Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore

**Huge side note: I love Vietnamese War culture, and I find the music an essential part of the culture. So if you do not understand the title of my posts, it's probably a song you should look up

Today we went to the Vietnam Remnants Museum. It was an extremely jarring and eye opening experience. The entire museum portrayed the Vietnamese side of the war, and the war crimes and inhumane actions the US took to win the war they thought was vital in stopping communism.

I think the most moving part of the entire museum was two fold: the first part being the exhibit that displayed the effects of agent orange on civilians. The people of Vietnam are still seeing the pain that agent orange had; first, second, and third generations are still suffering pain, defects, and different conditions due to the thousands of tons dropped on these people. Seeing pictures, videos, and even a display of a fetus that was killed during the bombings was extremely unsettling. I always knew that the United States did horrible things to this innocent country, but at what cost became very clear to me.

One specific part of the entire agent orange exhibit was the photo of the "Napalm Girl." It is the famous photo of the little girl running naked through the streets of Vietnam, completely burned from napalm. What moved me so much was the fact that I met this (now) woman when I was in high school. She came to Brooks and spoke about her healing process, both physically and mentally. It was so jarring to see this photo and have the tour guide along with the rest of the class talk about her, and I felt so much more emotion than I had expected. I walked the rest of the museum with shivers, though it was nearly 90 degrees.

The second part of the museum that made the atrocities of the war so clear to me was when we went into the exhibit that mimicked a prison. They listed all the different types of torture methods, along with replicas of the cages, guillotines, and cells where prisoners were held. It was hard getting through the whole exhibit as I was picturing in my head what was actually happening during the war. Being in Saigon makes the Vietnam War very real to me, and the more perspective I gain, the more I understand this horrific war.