Preface
Due to Tito’s distance from Los Angeles, this interview was conducted via Skype. Before beginning the interview, Tito asked if the interviewers would like to hear a song, and when he received a positive response, he chose to sing something that he had learned in his youth, ‘La Malagueña’.
A Song from El Salvador
La Malagueña
Ellos me quieren mirar
Pero si tu no los dejas
Pero si tu no los dejas
Ni siquiera parader
“Your eyes want to look at me, but you won’t let them, you won’t let them, you won’t even blink.”
We Had to Protect Our Freedom
Interviewer: Do you want to tell us about, when you first got to Viet Nam, what your kind of experience was? Or you can tell us about your training before and then your transition into actually going to Viet Nam.
Tito: Well, um, of course, everybody that joined the military, they have to go through basic training. In basic training, they teach you everything there is to know concerning your ability to use any arms. You know, your rifle, your gun, your bayonet, whatever there is, because you know they teach you how to protect against the enemy. In case, you know, you deploy to a war zone. So they teach you all that, and you’ve got to learn. You better learn fast, because you never know when you are going to use whatever you are taught to do. You are actually protecting yourself and protecting your fellow soldiers.
Interviewer: What was your view of the war? What did you think about having to fight against the Vietnamese when you were there?
Tito: Good question, I never thought about that before, myself. All I know is that I had work to do. I had an assignment to do, and that was to serve our military active years, which is 2 years with the Army. And that’s all I knew concerning my general view of it. You know, I had to put in 2 years of active duty in the service. Whether it was the Army, Navy, Marines… whatever, but that was my assignment then in my life, at that point.
Sort of like my citizenship obligation, even though I wasn’t a citizen yet. But I felt that I was contributing to keep our way of freedom. Fighting for our freedom. Freedom is not free. We have to protect our freedom, and our military is part of that part that we had to depend upon, so we don’t get overwhelmed by other ideologies, that kind of thing. Our country, our way of life, we have freedom of expression. We have freedom of worship, whatever we want to worship, whether it’s our lord Jesus Christ, or whatever people want to worship. This is part of our military to protect that part of our lives, I think.