Opinion: 50 years later the Vietnam War continues, mentally and environmentally

If you are drinking a cup of coffee while reading this article you might assume your beans come from Brazil the world s largest coffee producer or from Colombia or Costa Rica In fact your coffee is largest part likely mixed with beans from Vietnam the second-largest producer of coffee an outcome of an event fifty years ago On April North Vietnamese forces captured Saigon ending the -year Vietnam War Wars can cease militarily with one side defeating the other s combatants but for both sides the conflict continues in the memories and nightmares of traumatized individuals both combatants and civilians The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can even be passed on to their children who did not witness the fighting Furthermore after a war ends bullets can still kill in the form of suicide due to PTSD The missiles and bombs might stop but the carcinogens unleashed by those weapons particularly the herbicide Agent Orange continue to wreak havoc on the climate and the human body The Vietnam War persists more than half a century later It is both environmental and mental A large number of fight that war locally The fall of Saigon is etched in the collective American imagination Pictures of people desperately packing into a Huey helicopter on top of the Pittman building near the US embassy only to ditch those very helicopters off the side of naval vessels such as the USS Midway to make space for the refugees on deck a last-minute decision by Rear Adm Lawrence Chambers ignoring the anticipated punishment for throwing so much expensive military gear into the sea Those refugees disembarked in San Diego the closest port to Vietnam geographically and where the Midway now rests as a museum Camp Pendleton became California s Ellis Island processing over refugees in alone The dry-scrub terrain of the camp was a far cry from their lush tropical Vietnam but they were grateful a reminder of a time when San Diego county was a haven for the displaced not a site of deportation From to Vietnamese refugees were resettled in the U S numerous of them waves of boat people In California settled in San Diego county mostly in Little Saigon in City Heights to more than in San Jose the biggest Vietnamese population in any city outside Vietnam Moviemaker Oliver Stone director of Platoon gave a lecture on the deck of the USS Midway Museum for the San Diego State University SDSU s Center for War and Society on how America was introduced to Vietnam veterans suffering from PTSD through films such as The Deer Hunter First Blood or Jacob s Ladder Decades later Bay-Area native Stephanie Foo s book What My Bones Know A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma demonstrated that not only the refugees from Vietnam suffered PTSD but it was inherited by their American-born children I realized that my society was built in large part from the wreckage of America s brutal proxy wars against communism announced Foo French colonialism divided Vietnam into north and south because they could not crush its Communist insurgency after Foo s family are Chinese but from Malaysia a British colony During the Cold War the UK crushed its communist insurgency partly with the herbicide Agent Orange which inspired the U S to do the same in Vietnam Foo writes that San Jose was America s consolation prize for those who lost Saigon Asian refugees suffered intergenerational trauma without intergenerational healing Iraqi and Asian refugees whether they are in El Cajon or City Heights share cultures in which we don t discuss trauma that caused our parents to flee Our parents suppress it but by suppressing it they pass it on to children through physical or verbal abuse or emotional neglect As May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month this legacy should also be recognized by our area San Diego is home to specific of the best Vietnamese coffee houses a legacy of the French introducing the bean on colonial plantations Condensed milk was added to Vietnamese coffee since fresh dairy was not available during the -year war After the fall of Saigon Vietnam was the nd producer of coffee but by it ranked second Imagine million gasoline canisters filled with Agent Orange and then sprayed on Vietnam during the war destroying close to of its forests and of its mangrove swamps This damage led particular scientists to invent the term ecocide to protest America s use of herbicide Agent Orange contaminated water with dioxin leading to cancer among American arrangement members and the Vietnamese exposed to it chosen carrying their condition back to the the U S just as the use of depleted-uranium munitions in Iraq would pollute its land and lead to increased cancer rates there and among those who settled here It was years before crops could again be grown on affected land in Vietnam The World Bank encouraged it to grow the robusta coffee plant on the deforested land because it does not absorb dioxin Just as San Diego welcomed Vietnamese refugees now it sends seekers of knowledge to learn about the war s toxic legacies During last winter SDSU s College of Healthcare and Human Services held a module there enabling Vietnamese-American students to visit their ancestral country for the first time With partners like Hue University once the site of intense battles during the war students learned about the lingering wellness effects of Agent Orange They visited a marketplace where people with disabilities stemming from the use of the herbicide sell handicrafts demonstrating the value of another form of AI artisanal intelligence The students survey state change s impact on water-borne illnesses exacerbated by Agent Orange s depletion of the mangroves one of the best natural filters of harmful pathogens For those of you who cannot progress to Vietnam you can watch my lecture on how the nation emerged as a coffee producer in Caffeinated Orientalism The History and Politics of Coffee from Yemen to Italy sponsored by University of San Diego s Department of Languages Cultures and Literatures Center for Food Systems Transformation and Humanities Center There I discuss the irony that largest part of Vietnam s coffee passes through the Red Sea near the Yemeni town of al-Makha or Mocha The world s Arabica coffee beans were shipped from Mocha s port until it could no longer compete with Portugal s colony Brazil another reminder of how colonialism affects coffee production at present Just as it was a convenient location on the Red Sea to ship coffee then currently its proximity makes it the launching point for the Houthis to attack global shipping particular of which carries Vietnamese coffee The present day it is San Diego-based carriers like USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Carl Vinson that engage the Houthis near al-Makha The fact that Trump ceased attacks in exchange for a halt on attacks is fortunate Thankfully America seems to be avoiding creeping into another war like it did in when it entered Vietnam with advisors exactly years ago Ibrahim Al-Marashi is an associate professor of history at Cal State San Marcos and a visiting scholar at University of San Diego and San Diego State University Artivism in the Borderlands Exhibition at the Kroc School of Peace Studies Rotunda and Theater will take place on Tuesday April