Never again. As a Jew I hear this, read this, say this, think this any time the Holocaust is discussed. I have visited Holocaust memorials and museums around the world. I studied World War II in school. I have met survivors with numbers tattooed on their arms. They are my friends’ grandparents. Never again.

I have heard that all my life. But I have recently come to realize that we haven’t truly meant it. While visiting Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, Brandon and I have learned quite a few things we were not taught in history class.

This posts will be focused on these events. When numbers and facts are shared, I will try to link to a reputable source that substantiates the information. It will be quite a long post, but we really hope you read it through.

THE SECRET WAR

For us it started a in Laos at the UXO Museum in Luang Prabang. While we were there, we learned that during the Vietnam War more than 2 million tons of bombs, bombies (cluster munitions) and other munitions known as ordnance were dropped on Laos by American troops. Let that sink in. 2 million tons. This is equivalent to a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, and more than all the bombs dropped on Europe during the entirety of World War II (via Legacies of War).

But according to our government, we had no military presence in Laos. It made me furious to see a video of former President Nixon stating to the press that we had “no American ground combat troops in Laos.” (This is also quoted in the Chicago Tribune archives.) Before that, former President Kennedy even talked about the importance of Laos neutrality to America! We may not have had men on the ground, but we did have bombs. In fact, maps like the one above were created with the support of intel from US military flight records.

But this is why it is often called the Secret War. Why did we do this? It was military tactic used during the Vietnam War to try to cut off Vietnamese supply lines on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. (Other tactics we tried were to literally soap up the road to make it too slippery to use. Seriously.) But up to a third of the bombs dropped did not explode, leaving it contaminated with unexploded ordnance (UXO).

Though this war ended more than 40 years ago, there are still injuries and casualties every year from UXO. And anywhere from 40-60% of those victims are children. This happens for a few reasons:

• The scrap metal business is incredibly lucrative. A good piece could earn someone their yearly wages in one sale. Unfortunately, this means men, women and children take their lives into their hands trying to salvage what they can find.
• Children don’t always recognize them. Though now programs like COPE travel the country to educate people on how to identify them, some children make mistakes. They see a shiny metal ball to play with and when they pick it up or throw it, it detonates.
• Citizens just don’t know where the UXO are located. Sometimes they are working the rice fields, digging for worms to fish, or lighting a fire to keep warm when a UXO under their feet detonates.
• Resources are scarce. We’ve seen pictures and held household objects made from UXO. Larger bombs have acted as pillars for homes. Smaller ones have been deconstructed to make bowls, spoons, farming tools, and anything else you can imagine.

We heard stories about kids, families, and communities who have been torn apart by these bombies. As I mentioned, rural kids and families are now becoming more educated on how to ID and safely notify officials about the presence of a UXO. City kids thought are not always as informed and have also been victims.

In 2008, the Convention on Cluster Munitions came together to create a ban on the use of bombies in future warfare which is great. But guess what, the US has not signed it yet. ‘Merica! *sigh*

You can learn more about the UXO problem in Laos here

THE VIETNAM WAR – THE SECOND INDOCHINA WAR – THE AMERICAN WAR (TO THE VIETNAMESE)

Now on the the Vietnam War itself. Growing up, I remember knowing about the Vietnam War as something that happened. Something that our parents and grandparents protested – or were even drafted to fight in. But what were we fighting against? If you had asked me before this trip, I would have shrugged and answered, “Communism?” I honestly never really knew, and never remember learning about it in school. A lot of this was a reminder of how our education systems “edit” the history books so we don’t know about certain things. This is still going on today. Again, if we don’t learn about these things we cannot learn from them, and future generations are bound to repeat them.

So why were we even there? What were we doing? And WHY did we end up supporting what is now known as the puppet government?

American forces first showed up in Vietnam during the First Indochina War in the 1960’s to help the French fight to maintain control of Vietnam (French Indochina) against the threat of communism But that isn’t all. Though his speech focused on what became known as the “domino theory” – the idea that a communist takeover of Indochina would lead to other Asian nations also falling to communism – former President Eisenhower was also  quoted saying that if communism took over, “several things happen right away. The Malayan peninsula, the last little bit of the end hanging on down there, would be scarcely defensible. The tin and tungsten that we so greatly value from that area would cease coming.” Tin. And Tungsten. This feels like the focus wasn’t exactly what we thought.

We were meant to leave after this, but never did for fear that a communist leader would win during the first post-war democratic election. We went on to support southern Vietnam against the north along with other anti-communist allies. But it feels like, to quote the movie Clue:

So we should not have been there in the first place! But on top of all of this, the chemical warfare we used in the fight were horrific and still have lasting effects today. Agent Orange was meant to eliminate forest cover and crops for the Viet Cong troops. Created with the chemical dioxin, we for some reason believed that it wouldn’t harm humans, even though it could decimate trees and nature. Well of course we were wrong. And now, three and four generations later people are still suffering the consequences of exposure: tumors, birth defects, rashes, psychological symptoms, cancer and more. We are focused today on the birth defects Zika can cause, but the Vietnamese have been dealing with much worse due to Agent Orange for years. And when the community came to the US for reparations, we basically said we don’t have to make reparations with the enemy. Americans who were exposed, and whose children suffered the consequences are eligible for benefits. But not “the enemy” – even though they are no longer an enemy.

This is not meant to spark any political conversations, and I am not a fan of Trump, but some of the things former presidents have done and said seem to be as bad or worse than some of what Trump is spewing. It all made me sad to be an American. The so-called greatest country in the world is not looking all that great when we peel back the shiny top layer.

THE KHMER ROUGE

The Vietnam War finally ended in 1975. But that same year, another round of atrocities began that the world largely ignored. Do you think you would know if a rouge government eliminated 1/4 of a country’s population in just a few years? Especially if the majority of those killed were the most educated and talented in the country. Seems like something you would hear about, right? Well it happened in Cambodia and is known as the Khmer Rouge, or Pol Pot.

During this time the Khmer Rouge wanted to level the playing field by eliminating the educated, the wealthy and the elite. They wanted to start at “year zero” to create a rural, classless society. Money, free markets, traditional schooling, religion, and more were eliminated. Schools and government buildings were shut down and turned in to prisons or “reeducation centers.”  Is it just me, or does this sound like an extreme version of the communism we were so adamantly fighting against in the years leading up to this?

It began with chaos. A few days after the Khmer Rouge took power, they went door to door, town to town, forcing everyone in major cities to leave their homes with the promise of coming back in a few days. They told citizens that America was going to be sending more bombs, and if that didn’t work, moved them by force. Families were moved multiple times throughout the countryside, split up, and decimated. Many died during these journeys. Once “settled” they were forced to take on agricultural work, which was a very unfamiliar activity for most. Most were forced to work more than 12 hours per day, with minimal food, and the expectation to deliver three tons of rice per hectare (or every 2.5 acres).

But that was just the start. The Khmer Rouge turned the country into a huge detention center, which later became a graveyard for nearly two million people, including their own members and even some senior leaders. They arrested and killed thousands of soldiers, military officers, government officials, intellectuals, minorities, anyone considered too educated (or wore glasses – which was a sign of education), and anyone they deemed not “pure” enough to rebuild the community. Many were arrested under false pretense, imprisoned, tortured into giving false confessions, then murdered based on those confessions. And if one person was found guilty, their entire family was executed because:

1. They did not want to leave any survivors that may come back for revenge one day
2. Their motto was that it was better to accidentally kill the innocent than to accidentally let the guilty go free.

One of the primary prisons called S-21 was converted from a public high school and held around 14,000 prisoners while operating. There were only 12 survivors found. And then there were the killing fields. Hundreds and hundreds of people were brought in by the truckload and immediately murdered. Sound familiar?

This was only 30 years after the Holocaust. Just 30 years later, and we let it happen again. Somehow the world ignored it. Swedish political leaders and dignitaries even visited Cambodia during this time. They were shown what the leader (Pol Pot) wanted them to see. (Of course.) They went home supporting Pol Pot and his followers. They spoke out against those who escaped and shared news of the atrocities taking place saying that they must be lying, because they saw no such thing on their visit.

When the truth finally came to light, the United Nations still recognized Pol Pot’s government as the primary government of Cambodia for 12 years. 12 years. Seriously? That is akin to recognizing Hitler’s government as legitimate 12 years after World War II ended. This ignores those who suffered under their rule. To this day there are people who still believe in what the Khmer Rouge tried to accomplish which I cannot comprehend.

More information on the Khmer Rouge can be found here.

TODAY

Somehow we still haven’t learned that ethnic/political cleansing is not a thing. Your skin being black and mine being white is no different than your eyes being blue when mine are green. Your hair being blonde while mine is brown. You being tall and me being short. You believing in your G-d does not affect me believing in my G-d and all of us coexisting together.

Surprised you had not heard about this? I understand that people don’t always want to highlight mistakes made – but you cannot rewrite history! Slaughtering Native Americans happened. Slavery happened – and they were not immigrants. The Holocaust happened. The Khmer Rouge. Darfur. Syria. If we say “Never again,” we have to mean it. This means talking about it to teach others. Otherwise, they are just empty words. And I don’t want to live in a world like that.