What my father does not talk readily about is the last time he wore his uniform.

A day after Saigon fell to communist hands my father commandeered a navy ship full of army officers to the Philippines. Nearing destination, he put away his uniform, changed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and threw his Colt 45 into the Pacific Ocean and along with a hundred or so other officers, asked the U.S. authorities for asylum.

That image perhaps more than any other, had haunted me. It spelled the end of my childhood mythology. At 12, I too had already become a veteran of a war I never actually fought.

Indeed, I wear no army uniform today; I carry a lap-top and a press card instead. If my father had boasted of victorious battles, I once saw the ethnic and private enclave. I substitute the medals I once saw decorating my father's army uniform for the colorful entry and exit stamps on my American passport.

When I turned 30 recently, my father said, "At your age I was already a colonel."

"We are very different now dad," I snapped, a little irritated. "don't have to be a warrior here in America."

My father smiled a sad, knowing smile. What relevant words of wisdom can an exiled general pass on down to his fully grown son? I am, after all the one who my father sometimes humorously introduces to his ex-army buddies as his "American son" which in Vietnamese, could sometimes translate to mean soulless or traitor.

Andrew Lam is an associate editor with Pacific News Service in San Francisco. © 1996

A joke I like to evoke from time to time with my mother. When I was a child sometimes we would watch cai-luong or Southern Vietnamese opera together in the evening. The word "cai-luong" means renovation, but the opera was always about some past tragedy--some young people met, fell in love, became separated by some unforeseen tragic forces--it was usually their evil and close-minded families. But regardless of whatever plot, the ill-fated lovers would invariably meet again, some twenty years later. (For some reason, it was always twenty years in these cai-luong operas). "Roi Hai Muoi Nam Sau." "After Twenty Years."

The joke had to do with our disbelief--my mother and I never suspended our disbelief. In these plots the lovers would always meet, twenty years later, as sextagenarians, or looking very much decrepit, with snow-white hair, deep lines on their faces, hoarse whispers.... A couple of tough decades. Perhaps they were shooting opium. My mother and I, we would laugh. Mortality and old age became an unintended joke. Yet beneath our disbelief there lurked an unexamined faith--now suddenly perceived: that the passage of time can be a merciful interval. Time does not ravage but beautifies and credits the face. Experience warms you up to Fall and Winter. Loss of innocence gains courage. Real time finally catches up with the refugee.

Washington, D.C., September 1996

Thuy Dinh Directed the film, Cyclo

I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy, we fought ourselves -- and the enemy was in us...

The war is over for me now, but it will always be there -- the rest of my days. As I am sure Elias will be -- fighting with Barnes for what Rhah called possession of my soul...

Oliver Stone - excerpt from the screenplay of his film, "Platoon" submitted in response to a request to contribute to this website. ©