WQED's "In Country: A Vietnam Story" and Friends of Danang.

Watch In Country: A Vietnam Story on PBS. See more from WQED.

A documentary worth watching is WQED's "In Country: A Vietnam Story", an hour-long 2006 program that follows a group of Vietnam veterans as make an emotional return to the country for the first time since the war. Accompanying the group is "Friends of Danang", a Pittsburgh-based non-profit with the mission of rebuilding and reconciliation almost exclusively known to the general public for the American destruction there. From a WQED profile [.pdf file]:

In Country: A Vietnam Story, tells two emotional stories; separate yet intertwined. There are the “Friends” themselves, the men and women who travel to and from Vietnam on a bi-annual basis, devoting their energies and talents to building an elementary school for the children of Danang. Their current reconciliation efforts are devoted to providing prosthetic and orthopedic rehabilitation services for children still being maimed by abandoned ordinance from the conflict, as well as funding the construction of a second school.

It's especially significant around Memorial Day, when we consider--among other things--American interpretations of the Vietnam War, a public imagining that focuses almost entirely on its own suffering: the loss of American lives, the tumultuous protests, and the upheaval of a generation. As we noted in 2011, the inscription on the Vietnam Veterans Monument in Pittsburgh, for instance, reads:

Welcome home to proud men and women We begin now to fulfill promises To remember the past To look to the future We begin now to complete the final process Not to make political statements Not to offer explanations Not to debate realities Monuments are erected so that the future might remember the past Warriors die and live and die Let the Historians answer the political questions Those who served -- served Those who gave all -- live in our hearts Those who are left -- continue to give As long as we remember -- There is still some love left. - T.J. McGarvey

No doubt a moving tribute to those who served and were forced to serve, but trying "not to make political statements" and "not [debating] realities" ignores the scale of destruction half a world away. We don't often enough acknowledge the enormous devastation wrought on Vietnam and its neighbors, the losses suffered by American allies acting on its behalf, and the tension their presence caused to Pan-Asian relationships. A major part of the American response to this war in particular needs to be atonement, not simply an accounting of its own losses, and projects like Friends of Danang are important parts of this.