Wartime Education

Hải Nguyễn attended Lasalle Taberd Saigon during his childhood, a French Catholic school located in District 1 of Saigon. Currently, it is now the Trần Đại Nghĩa Specialist High School, but the alumni of Lasalle Taberd Saigon have set up a memorial website. Continual updates and a detailed archive, specifically one account written in English titled Memories of Taberd Saigon High School details a very keen sense of nostalgia recognize the diaspora of students as a result of the postwar effort. Hải noted that he had seen this website before, though he did not comment on it other than saying that students of this school would typically go overseas for a college education. While he was always interested in business and economics, the wartime circumstances of his situation reified the educational concepts.

"During the time I became aware... there was always talk of shortage. Shortage of food... sugar... cooking oil. And then inflation... I kind of became aware of the condition of people-working people-... So later on, I went to study economics to address the question of poverty."

Wartime loomed over his education. During the Tet Offensive, for example, school was cancelled from about February of 1968 until September of the 1968, the beginning of the next school year. During the Tet Offensive, he recalls the disruption in his education; the schools would open when the attacks calmed down, only to close again when the fighting became too dangerous to conduct schooling. 

He remembers being more aware of the war in the teenage years because there was a document similar to registering for the draft that had to be carried at all times in addition to an identity card. In the interview, he recounts that occasionally, students in his class would not return in the next year, because—as he would later find out—they had been drafted to fight for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam at the age of eighteen. After completing his education here and graduating from this school, he left to attend a university in Paris, France.

According to a Hungarian diplomat's account in Vo's Saigon: A History, being drafted was essentially permanent, and there was draft resistance in the People's Republic of Viet Nam (PRVN) as well.  Whichever side youth were growing up in, they did not shy away from avoiding wartime obligations mandated by the government—for Hải in the RVN, it was school.

Interruptions: The Tet Offensive

In the fall of 1967, the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) began a heavy bombing of Khe Sanh, which drew many troops away from Saigon to defend Khe Sanh. In previous years, both sides had agreed to a truce on Tet —the Vietnamese Lunar New Year celebration—to allow soldiers to return and celebrate the holiday; this had been the case for the 1968 Tet celebration as well. But on January 30, 1968, Radio Saigon announced a cancellation to the Tet truce that the National Liberation Front (NLF) and PAVN had agreed to weeks before. The Tet celebration was overshadowed with the sounds of warfare throughout.

"You got on the rooftop and you saw—you saw action. And then at night, sometimes you see flares. And you see [them]—they shoot them in the sky—you [see] the tracers. You see all these lights..."

Hải Nguyễn was approximately twelve years old during the Tet Offensive (1968). While the celebration of the Tet Holiday seemed to begin innocuously with firecrackers, radio and television broadcasts soon recalled soldiers such as Hải's brother and brother-in-law back to their stations. Hải and his father temporarily self-evacuated to a relative's residence in District 1 of Saigon, where it was supposedly safer, while his mother and sister stayed in their townhouse and opened it to other citizens seeking shelter. He did not know that the U.S. Embassy, the Radio Saigon station, and several other strategic locations were all attacked to varying levels of effectiveness. Historians such as Nghia M. Vo have corroborated accounts of Vietnamese people taking shelter and ARVN soldiers driving out enemy forces. From the rooftop of their their temporary residence in District 1,  Hải saw fire and smoke in addition to hearing the sounds of fighting. Because he and his family had already prepared a substantial amount food for the Tet celebration, they managed to survive. Like many other observers of the war, this was Hải's first experience with wartime in such close proximity. 

According to Vo, there was a significant boost in nationalist movements such as military volunteers and anti-corruption measures after the attack. However, Hải and his family remained uninvolved from the family; his involvement of the military was still minimal, save for one specific incident where Hải's motorbike was taken away because it had floral designs perhaps reminiscent of the U.S. anti-war and hippie movement at the time. Regardless of specific incidences with military and police forces, he often reflected on the mood of the atmosphere, noting that one should no be out at certain hours.