This is a collage I made using a photograph of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial statue in Washington DC. The statue is situated beside "The Wall" , a powerful tribute to the American people who died in the war with all of their names engraved on it. It was dedicated on Veterans Day, November 13th, 1982. On Veterans Day in 1993, sculptor Glenna Goodacre's bronze statue of three women nurses helping a wounded US soldier was unveiled, thus honoring the 11500 US women who also served in Vietnam. Although the US has found some reconciliation, many veteran organizations still continue to campaign for veteran help programs. View our link page for some of these organizations.
In Vietnam the veterans organizations are very meager. There have not been much assistance for war veterans and those from the south would sometimes find it impossible to find assistance from the North. Veterans would receive small subsidies such as 20 pounds of rice, some fish, meat and cigarettes each month. Economically they cannot afford to invest in help programmes the way the US could if it desired to do so. Research shows that over 30 percent of Vietnamese war veterans are homeless. Many veterans in the south were sent to "reeducation camps" that the communist regime set up. Many have also made their way (and many perished) as boat people to the US and between 1970 and 1980 over 100.000 Vietnamese veterans came to America in search for a better life.
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