Saturday, January 16, 2010

Quang Pham and Vietnam War Museum in OC



There is a nice article in the OC Register recently about the building of a Vietnam War Museum

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/war-229450-vietnam-museum.html

Here are some of the excerpts:

"..........Quang Pham, who is running for Congress in the 47th District that includes Garden Grove, also wants to get the museum process underway. He has nabbed a web domain for the museum and plans to incorporate for non-profit status.



Pham wants a museum that will provide a complete picture of the war on behalf of all veterans and their families.


"In war," he says, "there is a tremendous fallout on human souls."


..................................For Pham, it was the war in which his father fought for South Vietnam as an Air Force lieutenant colonel. Pham's father remained in Vietnam when his family was airlifted out in 1975, and he was not able to see them again for 17 years.

"A museum would include not just the U.S. perspective," Pham explains. "The other parts were the allies and the South Vietnamese. It must include the aftermath and the reasons why the Vietnamese are in the U.S. The younger generations don't really understand about the killing fields or the re-education camps."


There is some urgency.


April 30 will mark the 35th anniversary of the fall of South Vietnam to the Communists. Passing years make it harder to document history first-hand from the veterans who fought the war, the families who lived through it, and the lives that were up-ended because of it.


U.S. military involvement, which lasted more than 14 years, claimed more than 58,000 American lives and over three million Vietnamese. Vietnam meant America was never the same.


Pham forwards the December obituary for former Marine Pilot Col. John Braddon, 80, who rescued a Vietnamese pilot who crashed while supporting U.S. Marines during the war. That pilot was Pham's father....."

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