joshualunacreations:(Please don’t repost or edit my work. Reblogs are always appreciated. Supp

joshualunacreations:(Please don’t repost or edit my work. Reblogs are always appreciated. Support my work here: https://www.patreon.com/joshualuna)CW: Anti-Asian racism, warWhen I was a teen, I worked as a summerhire filing Vietnam War records. I couldn’t articulate it then, but as a FilipinoAmerica, working there deeply affected me.Imagery of the Vietnam War is so one-sided that many have beendesensitized to the trauma and suffering of Vietnamese people—even AsianAmericans ourselves. By that age I had already long been taught to identify asan un-hypenated American, and to root for Rambo and other violent whitesaviors. So that’s why, when an older white co-worker—who was a Vietnam War vet—suggestedmy Asian presence was triggering to him, I internalized it by learning to walkon egg shells around him and make myself smaller. It didn’t matter that I wasFilipino. To him, I was just another g**k. The US now recognizes the suffering of the 58k soldiers whodied and vets who returned with ailments and PTSD—so common that the term “Namflashback” is ubiquitous—but that empathy hasn’t extended towards the innocentSoutheast Asian lives that were also affected, both during the war and after.The US dropped more bombs on Vietnam than it did in all ofWW2, but didn’t stop there—it also dropped 2 million+ tons of ordnance on Laosfor 9 straight years (making Laos the most bombed country per capita inhistory) and 2.7 million in Cambodia as part of its “Secret War.”Two-thirds of Vietnam’s 3 million+ deaths were civilians. If that wasn’tenough, they’re still dying today. Since the war ended, nearly 40k have diedfrom unexploded bombs and landmines left behind, and 67K more have been blindedor maimed—together that’s double the number of US war deaths.While PTSD is a serious issue, “Nam flashback”suggests that the pain of war for American vets lives in the mind and that thephysical threat is buried in the past. But for Vietnamese, Lao, and Khmervictims of America’s relentless bombing, the threat remains buried in theground they live on. International law requires the US to clean up unexplodedordnance in Southeast Asia, but the US is skirting responsibility. As a result,cleanup is estimated to take hundreds of years at the current rate. (It’s worthnoting the US war in Afghanistan is creating similar conditions as we speak.)Similarly, the US largely ignores the 20-30k Amerasians fathered and abandonedby US soldiers in Vietnam—legacies of US sexual plunder—and the enduring impactof Agent Orange, which is so destructive it altered the DNA of Vietnamesesurvivors and gave their children debilitating deformities. It’s not hard to understand why Filipinx have an affinityfor our SEA neighbors—we also experienced war and genocide at the hands of theUS in 1899, which is sometimes called “The First Vietnam” because itset a precedent for US intervention/exploitation in the Southeast Asian region.But on a personal level, I saw the inherited legacies of war in Southeast Asianrefugees—whose Asian American kids were my high school classmates. Theirexistence was all but criminalized, pushing them towards teen pregnancies andgangs, and putting them on the school to prison to deportation pipeline.So in discussing the Vietnam War, it’s not enough to talk about USvets. We must also recognize the PTSD and continued terror that Vietnamese andother Southeast Asians victims experience, and acknowledge America’s racistinstitutional animosity towards Southeast Asians (abroad and in the US) thatpersists today.Note: All of the information and stats talked about here are frompublicly available sources. Also, please be respectful to Vietnamese people andremember to call the war by its full name (“Vietnam War”) and notshorthand it as “Vietnam.”If you enjoy my comics, please pledgeto Patreon or donate to Paypal. I recently lost my publisher for trying topublish these strips, so your support keeps me going until I can find a newpublisher/lit agent.https://twitter.com/Joshua_Luna/status/1134522555744866304https://patreon.com/joshualunahttps://www.paypal.com/paypalme2/JoshuaLunaComics -- source link

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