Free Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War by Viet Thanh Nguyen Page B

for my brother Tung and me, as well as for our partners and children, have been enormous. Born in the 1930s in a poor northern village, they have traveled an immense distance in space and time from their homeland. My father and mother are the ones to whom I owe the most, and I dedicate this book, insufficient as it might be, to them.

Index
     
     
The Abandoned Field: Free Fire Zone (film), 119, 120, 168
Acosta, Oscar Zeta, 219
Adams, Eddie, 105
Affirmation, 204
Afghanistan, 2, 6–7, 14
African Americans, 53, 153, 200, 218
Agamben, Giorgio, 244
Agent Orange, 230
Aguilar-San Juan, Karin, 40
Ahn Junghyo, 141–42
Air America (film), 123, 124
Air Defense Museum, 165
Aki Ra, 172
American PX, 140
American Sniper (film), 14
American Sports, 1970: Or How We Spent the War in Vietnam (Papageorge), 231–32
American War, 4, 6–7
American Way: exclusivity of, 10
Angkar (Organization), 84, 89
Angkor Wat, 269
Anlong Veng, 297–99
Antiwar movements, 265
Apocalypse Now (film), 13–14, 64–65; power of, 127; as secondhand memory, 103; in U.S. war machine, 116–21; worldview of, 120
Apostol, Gina, 111
Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 271–72, 274
Appy, Christian G., 50–51
Arendt, Hannah, 96
Arlington National Cemetery, 44
Army of the Republic of Vietnam: memorials to, 335
Art: acknowledgment of dead through, 175; commodification of, 13; as gifts, 296–97; of Hmong trauma, 281–83; of Ho Chi Minh, 160–62; importance of, in ethics of memory, 12–13, 87; inequities of memory industry in, 184; in just forgetting, 286–87; of Khmer Rouge era, 87; to memorialize Korean forces, 137–38; recognition of human and inhuman in, 99; in shock of recognition, 113; and the war machine, 269–78
Asian Americans: as model minority, 131, 153
Assman, Jan, 50
Augé, Marc, 25–26
Balaban, John, 295
Baldwin, James, 218, 219
Ban Me Thuot, 163
Ban Vinai refugee camp, 242–43
Bao Ninh, 30, 37–38, 55
Bars, 179
Barthes, Roland, 183
Bataille, Christophe, 84
Battambang, 188
Battle Hymn (film), 130
Baudrillard, Jean, 64–65, 116–17, 127
Bercovitch, Sacvan, 10
Bergson, Henri, 109
The Betrayal ( Nerakhoon; film), 292–93
B-52 Victory Museum, 165
Bhabha, Homi, 248
The Birth of a Nation (film), 117
Black April, 42
Blackness, 141
Black Ops (video game), 109, 110
Black Panthers, 218, 219
Black Virgin Mountain (Heinemann), 295
Bombings, 276–77
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Kundera), 94
The Book of Salt (Truong), 206, 208, 209–10
Borges, Jorge Luis, 19
Boym, Svetlana, 43
The Bridges at Toko-Ri (film), 130
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Díaz), 220
Buddhism, 295
Bui Thac Chuyen, 171
Bush, George H.W., 49
Butler, Judith, 75–76
Butler, Robert Olen, 209
Call of Duty (video game), 109
Cambodia: acknowledgment of conflict in, 7, 288; commodification of war in, 15; extension of war into, 6; under Khmer Rouge regime, 7, 83–100, 129; memorials to, 260; prosecution for war crimes in, 289–90; recognition of veterans in, 66–67; war casualties in, 7, 8, 156; war photographers from, 184
Cambodian refugees, 234
Cambodia: Splendor and Darkness (Lê), 268–69
Cao, Lan, 203, 212
Capitalism: industrialization of memory in, 13–16; just memory and, 18; in Korea, 130–31, 149–50, 151–52; Korean immigrants’ effect on, 131–32; in museum gift shops, 175, 177–79; national power and, 15–16; perpetual war and, 285; reconciliation and, 295–96; success of South Korea in, 129; of tourist industry, 178; of Vietnam refugee communities, 40–41
Carter, Jimmy, 114
Casualties, of war: art as acknowledgment of, 175; burial of, 23–25; as depicted in war stories, 229; forgiveness for, 287–88; industry of memory and, 156–57; in Korean War, 129; in Korean war films, 145, 146, 147–48; memorials to, 24–27, 35–36, 42–43, 44, 49, 52–56, 66–68, 153–55, 187, 258–59; memories of, 25–33, 50–51; museums related to, 29–30, 39–40, 112–13, 254–61; natural affinity for, 28–29; number of, in Vietnam War, 8, 156; otherness of, 68–69;