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Warriors Journey Home

  Warriors Journey Home (www.wjhm.org) is a program dedicated to supporting and assisting veterans during their service and their journey home. One element of the program is taking veterans and their families back to Vietnam, returning to sites where their war experiences impacted their souls and call for healing and reconciliation. I was in Vietnam with the American Red Cross from 1966 to 1967. My own experience taught me and is still teaching me that the wounds of war go deep and are often hidden. With the help of therapy, ceremony and community recovery is possible. We are here performing ceremony and supporting each other.  In this blog I will be describing the events of this journey as well as my personal experience as I would for my family and friends, though I invite the public to join me on this journey. 
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Hoa Lo Prison

    Prison is hell. A prison where torture is standard is Hoa Lo--the fiery furnace. Americans know this prison as the Hanoi Hilton, where many US POWs were kept during the war. We generally do not know that this prison has housed many freedom fighters over the years, having been built by the French in 1886 to house political dissidents. The incarceration of Vietnamese by foreign colonizers is the key theme of the prison. There are dioramas and installations depicting the starvation and torture levied on inmates throughout its history. Its a pretty grim tourist site, but many tourists, both Vietnamese and foreigners, were there the day we visited. There was a special exhibit covering the American War era. Lots of victors' bravado on the text of professionally produced wall plaques.   This is one of those places where the reality of humanity's inhumanity to itself kind of sinks your heart. We want to push away this darkness in our human nature and feel stunned to see ...
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