Letters to the Editor: Opposing views on L.A. County’s ‘Jane Fonda Day’ and the Vietnam War

To the editor: As a citizen who was affected by the Vietnam War, I agree with the letter writer in The Times, a Vietnamese American, who wrote that “many Vietnamese ex-pats ... don’t understand the history of Vietnam.”

He went on to cite several facts about Vietnam under French colonialism and its arbitrary partition into north and south. The writer also mentioned that the U.S. intensified its military activities after fabricating an attack on Navy ships in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964.

It’s time for people with very strong feelings on Vietnam and their political leaders in Orange County to abandon their delusional narrative of the war. They should accept the fact that Vietnam and its people, who managed to overcome and survive French colonialism and American military power, have evolved into a modern market-driven economy with the investment assistance of the United States.

One only has to shop at Costco to find clothes made in Vietnam to understand its socioeconomic and political evolution since becoming a unified country bent on self-determination.

Larry Naritomi, Monterey Park

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To the editor: As a citizen of the U.S., Jane Fonda certainly had the right to speak out against our war effort in Vietnam in the 1960s and ‘70s. Her support for the enemy, however, with a trip to Hanoi in 1972 that included her sitting on the seat of an enemy antiaircraft gun, was significantly beyond the right. (“Vietnamese groups furious over ‘Jane Fonda Day’ in L.A. County,” May 15)

She played the role of a traitor. It was an act that gave aid and comfort to an enemy. It violated her responsibility as a citizen.

I was the pilot of an American airplane who willingly put himself in harm’s way as directed by our commander-in-chief, and my resentment is profound. Fonda’s success playing roles on screen did not give her the right to glorify those who put me or any of my comrades in the sights of that gun.

She behaved in a way that violated the moral obligation of American citizenship.

Stephen Sloane, Lomita