Vietnam Buries Its Anger, Seeks U.S. Ties

Le Ngoc Thuy drew aside a soiled curtain across his altar to reveal fading photographs of his wife and their three children. They died, he said, when U.S. bombers destroyed their neighborhood 19 years ago.

“If I had met the pilot who dropped those bombs right after the attack I would have killed him by any means possible. I was crazed with grief,” said the 78-year-old man, sadness etched in his eyes.

Thuy described the night of Dec. 26, 1972, the so-called Christmas bombing of Hanoi, when he lost his family inside an underground shelter next to their brick home that also was obliterated.

“But if that pilot were in front of me now?” he said. “Well, I have become calmer. I know everyone on both sides had to do their duty--they had no choice. And the war has been over for many years. Now we must look to the future.”

If any place in Hanoi has cause for bitterness against the United States it is Thuy’s neighborhood along Kham Thien Street, a working-class area through which American warplanes cut a deadly swath.

Several hundred civilians perished in a campaign by President Richard M. Nixon to pressure Hanoi into a peace agreement to end American involvement in the Vietnam War.

A memorial to the Kham Thien Street bombing says 283 people were killed and 266 wounded there on Dec. 26.

But even here, among factory workers and sidewalk vendors, the anger has faded, and residents hope for renewed ties with their one-time archenemy.

The United States soon will begin talks with Hanoi on normalizing diplomatic ties and perhaps will end a crippling trade embargo imposed since Communist forces triumphed in 1975.

A French colonial villa has been reserved for the future U.S. Embassy at 19 Hai Ba Trung St., where the United States maintained its last official presence in Hanoi, a U.S. consulate.

In most parts of Hanoi, and particularly among youths, pro-American feeling runs high.

In one of the world’s last bastions of Communist power, a new and once most improbable refrain goes: “America is No. 1,” accompanied by the thumbs-up sign.

Many Hanoi residents have relatives in the United States, which represents the good life in contrast to their sacrifice and poverty. People also believe that lifting the trade embargo will hasten Vietnam’s economic development with foreign investment.

And most in Hanoi under the age of 30 do not remember the war’s horrors and hatreds--as do the survivors of Kham Thien Street.

“I hope Mr. Bush will be the architect of charity toward Vietnam,” said Dinh Ngoc Duc, a 77-year-old retired doctor who lost his eldest son in the Christmas air raids.

“Every war creates tragic consequences. But I am not angry anymore. It’s been long enough to forget,” he said.

Thuy lives in a narrow, fetid alley behind Duc’s coffee shop. His leaky roof is made of thatch, and the walls from bricks he salvaged from his destroyed house. He says he has never recovered--economically or emotionally--from the bombing.

Incense sticks and flowers grace the one bright spot of his shanty--the Buddhist altar where he prays for his lost family. On the day of their deaths, Thuy had gone to the countryside to bring food to his grandchildren, who had been evacuated along with many Hanoi residents.

At sunset, on the rim of Hanoi, children played outside a primary school. In front, the twisted remnants of a U.S. B-52 bomber jutted from a pond otherwise lush with vegetable beds. A plaque said the plane had been downed Dec. 27, 1972.

Girls with flowers in their pigtails and rambunctious boys knew little about this mangled wreckage. They were more interested in teasing a reporter and practicing foreign languages.

“You are an American,” one boy proudly deduced. “We like Americans.”