South Vietnamese veterans

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February 16, 2007

South Vietnamese veterans show off their stuff

You can see the passion in James Vu. You can hear it in his quivering voice when he talks about that day in 1973 when he and thousands of South Vietnamese soldiers marched through the yellow gate during the Armed Forces Parade in Saigon.
"It seems like a long time ago," he muses, standing in a corner of Garden Grove Park where the 25th annual Tet Festival kicks off Saturday.
Even today, Vu is wearing his camouflage pants and his dog tags.
But Vu remembers it as if it happened this morning. He's recreating a replica of that yellow gate for the festival, which will be part of the Vietnam Veterans exhibit at this year's Tet Festival. In fact, this is the first time the festival is even having one such exhibit.
Vu believes this will help veterans talk to the younger generation about who they were and what they believed in.
Vu, who makes replica South Vietnamese army decorations such as ribbons, badges and medals in his Garden Grove store, says no one ever got a chance to show off these decorations.
"I bought a book many years ago that shows how to recreate these things right from the ribbon that's used to the bronze alloy that the medals are made from," he says.
Also on display throughout the veterans exhibit is the South Vietnamese flag, yellow with red stripes, which was recently declared by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to be the flag of the Vietnamese American people in California.
Vu proudly says that he was the first one to hoist that flag two years ago at the Vietnam War Memorial, which stands in the Sid Goldstein Park in Westminster.
"The flag is very important to the soldiers," he said. "We live for it and we will die for it."
The veternas area on the festival grounds will also have an entertainment stage that will have everything from martial arts to music.
It's music that appealed to the soldiers.
"Soldiers are not fighting machines," Vu says. "We feel happy, we feel sad, we feel love and we feel pain."
All that and more is reflected in the South Vietnamese army songs that capture a soldier's emotions so perfectly and beautifully, Vu says.
He is proud of the gate he built with a generous donation from a former fighter pilot.
"Oh, it's jsut made of paper and wood," he said. "But it means a lot to us. It takes us back in time and it will show the young people who come here to celebrate why their grandparents and parents came here and why they did what they did."