Vietnam Story

Tanya photo

"One, two, three, what're we fightin' for?"

(From a Vietnam War era song by Woody Guthrie)

In the late sixties, I was teaching English at Kapaa High School on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

One of my students was a tall, very dark-skinned Hawaiian boy we called "Geedee". He was one of sweetest natured and most respectful boys I ever taught.

After graduation he joined the army-there wasn't much else a young man could do there and then.

Sometime during the next school term Geedee came to see me one day at school after classes were done. He had been in training camp near New Orleans and wanted to tell me about something that had happened to him there.

"I was on a weekend leave from camp," he said, "and was in New Orleans. I was standing on a street corner waiting to cross when a turning bus came too close to the sidewalk and knocked a white lady down. I went to help her to her feet and she started yelling at me not to touch her; to leave her alone. She called me some bad names too. I only wanted to help her. Why did she do that?"

Poor boy.

Being from this little town on this little island (before jumbo jets and hippies with marijuana civilized it) he had never experienced this kind of hysterical racial prejudice before.

Of course, by the time he talked to me, he had learned something about black/white relations in the Deep South of the USA, but I think he wanted to hear me explain them myself--since I was the only haole (white) teacher at his high school. (The other teachers were Japanese.) Maybe he wanted me to say why I had never mentioned things like this in my classes.

Why not, indeed?

Well, I suppose I was so charmed by the innocence of those Hawaiian youngsters back then that I just didn't want to be the one to tell them about such cruel and stupid things. Growing up in New Mexico, I knew plenty about racial discrimination-I had been the only white (gringo) boy in my class at Los Griegos Elementary School in Albuquerque. The first Spanish words I learned had been "Quiere combate?" ("Do you want to fight?") I had seen blood spilled in racial fighting and I had learned very young to be diplomatic in my conversation and to run very fast.

We talked a bit. He left. I never saw him alive again because a few days after our talk he went back to his active duty station then was sent to Vietnam where he was killed.

"...One, two, three, what are we fightin' for?"

Tomasito, 2008

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