US doctor returns amputated arm to Vietnamese veteran

[Edison Chen]

US veteran doctor Sam Axelrad (R) holds the preserved arm bone of Vietnamese ex-soldier Nguyen Quang Hung (L), at Hung's home in An Khe town, central highland's province of Gia Lai.

An American doctor has arrived in Vietnam carrying an unlikely piece of luggage: the bones of an arm he amputated in 1966.

Dr Sam Axelrad brought the skeletal keepsake home to Texas as a reminder that when a badly injured North Vietnamese soldier was brought to him, he did the right thing and fixed him up. The bones sat in a closet for decades, and when the Houston urologist finally pulled them out two years ago, he wondered about their true owner, Nguyen Quang Hung.

The men were reunited on Monday at Mr Hung's home in central Vietnam. They met each other's children, and grandchildren, and joked about which of them had been better looking back when war had made them enemies. Mr Hung was stunned that someone had kept his bones for so long, but happy that when the time comes, they will be buried with him.

"I'm very glad to see him again and have that part of my body back after nearly half a century," Mr Hung said by telephone Monday after meeting Dr Axelrad. "I'm proud to have shed my blood for my country's reunification, and I consider myself very lucky compared with many of my comrades who were killed or remain unaccounted for."

Mr Hung, 73, said American troops shot him in the arm in October 1966 during an ambush about 46 miles from An Khe, the town where he now lives. After floating down a stream to escape a firefight and then sheltering in a rice warehouse for three days, he was evacuated by a US helicopter to a no-frills military hospital in Phu Cat, in central Binh Dinh province.

"When I was captured by the American forces, I was like a fish on a chopping-board," Mr Hung said. "They could have either killed or spared me."

When Mr Hung got to Dr Axelrad, then a 27-year-old military doctor, his right forearm was the color of an aubergine. To keep the infection from killing his patient, Dr Axelrad amputated the arm above the elbow.

After the surgery, Mr Hung spent eight months recovering and another six assisting American military doctors, the former soldier said. He spent the rest of the war offering private medical services in the town, and later served in local government for a decade before retiring on his rice farm.

"He probably thought we were going to put him in some prisoner-of-war camp," Dr Axelrad said. "Surely he was totally surprised when we just took care of him."

As for the arm, Dr Axelrad said his medic colleagues boiled off the flesh, reconstructed the arm bones and gave them to him. It was hardly common practice, but he said it was a reminder of a good deed performed.

The bones sat in a military bag in his closet for decades, along with other things from the war that he didn't want look at because he didn't want to relive those experiences.

When he finally went through the mementos in 2011, "it just blew me away what was in there," Dr Axelrad said at a hotel bar in Hanoi early Sunday, hours after arriving in Vietnam with his two sons and two grandchildren on Saturday evening. "That kind of triggered my thoughts of returning."

It had taken a little luck for Dr Axelrad to reunite Mr Hung with his amputated arm. He traveled to Vietnam last summer - partly for vacation, but also to try to find the man.

He said he wasn't sure Mr Hung was still alive, or where to begin looking for him. By chance, Dr Axelrad toured the old Vietnam War bunker at the Metropole Hotel in downtown Hanoi. His tour guide was Tran Quynh Hoa, a Vietnamese journalist who took a keen interest in his war stories, and went on to write an article in a widely read local newspaper about the doctor's quest to return the bones to their owner.

Mr Hung said his brother-in-law in Ho Chi Minh City read the article and contacted the newspaper's editors.

Ms Hoa, now a communications officer for the International Labour Organisation, arranged Monday's reunion in An Khe, near the coastal city of Qui Nhon, and served as an interpreter for the veterans.

"It's just time for closure," Dr Axelrad said a day before the meeting.

Mr Hung was surprised to be reunited with his lost limb, to say the least.

"I can't believe that an American doctor took my infected arm, got rid of the flesh, dried it, took it home and kept it for more than 40 years," he said.

Mr Hung served Dr Axelrad and his family lunch, shared memories and reflected on all the time that had passed. Dr Axelrad said he was pleased to learn where and how Mr Hung had been living for so many years, and to meet his children and grandchildren.

"I'm so happy that he was able to make a life for himself," Dr Axelrad said.

Vietnam is now a country full of young people who have no direct memory of the war, which ended in 1975 and killed an estimated 58,000 Americans and 3 million Vietnamese. But the war's legacy persists in the minds of combat veterans who still are processing the events and traumas they witnessed in their youth.

John Ernst, a Vietnam War expert at Morehead State University in Kentucky, said he knows of a few American veterans who have travelled to Vietnam to return personal items to former enemy soldiers as a way to bring closure.

"It is a fascinating phenomenon," Mr Ernst said by email on Sunday. "I always wonder what triggers the decision to make the gesture."

 

[BoQ77]

Both side warming up the relations by social improvement and strengthen the military, economic relations ...

 

[Edison Chen]

Both side warming up the relations by social improvement and strengthen the military, economic relations ...

Did his families killed by Americans?

 

[BoQ77]

Did his families killed by Americans?

We never forget but we never confuse .. there's no Americans in general ...
During the wartime, our leaders pointed out "we fight against American imperialism, not American people"

So the forgiveness is the good thinking in Vietnamese mind ...

 

[Fukuoka]

This disgusting piece of news has been discussed months before

 

[senheiser]

We never forget but we never confuse .. there's no Americans in general ...
During the wartime, our leaders pointed out "we fight against American imperialism, not American people"

So the forgiveness is the good thinking in Vietnamese mind ...

so how is that they have war memorial for 50k us soldiers but none for the millions of south east asians who were genocided ?

 

[EastSea]

so how is that they have war memorial for 50k us soldiers but none for the millions of south east asians who were genocided ?

how Russian think about German people ? 27 mill people of Soviet U dead in WW II and genocide of Nazists.

View attachment 25903
US veteran doctor Sam Axelrad (R) holds the preserved arm bone of Vietnamese ex-soldier Nguyen Quang Hung (L), at Hung's home in An Khe town, central highland's province of Gia Lai.

An American doctor has arrived in Vietnam carrying an unlikely piece of luggage: the bones of an arm he amputated in 1966.

Dr Sam Axelrad brought the skeletal keepsake home to Texas as a reminder that when a badly injured North Vietnamese soldier was brought to him, he did the right thing and fixed him up. The bones sat in a closet for decades, and when the Houston urologist finally pulled them out two years ago, he wondered about their true owner, Nguyen Quang Hung.

The men were reunited on Monday at Mr Hung's home in central Vietnam. They met each other's children, and grandchildren, and joked about which of them had been better looking back when war had made them enemies. Mr Hung was stunned that someone had kept his bones for so long, but happy that when the time comes, they will be buried with him.

"I'm very glad to see him again and have that part of my body back after nearly half a century," Mr Hung said by telephone Monday after meeting Dr Axelrad. "I'm proud to have shed my blood for my country's reunification, and I consider myself very lucky compared with many of my comrades who were killed or remain unaccounted for."

Mr Hung, 73, said American troops shot him in the arm in October 1966 during an ambush about 46 miles from An Khe, the town where he now lives. After floating down a stream to escape a firefight and then sheltering in a rice warehouse for three days, he was evacuated by a US helicopter to a no-frills military hospital in Phu Cat, in central Binh Dinh province.

"When I was captured by the American forces, I was like a fish on a chopping-board," Mr Hung said. "They could have either killed or spared me."

When Mr Hung got to Dr Axelrad, then a 27-year-old military doctor, his right forearm was the color of an aubergine. To keep the infection from killing his patient, Dr Axelrad amputated the arm above the elbow.

After the surgery, Mr Hung spent eight months recovering and another six assisting American military doctors, the former soldier said. He spent the rest of the war offering private medical services in the town, and later served in local government for a decade before retiring on his rice farm.

"He probably thought we were going to put him in some prisoner-of-war camp," Dr Axelrad said. "Surely he was totally surprised when we just took care of him."

As for the arm, Dr Axelrad said his medic colleagues boiled off the flesh, reconstructed the arm bones and gave them to him. It was hardly common practice, but he said it was a reminder of a good deed performed.

The bones sat in a military bag in his closet for decades, along with other things from the war that he didn't want look at because he didn't want to relive those experiences.

When he finally went through the mementos in 2011, "it just blew me away what was in there," Dr Axelrad said at a hotel bar in Hanoi early Sunday, hours after arriving in Vietnam with his two sons and two grandchildren on Saturday evening. "That kind of triggered my thoughts of returning."

It had taken a little luck for Dr Axelrad to reunite Mr Hung with his amputated arm. He traveled to Vietnam last summer - partly for vacation, but also to try to find the man.

He said he wasn't sure Mr Hung was still alive, or where to begin looking for him. By chance, Dr Axelrad toured the old Vietnam War bunker at the Metropole Hotel in downtown Hanoi. His tour guide was Tran Quynh Hoa, a Vietnamese journalist who took a keen interest in his war stories, and went on to write an article in a widely read local newspaper about the doctor's quest to return the bones to their owner.

Mr Hung said his brother-in-law in Ho Chi Minh City read the article and contacted the newspaper's editors.

Ms Hoa, now a communications officer for the International Labour Organisation, arranged Monday's reunion in An Khe, near the coastal city of Qui Nhon, and served as an interpreter for the veterans.

"It's just time for closure," Dr Axelrad said a day before the meeting.

Mr Hung was surprised to be reunited with his lost limb, to say the least.

"I can't believe that an American doctor took my infected arm, got rid of the flesh, dried it, took it home and kept it for more than 40 years," he said.

Mr Hung served Dr Axelrad and his family lunch, shared memories and reflected on all the time that had passed. Dr Axelrad said he was pleased to learn where and how Mr Hung had been living for so many years, and to meet his children and grandchildren.

"I'm so happy that he was able to make a life for himself," Dr Axelrad said.

Vietnam is now a country full of young people who have no direct memory of the war, which ended in 1975 and killed an estimated 58,000 Americans and 3 million Vietnamese. But the war's legacy persists in the minds of combat veterans who still are processing the events and traumas they witnessed in their youth.

John Ernst, a Vietnam War expert at Morehead State University in Kentucky, said he knows of a few American veterans who have travelled to Vietnam to return personal items to former enemy soldiers as a way to bring closure.

"It is a fascinating phenomenon," Mr Ernst said by email on Sunday. "I always wonder what triggers the decision to make the gesture."

What PLA veterans do for that they destroyed our country in six provinces of Vietnam and killed many Vietnamese in Sino Vietnam war 1979 ? They were cheated by commusts in China.

You are stupid chinese.

 

[cirr]

so how is that they have war memorial for 50k us soldiers but none for the millions of south east asians who were genocided ?

Why should they care？The US is their saviour。

Vietnameses are ready to die kissing American butts。

Those Viets who died of napalm bombs are considered sacrifices or offerings on the altar of US the Mighty God。

 

[BoQ77]

USSR planned nuclear attack on China in 1969
The Soviet Union was on the brink of launching a nuclear attack against China in 1969 and only backed down after the US told Moscow such a move would start World War Three, according to a Chinese historian.

US President Richard Nixon in Moscow with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in 1974 Photo: AP

Andrew Osborn in Moscow and Peter Foster in Beijing

6:09PM BST 13 May 2010


The extraordinary assertion, made in a publication sanctioned by China's ruling Communist Party, suggests that the world came perilously close to nuclear war just seven years after the Cuban missile crisis.

Liu Chenshan, the author of a series of articles that chronicle the five times China has faced a nuclear threat since 1949, wrote that the most serious threat came in 1969 at the height of a bitter border dispute between Moscow and Beijing that left more than one thousand people dead on both sides.

He said Soviet diplomats warned Washington of Moscow's plans "to wipe out the Chinese threat and get rid of this modern adventurer," with a nuclear strike, asking the US to remain neutral.

But, he says, Washington told Moscow the United States would not stand idly by but launch its own nuclear attack against the Soviet Union if it attacked China, loosing nuclear missiles at 130 Soviet cities. The threat worked, he added, and made Moscow think twice, while forcing the two countries to regulate their border dispute at the negotiating table.

He quotes Soviet ministers and diplomats at the time to bolster his claim.

On 15 October 1969, he quotes Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin as telling Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev that Washington has drawn up "detailed plans" for a nuclear war against the USSR if it attacked China.

"[The United States] has clearly indicated that China's interests are closely related to theirs and they have mapped out detailed plans for nuclear war against us," Kosygin is said to have told Brezhnev.

That same day he says Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to Washington, told Brezhnev something similar after consultations with US diplomats. "If China suffers a nuclear attack, they (the Americans) will deem it as the start of the third world war," Dobrynin said. "The Americans have betrayed us."

The historian claims that Washington saw the USSR as a greater threat than China and wanted a strong China to counter-balance Soviet power. Then US President Richard Nixon was also apparently fearful of the effect of a nuclear war on 250,000 US troops stationed in the Asia-Pacific region and still smarting from a Soviet refusal five years earlier to stage a joint attack on China's nascent nuclear programme.

The claims are likely to stir debate about a period of modern history that remains mired in controversy.

Mr Liu, the author, admits his version of history is likely to be contested by rival scholars. It is unclear whether he had access to special state archives but the fact that his articles appeared in such an official publication in a country where the media is so tightly controlled is being interpreted by some as a sign that he did have special access.

 

[EastSea]

Why should they care？The US is their saviour。

Vietnameses are ready to die kissing American butts。

Those Viets who died of napalm bombs are considered sacrifices or offerings on the altar of US the Mighty God。

don't forget China mao kissed *** USA Nixon 1972 and Deng Xiaoping kissed *** Cater in Washington 1979 when USA protect Taiwan.

 

[senheiser]

how Russian think about German people ? 27 mill people of Soviet U dead in WW II and genocide of Nazists.

we got obviously revenge from them and bombed them to the ground, raped their women, forced them to pay tribute and divided their country for 40 years. Tough i still think they should pay for Russians just like they still give Israel free submarines.

Americans leaved and didnt paid anything to Vietnamese. And they still refuse to pay anything unlike Germans do to Jews. Vietnamese should hire Steven Spielberg and make more Vietnam holocaust movies to remind themselves and Americans about the murderess genocide in Vietnam.

Maybe you forgot or never knew but Americans bombed Vietnam more than in whole whole WW2 together.

 

[AViet]

We'll never forget the US crime in Vietnam, as well as never forget what the former Soviet Union and China helped us in the wars. Yesterday VTV1 aired a program about the help of Chinese experts during the war against French, with participating of Minister of Defence Phung Quang Thanh. Some families of Chinese experts, including son of Chinese and Vietnamese General Nguyen Son, were invited. Some months ago, a similar program with former Soviet Union experts participating was also held in Hanoi.

However, life will go on. Yesterday enemy may become friend and yesterday friend may become less friendly. The same with Russia or China or in any country in the world.

 

[EastSea]

we got obviously revenge from them and bombed them to the ground, raped their women, forced them to pay tribute and divided their country for 40 years. Tough i still think they should pay for Russians just like they still give Israel free submarines.

Soviet Union army with their Commissar cadres, soldiers did not do that, there is propaganda of westerners.

Your troll disclosed that youre' false flag, you are idiot Chinese when you troll on Cebu people and on vietnam.

 

[Fukuoka]

USA planned to nuke NV too

USSR planned nuclear attack on China in 1969
The Soviet Union was on the brink of launching a nuclear attack against China in 1969 and only backed down after the US told Moscow such a move would start World War Three, according to a Chinese historian.

US President Richard Nixon in Moscow with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in 1974 Photo: AP

Andrew Osborn in Moscow and Peter Foster in Beijing

6:09PM BST 13 May 2010


The extraordinary assertion, made in a publication sanctioned by China's ruling Communist Party, suggests that the world came perilously close to nuclear war just seven years after the Cuban missile crisis.

Liu Chenshan, the author of a series of articles that chronicle the five times China has faced a nuclear threat since 1949, wrote that the most serious threat came in 1969 at the height of a bitter border dispute between Moscow and Beijing that left more than one thousand people dead on both sides.

He said Soviet diplomats warned Washington of Moscow's plans "to wipe out the Chinese threat and get rid of this modern adventurer," with a nuclear strike, asking the US to remain neutral.

But, he says, Washington told Moscow the United States would not stand idly by but launch its own nuclear attack against the Soviet Union if it attacked China, loosing nuclear missiles at 130 Soviet cities. The threat worked, he added, and made Moscow think twice, while forcing the two countries to regulate their border dispute at the negotiating table.

He quotes Soviet ministers and diplomats at the time to bolster his claim.

On 15 October 1969, he quotes Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin as telling Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev that Washington has drawn up "detailed plans" for a nuclear war against the USSR if it attacked China.

"[The United States] has clearly indicated that China's interests are closely related to theirs and they have mapped out detailed plans for nuclear war against us," Kosygin is said to have told Brezhnev.

That same day he says Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to Washington, told Brezhnev something similar after consultations with US diplomats. "If China suffers a nuclear attack, they (the Americans) will deem it as the start of the third world war," Dobrynin said. "The Americans have betrayed us."

The historian claims that Washington saw the USSR as a greater threat than China and wanted a strong China to counter-balance Soviet power. Then US President Richard Nixon was also apparently fearful of the effect of a nuclear war on 250,000 US troops stationed in the Asia-Pacific region and still smarting from a Soviet refusal five years earlier to stage a joint attack on China's nascent nuclear programme.

The claims are likely to stir debate about a period of modern history that remains mired in controversy.

Mr Liu, the author, admits his version of history is likely to be contested by rival scholars. It is unclear whether he had access to special state archives but the fact that his articles appeared in such an official publication in a country where the media is so tightly controlled is being interpreted by some as a sign that he did have special access.

 

[BoQ77]

USA planned to nuke NV too

It's quite different.

USSR want to nuke China as direct conflict .. same to USA nuke to Japan ...
Whileas USA want to nuke China to protect Taiwan, nuke North Vietnam to protect South Vietnam, nuke North Korea to protect South Korea ...

Now, from above conflict, only Vietnam reunited ... and the relationship between unified Vietnam and USA is good.

We just want to make sure, when USA, Russia want to use nuke to China to protect Vietnam.

About the position, Vietnam feel strong enough to stay independently, deny ally to someone against others ...