Thoughts on US Involvement
Justin: So did you sympathize with one side over the other? Did you sympathize with the Vietnamese, or did you sympathize with the Americans, or did you not really think about it in those terms?
Kiphan Kan: Well we were living in South Vietnam and at the time. The storyline was we were fighting the Communists. I mean a lot of people moved to the South because they were trying to get away from the Communists, and my parents knew [the] Chinese had already left China because of the Communist regime. So when we moved to the South it was–again– to sort of get away from the Communists, so the sympathy was towards the free world. And then the Americans, of course, had- were cast as the savior of the free world. So, in that regard, yeah, our sympathy was towards the South and the Americans, pretty much. And of course the Americans brought a bunch of things to Vietnam, and a lot of fun things that we liked such as T.V. But in general we thought of the Americans as the good guys.
Justin: And looking back on the war now, do you still feel that way about the Americans?
Kiphan Kan: I do think that they thought they were doing the right thing, on the other hand, I do feel that if you are a citizen of a country you can feel nationalistic about your own country regardless of which country you belong to, and so I do sympathize with the Vietnamese at the time because it was their own country and they had already suffered the occupation of French, and Japanese, and to have the Americans fight a war through them, against their own people, I do realize now that it was not necessarily the most righteous thing to do for them.