnam more and for Vietnamese in America to make Vietnam understand U.S. more? For my last 35 years of the travel back and forth and bring a lot of different groups, there are volunteers to do the work. That is one way to get to culture, to understand one another. Remember when young men went to Vietnam back in 1965 to 75? Many of them never have a chance to get to know Vietnamese and or even have never see Vietnamese really until they maybe after 75. I did a guy who the war ended in 1975 and I met him like 15 years ago and he said, I'm the first Vietnamese he see. You never know what it looked like. That is how difficult it was to talk about the how you can learn one another. So the best way is to get the backpack and get a group of people go to Vietnam. Most best is you can young or it doesn't matter. Just go there and enjoy the food. And I'll talk to everybody, be friendly to everyone. They just want you to have a happy face, show them. You don't have to give them anything. You don't have to do anything, but just be there. You will gain and you will appreciate their culture, motherland and you come back and you tell your friend, you tell your family. And that is how we start to ball rolling. And I want to add to go Le Le. There's this, I think underrated idea of soft power. Especially in entertainment. So V-POP, VIT RAP, Vietnam Society here in DC, the VIT Film Festival in Orange County. All of these soft power groups are doing the work over time, pushing out over time communities and getting together. And there are people that are creating in Hollywood, Vietnamese Americans, there's hundreds of them creating stories. There are hundreds of them that are acting, producing, directing in Hollywood. And going back to Vietnam, to Dring A, to hand off the work of filmmaking. So the soft power is happening in both directions. So it's just a matter of time, I believe. I agree, I think there's already so much good work going on right now. So I think just a matter of time and we're gonna see some great fruits of our labor. Yeah, it's a good time to be Vietnamese. Yeah? So to conclude tonight's session, we've invited Ambassador Ted Oceus, who served in Vietnam several times during his career and practiced bicycle diplomacy and people-to-people outreach and has written about the history and current state of US-Vietnam relations. Ted, would you like to sum up and offer your own comments on what we've discussed this evening? First, let me say thank you to Aaron and Peter and thank you to you, Andrew, for organizing a unique discussion, discussion that couldn't have taken place even 10 years ago. And thank you to all three panelists. And I have a little story that I think will help you understand the way I feel about what our panelists just said. Pete Peterson was the first US ambassador to Vietnam and at one point somebody kind of clapped him on the back and said, it's a miracle that we've come so far in our relationship and he got angry. He said, it's not a miracle. It's the result of courage and goodwill and commitment on the part of people. It didn't fall from heaven. And I think you're looking at people of courage, goodwill and commitment who believe that reconciliation, the process of reconciliation is in the interest of the family. And I talk about the family in a very broad sense. We heard a lot of language from the panelists about family. We heard about divorce, that mom and dad are divorced and the kids have to deal with both sides. Mom and dad being the US and Vietnam or mom and dad being Vietnamese Americans who are in favor of reconciliation and those who are not. And the very different views that some of them have about reconciliation. We heard from Zau Su Lom, Em Lom about the concept of home and how that's sometimes hard for the immigrant. We've, in the past, those of us who've read Viet Tung Nguyen, he writes a lot about the concept of home and that's not always an easy concept for those who've been displaced. Those are part of, those who are part of a diaspora. We heard about the plenitude of storytelling and I am a firm believer that whether it's Le Li telling her story or others through film, through art, through music, telling their stories through literature, telling their stories, that's actually a lot more helpful in some ways than all the data or treatises or anything like that. The storytelling is a very human thing to do and we as humans are programmed to understand stories and to react positively to stories. We heard from a number of the panelists about the importance of education and Fulbright, of course, was cited as one of those. I would just note that once as ambassador I went to Texas, to Houston and a lot of the people who are part of the Comdom and the Vietnamese community and Houston had called for me to be recalled from my job. It asked John Kerry to pull me back because they thought I'm too friendly to the communists. It sounds familiar, Le Li, doesn't it? But at the end I made kind of a pitch on reconciliation and why I thought reconciliation was better than the alternative and at the end of this discussion with a pretty critical community, one woman, a person of courage and commitment stood up and said, what can we do to help? And my answer was very simple, if you can contribute to education and to making sure that we learn more about each other, that's the best way to help. It's not political. We heard about respect. This is respect for those who can't move on from a painful past. For some it's just too difficult and we gotta respect folks where they are because some people have suffered too much to talk about reconciliation and forgiveness. We heard about forgiveness, especially, I mean there's no greater embodiment of forgiveness than Le Li Hayslip who has been through terrible things but had chosen the kind of life I wanna have, I'm gonna forgive. And that is something that I think we can admire and maybe try to emulate. We heard, and this actually, I've thought a lot about reconciliation, I wrote a book about reconciliation and I thank you for citing it. But what I had never really thought about was, and Long talked about this, was the role of Buddhism in enabling people to forgive and to reconcile. And then we heard about some of the ways that people have been brought together through Waiseeli and the Peace Corps, through V-Pop and Viet Rapp, the work of the Vietnam Society and just putting on backpacks and going to Vietnam and eating the food and talking to people. I didn't try to sum up because there's no way to sum up such a rich conversation but I felt that those were some of the themes that came out of it and I really wanna thank people of courage and goodwill and commitment for what they're willing to do, they're willing to stand up for reconciliation. Thank you.