Three Seasons

Just finished watching a film on the Sundance channel titled Three Seasons. It is a story of several relationships set in postwar Vietnam. I lived in Japan during part of the Vietnam war and saw many young American soldiers on their way to Vietnam and returning to the States after being injured. Many lost limbs and many more didn't make it home.
My father was sent to Vietnam for six months while we stayed behind in Japan. I worried about him. I look back on that time and realize how brave my mother was, too. She was left in a country with a very different culture to care for four children under 13. We lived in a small house in the rice paddys, close to the American Base Yokota, just outside of Tokyo. My father was sent to Saigon to work with Commander Kei in order to assist with pulling our troops out of Vietnam. (before the President escalated the war) When he returned, we learned the person he was replacing had been killed when a Viet Kong threw a a grenade inside a loaf of bread into his staff car. He told us they had given him a Jeep with chicken wire sides to protect him. Somehow it wasn't very reassuring but he was home.
After spending three years in Japan. We moved to California. It was great to be home. While I was having a fun time in high school, my father was still flying in and out of Vietnam. He flew C130s and later 141s. I didn't learn until much later that he flew tanks, weapons and vehicles in and hundreds of boys in body bags back. He said it was a very long flight home in that huge plane with just himself, his copilot and navigator and all of those of dead young boys in body bags. How chilling and sad, it makes me want to cry when I think of it. I hate war.
I HOLD MY SPACE in the place of PEACE.