Vietnamese Women's Museum

As part of my first full day in Hanoi, I decided to take a stroll down to the southern bank of the Hoan Kiem Lake to visit the newly renovated Vietnamese Women's Museum. It was a long walk, fraught with many harrowing street-crossing experiences, but I was not disappointed. The museum was really well laid-out, with displays covering women's roles in Vietnamese culture and society, both past and present. Displays included women's roles in agriculture, fashion, religion, and an especially large section devoted to the wartime contributions of several individual women (and women in general). In the wartime display, one picture really caught my eye, which I shall post below. It shows a young, armed, Vietnamese girl leading an enormous (at least by comparison) American prisoner down a path. From the picture's caption, I learned that it had been taken on September 20th, 1965 in the Ha Tinh Province. She is 17 year old guerrilla fighter Nguyen Kim Lai, squad leader of the communal popular militia, and he is 23 year old pilot William Andrew Robinson, whose F-105 had been shot down. The picture gained national fame--was displayed on billboards, printed on stamps, and lauded as "a symbol of courage and heroic nobility of the Vietnamese women". That was all great and informative, but not what really interested me. My favorite part was the last section of the caption which read: "In 1995, the two persons met again. At age 45, mother of three children, Mrs. Nguyen Thi Kim Lai, works at the hospital of Thach Ha (Ha Tinh) while Andrew Robinson, a mechanic, was part of a group of war veterans visiting old combat zones in Vietnam." The caption didn't go on to say what happened when they met or what was said. Maybe the language barrier was too great to say anything at all (pretty likely). I like to think, though, that like the veterans I mentioned earlier who visited Phong Na-Ke Bang and met the locals they once bombed, that they were able to look past their old enmity. To look each other in the eye, acknowledge their common humanity, and maybe even share a smile.

Yeah, I know. I'm sappy.