Spirit in Action

Mike Boehm - Vietnam Peace Park and Loan Fund

Mike Boehm was angry after the Vietnam War, a war for which he volunteered, as he learned of the deceipt and injustice that were part of that war. After a retreat from society, he found a new and powerful calling as he became the leading force toward establishment of 2 peace parks and many micro-credit loan funds to heal some of the wounds of the war, both for Americans and Vietnamese.

Broadcast on:: 11 Feb 2007
Audio Format:: other

I have no hands but yours to tempt my sheep No handkerchief but yours to dry the eyes of those who weep I have no arms but yours with which to hold The ones grown weary from the struggle and weak from growing old I have no voice but yours with which to see To let my children know that I am up and love is everything I have no way to feed the hungry souls No clothes to give and make, give the ragged and the morn So be my heart, my hand, my tongue Through you I will be done The enders have I none to help undone The tangle knocks and twists the chains the strangle fearful minds Welcome to Spirit in Action, my name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action and progressive efforts I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Above all, I'll seek out light, love and helping hands, being shared between our many neighbors on this planet, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots To produce sacred fruit in your own life My guest today on Spirit in Action is Mike Baem. Mike was angry after the Vietnam War, a war for which he volunteered As he learned of the deceit and injustice that were part of that war. After a retreat from society, he found a new and powerful calling as he became the leading force toward establishment of two peace parks and many micro credit loan programs To heal some of the wounds of the war, both for Americans and Vietnamese, Mike speaks eloquently and powerfully of his encounters with the enemy as part of his and other veterans non-veterance attempt to come to term with their life changing experience of the Vietnam War There are stories of his encounters with survivors from the Meilai Massacre and other massacres, but especially of the grace and transformation of his work in Vietnam Mike, raised Catholic, is strongly non-religious, but performs his work as a primary force with a non-profit agency called Madison Quaker's Inc Mike, thanks for joining me today on Spirit in Action Thanks for inviting me I'm Madison right now, but I think you were just traveling around the east coast recently, weren't you? Right, I was traveling for almost two months, just about every state up and down the east coast from Vermont down to Georgia And what were you talking about as you traveled? Well, the presentation is basically a one hour slideshow about the humanitarian projects that I facilitate in Vietnam on behalf of the Madison Quakers It starts with a few introductory slides of when I returned to Vietnam in 1992 for the first time since the war and how that was such a profound change in my life unexpectedly so, and then segues into the projects as they developed, starting with our first project, which was the Meilai Loan Fund Going through there, progressing through the other loan funds, the schools were building for Meilai primary schools, the two peace parts were building in Vietnam Working with the ethnic minority people, we've got an art exchange going between the children of Meilai and Madison, projects like that So you talk about that as you go all around the place, both whipping up support, helping people reconnect with that work It's not a popular thing to reconnect people with the Vietnam War, is it? No, it's not, and it's complicated On the one hand, we've got the problem of American people having little or no historical memory The other hand is so many other people were hurt You know, whether we fought in the war or whether we fought against the war, trying to end it The nerve ends are still raw, and so it's just very difficult for people for different reasons to come and re-engage What got you into this work? Why are you talking about Meilai and that? What's your personal connection? Well, I didn't really think I had a personal connection, you know, of course I heard about the massacre, you know, when it broke On March 16th, the morning of March 16th, 1968, more than 100 members of Charlie Company Went into a village called, well actually the village name was, so me, called Meilai at the time And in four hours, murdered more than 500 men, women and children, mostly women and children And although reports had been coming out about massacres, this had been actually photographed in color by a combat photographer And so the evidence couldn't be denied It was and still is impossible for many Americans to take that in Because we are Americans, we don't do that sort of thing, Nazis do that sort of thing, we don't So it came to symbolize the war for me, and for many other people But I still hadn't thought about it, you know, beyond that Well, I had been living in a shack, and in 1991, had responded to a call by a carpenter from Albany, New York To come down with him to Puerto Rico, to do rebuilding after Hurricane Hugo And I thought, yeah, cool, I want to do that So we got down there, and I discovered that Puerto Rico, I mean, this really showed my ignorance at the time Puerto Rico was composed of more than one island, you know, the major island and two smaller islands And we went to one of the smaller islands called Vieques, I don't know if you've heard of Vieques It's famous or infamous because it's a tiny little island, about four miles by 22 miles long And it had been divided into thirds And for more than 60 years, our Navy had been using those outer thirds for target practice So that island had been shelled for more than 60 years, and this population of Puerto Rican people Were trying to live daily lives in that little tiny part that had been given to them So, regularly, shells would go astray and people would be killed, but the biggest problem was all the chemicals being released So cancer rates were high Well, that just fueled the hatred that I had felt anyway towards my government But putting bricks together in that context was a whole new experience And I came away from the Puerto Rico feeling really good euphoric almost And the first thing I thought of, maybe I can do this in Vietnam So I found a way to get back to Vietnam on this team of veterans going over to build a clinic I had not expected any problems because I worked in an office I was stationed in Coochee from 1968 to 1969 working in division headquarters G3 plants I never fired a gun, I never saw a body So going over there, I thought I have no trauma with this war If these other guys I'm traveling went who were in combat, they're the ones that have the trauma And I was just a mess because there was just something about physically being back in Vietnam standing on that soil And taking in in a whole different way what happened there, the millions of people that were killed and the death and destruction And I just couldn't deal with it But finally one night what kind of rose out of that stew of emotion was to go to Mely Now, as I said before, I didn't think I had any special connection with Mely Emotionally, but you know, obviously I did, you know, because of using Mely in my mind to symbolize the whole war So after the clinic was built a few of us traveled on to Hanoi by van And then I insisted on our way north that we stop at Mely And I went there with my violin which I brought with me to Vietnam and played taps as an offering to the spirits of the dead When I came back from that trip to Vietnam in 1992, you know, back to my shack And the emotional dust settled, I realized this is what I had been looking for You know, I wanted more of this, whatever this was, whatever that experience was, I wanted more And so without really knowing it, I was just, I was open for any other experience like that Well, in late 1992 Carol Wagner from Global Exchange came to Madison She was giving a slide presentation of a study tour she had led to Vietnam As she was talking, she said that she reached the point where they had visited Mely And then she had received from the Women's Union a proposal to start up one of these micro credit programs, you know, loan funds for poor women So she said she has this proposal, would we be willing to take on this project? And so here it is, Mely again, kind of falling into my life A number of us, as a result of that, slide presentation decided to form this kind of ad hoc group called the Madison Indochina Support Group And that we included, of course myself, Joe Elder, Betty Boardman, I don't know if that rings a bell? I know. And a few others. And so, you know, that's how that first project came about. That's what got you there. How were you living before 1992? Were you some kind of an organizer? No, no, not a bit. In fact, one of the reasons, there were a couple reasons that led me to end up living in that shack for so many years The summer of 1977, things kind of fell into place for me because that time I spent during the war really didn't have much impact on me You know, I just basically drifted through my year and a half in Vietnam I didn't know anything about communism, I didn't know anything about democracy You know, I couldn't have found Vietnam on the map if, you know, somebody had asked me But I started hearing things and started reading things over the ensuing years You know, reading about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which led to the explosion of expanding the war in Vietnam And it all fell in place for me the summer of 1977 I had been going to a two-year college entry program at a Tex school here in Madison from 1976 to '78 on the GI Bill And that summer when things fell into place for me, I went to my mother's house, went to her attic Got my uniform, my metals and everything, just threw them into garbage Because that, that rage, which so many veterans feel, when they find out they had been duped The two basically commit evil is something that I still struggle with today I have just left your hiding sons in fear They have met all tests there, and I can report to you without reservation They are splendid in every way Since the kids have been little, they have always known that I have vanished from their lives periodically And they have never really had the idea of what it is that I do What do I do anyway? If I don't know, why should they? We never travel together at all, since the kids have been little, they have always known that I have vanished from their lives periodically And they have never really had the idea of what it is that I do Yeah, Brendan, the 14-year-old, he got to travel with me during the summer But we got a chance to talk to each other as adults Instead of just father and son We left Boston, we were headed up to the left bank cafe in Blue Hill, Maine And Brendan, just above Marblehead, turned to me and he said, "How did you get to be like that?" That's a fair question I knew what he meant, I knew that he didn't have all the language to say exactly what he meant But what I meant to say was, "Why is it that you are fundamentally alienated from the entire institutional structure of society?" And I said, "Well, I've never been asked that, you know?" Now, don't listen to the radio and don't talk to me for half an hour, well, I think about it So we drove and talked, we were on highway one because it was pretty close to the water Got up toward the main border and there was a picnic area off to the sides of picnic tables, it was a bright clear day So I pulled into their parking lot, they sat down at the picnic tables and I sat down I said, "I want to tell you a story," so I thought about it So I sat down and said, "You know, I was over in Korea," and he said, "Yeah, I've always wondered about that, did you shoot anybody?" And I said, as long as he was like, "I don't know," but that's not the story, I said, this is what I'm telling you I was up at the Apokumari Gap there by the Imjin River There were about 75,000 Chinese soldiers on the other side and they all wanted me out of there With every righteous reason that you could think of I had long since figured out that I was the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time for the most vicious reasons But there I was, my clothing was rotting on my body, every exotic mold in the world was attacking my clothing And my prison, my boots had big holes in them from the rod I wanted to swim in the Imjin River and get that feeling of death and feeling of rot off of me The Chinese soldiers were on the inside, they were swimming, they were having a wonderful time But there was a rule, a regulation against swimming in the Imjin River I thought that was foolish, but then a young Korean fella carport for us as a carpenter by the name of Yung Sukhan All of his family had been killed off in the war He said to me in what English he had, "You know, when we get married here, the young married couple moves in with the elders and move in with the grandparents" But there's nothing growing, everything's been destroyed, there's no food, so the first baby that's born, the oldest, the old man goes out with a jug of water to blanket and sits on the bank of the Imjin River And waits to die, since there really dies, and then will roll down the bank and into the river And his body will be carried out of the sea And we don't want you to swim in the Imjin River because our elders are floating out of the sea That's when it began to crumble for me, you know, that's when I... Well, I ran away, not just from that, I ran away from the blueprint for self-destruction I had been handed as a man for violence and access, for sexual access, for racial access I had a commanding officer who said of the GI babies, fathered by GIs and Korean mothers that the Korean government wouldn't care for, so they were in these orphanages And he said, "Well, as sad as that is, someday this will really help the Korean people because it'll raise the intelligence level" That's what we were dealing with, you know, if I ran away, I ran down to Seoul City, down toward Asscom, not to the army I ran away to a place called the Korea House It was a Koreans, civilians, reaching out to GIs to give them some better vision of who they were the moment we were getting up at the divisions And they hit me for three weeks Late one night, because they didn't have any clothes that would fit me Late one night, it was a stormy, stormy night, rain falling in sheets I could go out, because I figured nobody would see me We walked through the mud and the rain, Seoul City was devastated And they took me to a concert at the AWA Women's University The large auditorium with shell holes in the ceiling and the rain pouring through the holes And clogged lights on the stage hooked up to car batteries, this wasn't the USO, this was the Korean Students Association The first that they invited to sing, I was the only white person there First the invited to sing was Mary Ann Anderson, a great black operatic soprano who had been on tour in Japan, you see? There she was singing old freedom, and nobody knows the trouble I've seen And I watched you through the rain coming through the ceiling and bought back to Salt Lake And my father said, who ran the Capitol Theatre, was a movie house, there had been an old vaudeville house He wanted to bring live performances back to the Capitol in 1948, he invited Mary Ann Anderson to come and sing there And remember we went to the train station to pick her up and took her to the biggest hotel in town The hotel you'd talk, but they wouldn't let her stay there because she was black And I remember my father's humiliation and her humiliation As I saw her singing there through the rain, and I realized right then, I said, "Randon, right then" I knew that it was all wrong, that it all had change, and that that change had to start with me So the next fall I went to the Veterans Representative at the Tech School, and I said, "I'm not taking the GI Bill anymore because there's blood money" And he was furious, because that's not playing the game But other than that small gesture, what could I do, in my mind it was a done deal Well, the more I learned, it didn't take long to realize that Vietnam was not an aberration That this was actually typical or a policy around the world So the more I learned, the more I started backing away from being part of the society The other problem was that it was too much, I thought, "I'm only one person, what can I do?" So, no, I wasn't an organizer, I just retreated more and more until I ended up living this shack And it was that I had to learn organizing from scratch I remember we only had to raise $3,000 for this Me and I loaned fund And it took us a year, you know, grab sales and that sort of thing, because I was learning as I went In the course of what you said about Vietnam, you said how you hate our government And that's a pretty strong sentiment, was it like that before you went to Vietnam? Did you have that kind of attitude towards our government then? No, I was pretty shut down, because I'm the oldest of seven kids And all of us were pretty badly abused by my father, so I was shut down emotionally And in fact, you know, I volunteered to go to Vietnam and in large part to please my father So thinking about foreign policy or anything like that didn't come about until I started overcoming the immediate effects of the abuse So what is your organization? What's it called and what's its structure? For years, the Madison Quakers were the fiscal and in my moral sponsors for all these projects And as of four years ago, we became autonomous and are now Madison Quakers Inc I have four board members composed of three of us who are veterans and three who are Quakers One is a Quaker and a veteran What's your religious affiliation? None No, I, you know, as I mentioned, I grew up with violence in the house Well, I also grew up in a small town and went to Catholic grade school and Catholic high school So that meant we had mass every morning before classes where we were taught by nuns and priests And there were quite a few dysfunctional nuns especially teaching us and who were violent themselves Not only verbally, but physically So here I was growing up with violence in a home, violence in a church And when I left home, I said goodbye to the Catholic religion and to all religions Obviously you didn't let go of all moral and ethics How do you see yourself spiritually? What are the roots of what motivates you? Well, I would have to say that the fundamental basis for the work that we're doing in Vietnam For me personally, anyway, is spiritual And it took me a long time to learn that religion and spirituality are two completely separate things I didn't realize that, and it also, I have to say, it took me a long time to realize what this drive was So strong, it had changed my whole life, you know, because I paid a pretty heavy price to do this work in Vietnam And so I had, for my own dedication, I guess you'd have to say, understand what was driving me And to me, it comes down to balance, that profound need for inner spiritual balance And outer balance, between myself and others and trying to bring balance between our two countries This concept of spirituality was something I actually had to discover on my own Because it was certainly not taught to me growing up When you threw out the church organized religion, did that mean cutting ties with a lot of your roots? No, I don't think so. I don't think my roots didn't mean a lot to me because my roots were so painful I've had to basically create a new life because there was no nurturing in my childhood Certainly no nurturing in the church, you know, I had to create that from scratch I'd have to say that the abuse drives me, you know, I certainly don't feel any self-pity Because I feel actually proud of where I've come, you know, where I am today from where I was But that abuse is part of my life forever and ever. It defines me as a person To me, Vietnam and the childhood abuse are so inextricably linked, I couldn't possibly separate the two of them And part of what I get from this work in Vietnam is empowerment You know, I don't really like buzzwords, but I have to say that's the right one Because by being able to do what I'm doing in Vietnam means that I can fight against abuse I can do something in the face of abuse, you know, I'm not powerless But one thing about my feelings about church, that didn't stay that way You know, I was pretty crazy in my 20s and even my 30s But as I started gaining control over my life, I learned about liberation theology And that was an eye-opener for me You know, here were these nuns and priests actually living Christ's teachings And paying for it with their lives, you know, and about the same time learning about Quakers Who I just cannot say enough about how impressed and how honored I am to be working with Quakers That change that really took away, you know, a way of that chip on my shoulder, you know, that I had towards organized religion So I do acknowledge, you know, there are Christians and Buddhists and so on Who are living their religious beliefs? And I honor them for that You mentioned before that you came to a realization that there was a difference between spirituality and religion And you came to some kind of realization, and I know the most important things are hard to put into words But what sense of spirituality do you have? What helps keep you on your steady course? Well, that's hard to put in towards or in 25 words or less I think 26 then Okay, I've given a lot of thought to religion in general because of my own personal experience To me, religion is humankind's attempt at making sense of the unknowable And to personalize that unknowable through saying that there is an entity, a God, or gods That is watching you, you know, that is watching over you Because otherwise it's too vast, it's too incomprehensible That may be fine for if it serves that purpose, but when it's used as a weapon It becomes so destructive like someone in Christian sex and Islamic sex Have used their religion toward, you know, just to promote violence Now what I think spirituality is, it is that part of us that makes us human It's that part of us that has, throughout human history, driven to be good Even though we fail over and over and over again Why do we honor, why do we admire Gandhi so much? Why do we strive to be like people like that? Why do we strive to be good? So to me, spirituality is this stream that has run through human history and through human lives And I'm part of that stream now That's the best way I can describe how I feel about spirituality That sounds pretty good to me I wonder if you can tell me a little bit more about your experience in Vietnam When you went over there, were the people of Vietnam antagonistic to you? I mean, after all, you represented the oppressor No, they were not antagonistic, and we all talked about that because our reactions to returning to Vietnam I think ran the spectrum to being worried, to being terrified And I was worried because in my mind, what I was visualizing was landing in Tonsenote Airport Outside of formerly Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City And there would be the Sea of Uniforms, Vietnamese men in uniforms And as soon as they found out we were former American soldiers, what would they do? You know, what would they do? They kept thinking that Well, we landed in Tonsenote, got into the airport and sure enough, there was a Sea of Uniforms Well, one of our guys, there were 12 of us veterans in this group One of our guys had lost his leg to an RPG round, and so he came in on crutches One of these Vietnamese men in uniforms, a customs man, came up, escorted Danny to the front of the line And that's why I thought, "Okay, it's going to be okay" For 14 years now, I've been returning to Vietnam doing this work The response has been consistent It doesn't vary from north to centre to south, it doesn't vary, I get the same message We know you were sent there, they make a very clear distinction between our government and our people And they tell me, "We know you were sent there to fight this war, it's your government we hate" Now for me, that's a level of maturity that I certainly don't have You know, I put myself in their place and I know it would hate Everybody that came from the country that did that horrible thing to me So, no, there has never in all these years been any animosity Towards me or towards any other veterans that I know of who have come back to Vietnam In fact, I've had some combat veterans tell me they're treated better in Vietnam than they are in their own country Even in Me Lai? Even in Me Lai? Did you meet individuals who were witnessed to the massacre that happened there? Oh yes, I've met survivors of the massacre They're very moved by the fact that the Madison Quakers are helping them Helping their village because they've seen so many people come and go and make promises and they never hear from them again But the fact that we have been there now since, well, for 12 years almost means a lot to them It gives them hope that somebody cares And let me tell you a story about one woman I met She had borrowed money through our loan fund program at Me Lai And Phan Rondo is my partner over there And that is really an understatement, he's my mentor, he's my teacher, he's my brother But Adon and I went to every year visit every one of our loan fund programs And we were visiting with Mrs. Thome once some years ago And I don't say anything about the massacre, I don't bring the subject up when I meet with people there Because I feel they're living with that trauma every day of their life And it's not my place to dredge up that trauma As we were sitting at her kitchen table She had no electricity so it was hot and it was dark Though when I was sitting across her kitchen table from her And Thome introduced me as the representative of the Madison Quakers And as a former American soldier When she heard that last part, her story came spilling out She had survived the massacre at Me Lai, she was six years old She was one of the villagers, one of the more than 100 villagers that was herded to the ditch And most of them were machine gun She survived by pretending she was dead You know, laying under the bodies of others But imagine being six years old, lying under the bodies Of your friends and your neighbors and your relatives all literally being blown apart by machine gun fire And she called out when the Americans were gone, found all of her family dead Including her younger sister with her throat cut First of all, what do you say? There's absolutely nothing I could say in the face of that story But the point of it is there was no hatred from her towards me, none, absolutely none In fact, she was making jokes later on that day because I almost hit my head on the low overhang Again, she said the same thing, every Vietnamese I've ever met has said We know you were sent here Do you have any sense of how good Americans could do the kind of horrific thing that happened at Me Lai? And could it happen again? Well, look at our own history throughout every one of our wars We have consistently done these horrible things We started with the Native American people through the African people we brought over Through every single war we've ever been in Read the book "Four Hours in Me Lai" by Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim Because they use quotes from various wars to point out that this is a fact of war And not limited to Americans All armies throughout human history no matter what country they came from Have committed atrocities, it is a fact of war So yes, good Americans can and have Commit these sorts of atrocities over and over and over again You know, we have this myth about ourselves, we Americans that because we're Americans we are incapable of evil We are so good that our goodness is so deep, it's genetic And therefore we don't even have to question our motives because it's automatically right We set our kids up, so many of our young people are idealistic That is probably the noblest motivation I can think of By some young man or woman to want to go to war to save their country And to have that noble motivation twisted by our government is obscene How was it that Me Lai got publicized, how did it come to public attention? Well, the Me Lai massacre was brought to people's attention basically through the efforts of one man, Ron Reidenauer He had been trained with this Charlie company in Hawaii And then they had been split up, half the guys he trained with in Hawaii Had been sent to Charlie company and the other half went off elsewhere So after three months, three or four months after they had been split up, they all met together And so Ron went around seeking out some of these guys in Charlie company that he had trained with in Hawaii Just to, you know, see how they're doing So he went up to this one guy I forget his name and said, you know, how things going And the first thing this man said was, "Hey man, do you hear what we didn't Pinkville?" Pinkville was their slang term for that whole area Me Lai in the surrounding area Because it was considered an enemy stronghold and Ron said, "No, what happened?" And so he starts, this other guy starts building up this story That he had in this, about this massacre that he had taken part in Well, Ron Reidenauer couldn't walk away from it So what he did for the next period of months was to very cautiously meet up with other people More of the members of that company that had taken part of it in the massacre And he said he was afraid they wouldn't talk, but he said it was like glancing a boil They had to talk about it So he got onto the military and told his family and friends that he wanted to do something about this And every one of them said, "No, leave it alone, don't cause trouble" It was his English teacher, composition teacher that encouraged him to write a letter Which he did to, you know, the Department of Defense, the Department of Army And to 30 or 40 senators, including Morris Udall A very articulate, powerful letter, and it was Mo Udall that took action on this What happened to corroborate this was very, I think it was unique Every unit has a combat photographer to take black and white photos Which will go into stars and stripes when the stars and stripes Army newspaper writes about the combat action Well, this Ron Haberly had another camera with him, his personal camera with colored slide film And so he would just walk around taking snapshots of all the photos you've seen that came out in the Life magazine So through Ron's letter, through these photos and through the testimony of the guy that committed the massacre It was finally forced into the open because for a year and a half it had been covered up by up to including general ranking officers When you heard about Abu Ghraib, were you at all surprised? No, no, I was not surprised at what happened in Abu Ghraib, or Fallujah Fallujah is considered the Iraqi Milai because of all the civilians that were killed there If we send our children to war, in a situation like this, it's going to happen They don't know who the enemy is, they're scared to death They may have gone into the military for high flown ideals, but when it comes down to combat There's only one thing that's motivating, stay alive and keep the friends alive And they will do anything to stay alive, as you would you, or I? The organization that you work for, that you really are the driving force of, I think it's called Madison Quaker's Inc It's not particularly a Quaker organization, is it? Well, actually, as I said before, we are fairly autonomous In my mind, this is still a Madison Quakers project Because, as I said, most of our board members are Quakers I, myself, don't have the moral authority, or if that's the right way to put it I feel what was important in all the years that the Madison Quakers were sponsors of these projects Was not only the fiscal responsibility, but the moral responsibility They took for all these projects, and of course my own feelings were in sync with that But I still believe, in my heart, even though we are this, you know, the Madison Quakers Inc That these are still projects of the Madison meeting, the Madison Quakers One of the reasons I bring that up is because the way that most people know the word Quaker at all is from Quaker Oats And that's actually a rip-off on the Quaker name It was someone who chose it because they thought that the word Quaker stood for integrity So they named their company that, in that case it said rip-off, I don't consider what you're doing a rip-off Partly what I'm thinking is that you deserve more credit It doesn't seem to me like it's something that the Quakers should get as much credit for as you're really driving spiritual force that you bring to it I can't accept that, I mean, that's very kind of you to say that, but I have a major role in this But how can I say I've done this alone, you know, like what I said about Joe Elder who has funded me All those years, which freed me up to be able to do this work You know, how about all the people who contribute money, we can't do anything without their support How about found my door, my partner, my brother in Vietnam So I can't say that I'm solely responsible for all of this I have a role, and it's a major role, but that's as far as I can take that Can you tell me what the major purposes of your work there is? Well, I would say that the most immediate goal is to alleviate the level of poverty That still exists in rural Vietnam, and we do that through our loan fund programs But what I feel is just as important as our spiritual need And our spiritual selves need to re-engage If we are going to heal our spiritual selves over what happened in that war in Vietnam We need to re-engage We need to acknowledge what happened to the people of Vietnam It doesn't mean that we have to be ourselves with guilt Just acknowledge what happened and take responsibility We can't walk away from the people of Vietnam Our lives, our past, were too painful The past relationship between our two countries We're never going to walk away from Vietnam We need to walk together into the future We, the people of America and Vietnam, walk together into the future in peace And that's another component of this work To try to re-engage the people of our two countries But in a peaceful way, there was a reason I ended up in the shack Everything, my personal life, but everything around me seemed so out of Not out of focus, disjointed, disruptive Out of sync, out of balance And so to do this work, I have to do this work For my own sake, my need for balance For inner spiritual balance Just drives me to do this work, I need to do it You know, I'm not a martyr I'm not doing this for altruistic reasons I don't think I'm not even sure anybody ever does anything for altruistic reasons I am definitely motivated I'm getting a lot out of this work By doing this work And that is fulfillment of this tremendous need for inner spiritual balance Sounds like really wonderful and necessary work I think you've sponsored so far two different peace parks in Vietnam And you've done the micro-credit stuff Can you tell me about some of the details of those peace parks and the lending you do? Well, the peace parks, especially the meat-like peace parks Has had actually a profound impact On people, not just from our two countries But more and more people around the world We dedicated the Me-Lite Peace Park on March 16, 2001 And shortly after we had planted the trees there and dedicated the park We went down to Me-K Beach, which is very close to Me-Lite for lunch We'd been there not long at all, and this man from Ireland showed up, Brendan Jones He had heard about the ceremonies at the Me-Lite Peace Park But didn't know where it was, didn't know how to find us or contact us So it was really disappointed that he couldn't attend the ceremony So we don't want to arrange for him to go by motorcycle, by himself, to the peace park And then he came back a short while, well, a while later, fairly subdued Two months after he got back home to Dublin, sent me a letter, and in it he said Mike, you asked me what I thought of the Me-Lite Peace Park When I saw those beautiful trees growing out of that barren soil And the villagers, Vietnamese villagers taking their lunch under those trees I thought there is hope for peace in Ireland We have now, for the last couple of years, had a delegation coming from Japan led mostly by this man, a professor from Manzan University Professor Hiroshi Fujimoto Many of the people he brings over are former anti-Vietnam war protesters Through this process, I have been introduced to taking to Hiroshima to visit Hiroshima Peace Park, and now talks are in progress to create a relationship between Hiroshima Peace Park and Me-Nite Peace Park So when people hear about it, there is just something about this idea of former enemies building a park for peace at the site of this horrible killing ground that just profoundly moves people One more story about the peace park in the North, the Vietnamese American Peace Park in the North of Hanoi was dedicated on November 11, 1995 And one of the veterans who had come over was Les Herring He was a Marine during the war, and it was a fairly, fairly hard guy the first time back to Vietnam When he got home, he sent us all a letter, and in it he said "As I stood on that hill, after having planted my tree and embraced my former enemy I felt that at long last I had begun to heal" Now, regarding the loan funds, I used the story of one woman to kind of illustrate the potential that these funds have that go beyond economic aid This woman's name is Pham Thihoung She lives in Truongkang Village up in the mountains in Kwanggai Province Kwanggai Province is where Mili is And we had funded that village, the village's loan fund in about seven years ago Shortly after we set up the fund and the funds had been delivered Do and I went to the village to visit some of the women who had received loans One of the women we visited was Mrs. Huong and she took us right away to her cow pen that showed us the cow she had bought with the loan Well, the day before we'd come up, Do had told me that this village also had a massacre You know, all these years our government and our military has been trying to portray the Mili massacre as an aberration at one time only event, but you know, massacres were common there So after we talked to a while to Mrs. Huong about her cow, she told us she had done what all women do once they buy a cow, which was to have it artificially disseminated So that as soon as she could have calf born and weaned, she could sell the calf, pay off the loan and then, you know, have the cow bred again and she's on a roll Well, at one point, Do asked her had she been on the day of the massacre and I watched as she replied in Vietnamese and then she just burst into tears and that couldn't speak anymore She said yes, you know, of course, she had survived the massacre, but that her aunt and two of her children were killed Well, the massacre at Mili took place over a period of four hours The massacre at Chong Kang took place over a period of two days where the GIs kept coming back shooting anybody they saw, but mostly they were trying to hide the evidence so they burnt the bodies and partially buried them It was days before the villagers felt safe enough to come out, unearth the bodies, and then enter them properly Well, bodies wrought quickly in tropical heat and the last thing that Mrs. Huong said before she broke down was "I cannot forget the smell of the decomposing bodies of my children" Again, what can you say to something like that? And we spent the fair amount of time with her that day She was walking and talking, but to me she was dead inside and, you know, understandably so because how could somebody ever recover from something like that? Well, it was wrong because two years later, Do and I were back in Chong Kang village Mrs. Huong and Mrs. Hu, the chairwoman of the village, women junior, were on a motorcycle Oh, at least a mile outside of Chong Kang just eagerly awaiting Do and I to come so they could take us through Chong Kang and show us the improvement in the lives of the women over the previous two years And Mrs. Huong was, I mean, even Do wasn't sure she was the same woman because she was alive She was laughing and talking and her eyes were shining and bright and alive Don't ask the neighbors what it happened And they said that once money started coming into the household, because she was living in a mud hut, you know, desperately poor They said that once she had, once money started coming into her household through the sale of cows, that at long last That crushing burden of poverty had lifted enough where she could begin finally begin to heal Well, if somebody had told me the story, I would have dismissed it Because how could anybody ever come back from something like that? But there she was right in front of me and I've seen this happening with women over and over again now And what it points out, the potential for these loans is more than economic aid to something I'd have to call spiritual aid Well, we went to see her again last year and she now has a new home And once we spent time in her home, she took me out to see her herd She has a herd now of five cows and three water buffalo This is just one woman's story You know, we've now provided loans to more than 3,000 women over the years In the 16 loan funds we have established in 16 villages And so every year, as funding comes in, we set up more and more loan funds There's another project that I haven't mentioned yet called Sisters Meeting Sisters In the fall of 1998, Madison Mayor Susan Bauman went down to El Salvador And because El Salvador is one of our sister cities And she visited women's groups not only in El Salvador but in El Salvador and elsewhere And the women there would tell her about the different issues they're working with The Miquiladories, for example, the sweatshops The loan fund programs they had tried to set up Because they were having problems with them So it was suggested to Mayor Bauman, why not bring the women of Milai to meet with the women of El Salvador? Because our funds are so successful I should mention that the repayment rate in 13 of 16 villages is 100% So Mayor Bauman thought that was a good idea When they came back to Madison, I was contacted Because of my relationship with the women's union of Vietnam So on behalf of this newly formed project, Sisters Meeting Sisters, I was sent down to El Salvador in January of 2000 When I met with women's groups down there, I just offered this idea I didn't say this is what we're going to do, you know, bring the women of Vietnam to meet with the women of El Salvador This is our idea, what do you think? And the reaction was just instantaneous and highly emotionally charged Because these women I met with were former guerrillas in El Salvador And all of the guerrilla movements in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala All of them look up to the people of Vietnam for having won their revolution Immediately, the women from not only El Salvador, but Vietnam would expand it on this concept Expanded on the list of issues that they wanted to explore and discuss with each other when they met And they were almost identical, you know, domestic violence, sexual violence, women in the workplace, women in government And above all, healing from the trauma of war Over the ensuing year, they exchanged a series of very powerful letters Which we had translated from, you know, Vietnamese to English to Spanish and then back again And we have them posted on our website All of them very articulate, please, for women, not only for their two countries, but of the world to unite in the fratricide of war Well, at one meeting I had with the women of El Salvador was on the real Sumpul Now, the massacre that's most well known that happened on the real Sumpul was the El Mosote massacre But there were massacres all up and down that river These four women, Esperanza, Pita, Esmeralda, and Adela were sitting in the circle with me On the riverbed at the real Sumpul as they related the massacre they had survived What was happening was that in the mid-80s, the El Salvadoran government becoming frustrated with not knowing who was the gorilla in the village And who wasn't, just gave up trying And out they suspected a village of harboring gorillas, they would just come in and massacre everybody And this by the way was the government that our government was supporting Well, these four women fled with hundreds of villagers from their village As the government troops were coming in to kill everybody, but were stopped by the real Sumpul, which was much higher at that time And as they swam across trying to escape the government troops, they were machine gun I mean, just hundreds, hundreds were killed And I, you know, as Esperanza was telling this story, all I could do was just look at the faces of these women And see how twisted they were, you know, from the pain of that memory And I've been in this position so many times, you know, in women's cow pens or pig pens or kitchens Or rice patties or wherever, hearing these awful, horrible, obscene things that happen to them And I'm having trouble Just hearing and caring their stories, I have no idea how they can live with what happened to them And still move ahead, still raise their family, and it just comes back to how strong these women are Well, when Esperanza finished relating this story of this massacre She said, "I've given testimony about this massacre all over the world, including the Vatican This is the first time I've given testimony at the sight of this massacre And then she reached out, picked up a small stone from the riverbed, gave it to me, and said, "Please give this to the women of Mili As a symbol of today's testimony" And so I was back in Vietnam shortly after then, and then on March 16th I formally handed this rock over to the women's union of Mili So already before they've even met, they've had this powerful emotional exchange with each other Well, I'm kind of stunned by the thought that you have to both have to and have the privilege of carrying such strong pain and healing I don't know how you live through it Well, it's forcing me to grow up We've really got it soft in this country, well, we wait people do, wait middle class people We can't imagine what it's like for people like that We haven't been forced to be strong, like people in countries where this has happened I used to lash out all the time, because that rage inside me would just be fueled by all this It was really immature of me to be lashing out like that Because if these women have the strength to carry on, you know, after having lived through this experience Then I can at least have the strength to just keep my mouth shut I'm talking about it, yes, but lashing out out of control is really, it accomplishes nothing and just drives people away So I guess what I'm saying is I've had to learn to grow up Has music been any part of your healing? It is, again, it's so much part of the process that I couldn't pull it out and separate and say how much Having made that small gesture back in 1992 where I brought my violin to me live, to play taps, was really important to me It was a visceral response, it was not a logical thought process that led me to me live that day You know, it was something more fundamental than that, more almost intuitive So yeah, it's been very important to me that music be part of this You know, I had no idea that that gesture that day was going to lead to be part of this documentary film That you've seen, The Sound of the Violin and Me Lie [Music] I find it interesting that you were not a trained musician Can you tell our listeners a bit about your history with the violin? Well, I was probably as surprised as anybody that I could play You know, I was living in the shack, one word about shack When people hear that I lived in the shack for years, some people will say, "Oh, you mean like Ted Kaczynski?" I have to say, "Well, no, not like Ted Kaczynski" People have the feeling that we are just lost people And when I lived in that shack, I wasn't lost, I was angry You know, I was a very good healing experience for me, a very good thing to do You know, I did rehabilitation work with wild animals You know, I'd get orphaned squirrels or hawks or owls or deer or foxes or whatever Then raise them until they could fend for themselves and release them That was very, very healing Well, at one point I was walking through one of the greenhouses that my landlord owned And I saw this broken violin And I was going to square dances at the time and counter dances and I thought I did even think I just acted I asked my landlord if I could have it and he said, "Sure" and got it fixed And I don't know what possessed me to do this because I had nothing in my background To tell me that I was capable of learning the violin What I did was to take old-time music which I loved And have it taped on a cassette and then I'd play a measure And I'd work out the notes on my fingers Rewinded, play that measure again until I could finally get the notes where they were supposed to be And so basically learn by hearing Because I can't read sheet music Well, in February '92 when the 12 of us veterans went over to Vietnam at first time I had only been playing the violin in about three years if that And I decided to bring it to Vietnam with me because I couldn't speak the language But I felt that this music would transcend that Well, as I carried my fiddle onto the plane Because I certainly wasn't going to check it The Stuart came up to me when he saw me carrying this fiddle onto the plane again Really excited and he said, "You know, we have more than a hundred members of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra on board Maybe we can get you two together." And I thought, "Oh, no." You know, because I had learned long ago to go ahead and do something even if it's frightening And that idea of playing music somehow with the Russians just scared me to death Well, the plane took off And here we are over the Pacific Ocean heading for Tokyo Stuart was trying to find the translator So he could help us communicate and he couldn't find the translator And I was trying to convey the idea of jamming to these Russians who sat next to me But of course they couldn't speak English So I just kind of gritted my teeth Got up, got my fiddle from the overhead compartment And went to the nearby exit door where there was, you know, some space to play And at that point I thought, you know, probably the worst thing they can have right now is If they kind of smile a little bit and kind of clap their head into a little bit like "Isn't he cute?" But old-time music has a lot of energy And they were on their feet and stomping their feet and clapping their hands And, you know, just really into the music And then had their video cameras out and we had ours out And then the Stuart came by with the phone intercom And started, you know, put the phone by my fiddle as I was playing And people were coming from the front of the plane on the back of the plane And the captain came back and I asked him, "Who's flying the plane here?" At one point one of the Russians tapped me on the shoulder and pointed it to another So I handed off my fiddle to him and he starts playing these classic Russian tunes Haunting, haunting tunes, hamming it up and one Russian came by And pretending he was crying on his shoulder And two other Russians got their violins out And they started playing and it just became this happening So finally when we got to Vietnam I had business cards made up in Saigon That said Mike Bain soloist for the Moscow Symphony Orchestra [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] That's quite an amazing story Mike, how do people get involved in your organization or how do they get involved in supporting you Or maybe involved in these trips over to Vietnam? People can contact me either through our website, which is www.meelipiecepark.org Or some people may not know how to spell "me lie" That's "M-Y-L-A-I" and that would all be one word "me lie" piece park Or they can contact me by email Which is "tingk@yahoo.com" that's spelled T-I-N-H-K-H-E @yahoo.com or call me My telephone number is 608-244-9505 Of course I welcome any kind of contact And we'll answer any kind of questions I have to stress that all of these projects And all the remarkable changes we have affected in the lives of the people have been due to people Like the people are listening right now This grassroots project funded by people like you If you would like to send a check, then please make out the check to Madison Quakers Inc And if you would like to specify a particular project, say the loan funds over the piece park Or just projects in Vietnam Thanks for your work Mike It's incredible work that you're doing And it's, I think, incredible work that you do in sharing the stories of the people you've met I think that the transformations happen in the relationships And you are really carrying those relationships to other people around the world Well, thanks, Mark, but you know we're all doing this together You support me I mean, I get strength from meeting people like you You know, and other people are doing such tremendous work around the world I mean, we're all in this web together Thanks again, Mike Hey, thanks, Mark You've been listening to an interview with Mike Bame And the work he's been doing for reconciliation following the Vietnam War You can listen to this program again and find more information about Mike On my website at northernspiritradio.org Music featured on this program has included "Korea" by Utah Phillips and Annie DeFranco "Taps" played by Mike Bame and "Shoken Farewell" also played by Mike Bame The theme music for "Spirit In Action" is "I Have No Hands But Yours" by Carol Johnson Thank you for listening I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit You can email me at helpsmeet@usa.net May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light This is "Spirit In Action" I have no higher calls for you than this To love and serve your neighbor Enjoying selflessness To love and serve your neighbor Enjoying selflessness To love and serve your neighbor Enjoying selflessness [MUSIC PLAYING]