by Daniel Gauss

When I went to Hanoi for the first time, I began a travel ritual I now follow in every city I visit.

I had grown up reading about the Vietnam War, mostly from our perspective, but still grim and unflinching, full of failed policy and the atrocities our military carried out. It was not just the insane level of the violence but its cruel senselessness that affected me, that so much suffering and death had been meted out gratuitously and malevolently by military and political leaders who knew we could not win. We kept killing innocent people and sacrificing our own troops, long after it was clear we should have stopped.

Because it was my country that inflicted the egregious pain and my own compatriots who were harmed by the war, it unsettled me deeply and tore apart the benevolent image of my country I had been taught. I knew that going to Hanoi would be more emotional than any trip I had taken before.

I felt I couldn’t just show up in Hanoi, I needed to go somewhere meaningful on my first day and offer a type of silent prayer. I now find a meaningful place in every city I visit to offer a prayer for those who have suffered. Read more »