Nilgiri
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Kilo attack submarine 187 Bà Rịa-Vũng Tàu
Do Viet submariners train in Russia?
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Do Viet submariners train in Russia?
Carlosa
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I believe both in Russia and India.
Viet
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The submariners or our men in dark dress receive initial training in Russia, combat in India and hunting exercise in Vietnam seas
Viet
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/opinion/combat-nurses-and-donut-dollies.html?_r=0
Heather Stur
VIETNAM '67 JAN. 31, 2017
Joyce Denke was 19 years old when her fiancé, Cpl. David Ives, received his orders for Vietnam. It was early 1967, and he had only six months left in the service. The young couple, who lived in Temple, Tex., just south of Waco, decided not to let the war dampen their excitement about their future life together, and they started making plans to get married when he came home in November.
Photo
Nurses with wounded American soldiers as they prepare to depart from Vietnam. Credit Bettman, via Getty Images
After just seven weeks in Vietnam, Ives was killed in action on April 23, 1967, at the age of 20. Ms. Denke still has the last letter he wrote to her, dated April 19, 1967. He signed it, “my very deepest love, Dave.”
Ives’s death inspired Ms. Denke to join the American Red Cross and go to Vietnam. She wanted to do something to honor his service, and so in 1970 she deployed with the Red Cross as part of its Supplemental Recreational Activities Overseas program. It was one of several ways American women participated in the war.
The Vietnam War story is a tale of combat: walking point, ambushes, booby traps, seeing friends die, narrowly escaping death. Too often, though, our idea of “combat” is male-centered — we think about the men firing the weapons, flying the planes and taking casualties. We forget that thousands of women also played a central role in that story.
Military nurses, Women’s Army Corps personnel and civilians who served with the Red Cross regularly saw the consequences of combat. For nurses, and to some degree for S.R.A.O. women like Ms. Denke, dealing with combat was their job. Nurses treated soldiers’ physical wounds, and Red Cross women worked to boost the morale of troops, tending to their emotional wounds.
Photo
A Red Cross worker with servicemen in Vietnam. Credit Larry Ray/American Red Cross
Women were not subject to the Vietnam-era draft, but thousands volunteered. For some women, the war offered an opportunity to travel and postpone marriage and motherhood, still the expected roles for young women in the 1960s. Some military women offered to go to Vietnam because they wanted to support the war effort or to see for themselves what was really happening on the ground. Others enlisted in the military for college and employment benefits after recruiters promised they would not be sent to Vietnam.
The Red Cross had sent teams of women overseas to work with troops since World War II. They served coffee and donuts, which earned them the nickname “Donut Dollies.” In 1965, fearing the impact on troop morale of what was already looking to be a long war, Defense Department officials asked the Red Cross to establish an S.R.A.O. program in Vietnam. From 1965 through 1972, nearly 630 women served in Vietnam through the program. Some staffed recreation centers on large bases where servicemen could shoot pool, listen to music, read, play games, write letters, or sit and talk. Others traveled, usually by helicopter, to fire support bases in remote areas where troops waited to go into battle. S.R.A.O. women traveled in pairs and brought with them games, snacks, soda and juice.
In the pre-departure training session, Red Cross instructors told the women that they were meant to be a “touch of home” for the troops, a reminder of wives, girlfriends, mothers and sisters. They should be the girl next door — cute, friendly and caring. Not sexual. Their powder-blue dresses projected a perky innocence but were impractical in Vietnam’s heat, dust and mud. Most of the women were in their early 20s, a few years older than the average enlisted man.
Smiling was a job requirement for Donut Dollies, so they had to compartmentalize their own fear and sadness about the war. Many grew close to the men they worked with. Emily Strange, a Donut Dolly who was stationed in the Mekong Delta with the Ninth Infantry Division and Mobile Riverine Force, became friends with a soldier named Michael Stacy. She had become close with Stacy because they both played guitar, and they often strummed folk tunes together. But after he died in a helicopter crash in March 1969, she realized that she needed to put distance between herself and the guys she worked with. So she stopped learning their names, and stopped becoming their friends.
Long after the war, she says she believed that there were probably guys she had encountered whose names went onto the Vietnam Wall. But she would not have to face the pain of knowing for sure. It was Ms. Strange’s job to make lonely, frightened soldiers feel better, and she had to show up and do her job despite the fear and isolation she herself felt. She called it putting on her “Eleanor Rigby” face that she kept in a jar by the door.
Of the military women who served in the war, the majority, about 5,000, did so through the Army Nurse Corps. They were there from the beginning: As the historian Kara Dixon Vuic has shown, the Army began deploying nurses to Saigon in 1956 to train Vietnamese nurses. As the war deepened, they had the double duty of treating the physical wounds of servicemen, and sometimes Vietnamese civilians, and offering an emotional salve to injured and dying troops. Some nurses held men as they cried out for their parents and took their last breaths. They broke the news that a man would never walk or see again. Literally and figuratively, nurses carried wounded servicemen across the threshold from combat to a drastically altered life, or death.
Some nurses wore perfume because it reminded their patients of home. In a military hospital in a war zone, it was at once utterly incongruous and a desperately needed bit of normalcy. Lynda Van Devanter, a nurse whose memoir, “Home Before Morning,” was the inspiration for the television drama “China Beach,” wore ribbons in her hair to uphold the feminine image her patients expected and needed. At the same time, she suppressed her emotions and steeled herself to cope with the mental burden of being soothing and pretty to broken and dying men.
Linda Pugsley was a 22-year-old registered nurse working at Boston City Hospital when she joined the Air Force in 1967. She went through basic training and flight school and was commissioned a second lieutenant. At the time, she had no political feelings about the Vietnam War, but she wanted to help take care of American servicemen who were injured there. She figured she could handle it, with good reason: A weekend shift at Boston City Hospital usually included gunshot and stab wounds, car wrecks and other sorts of bloody trauma.
Nothing could have prepared her for Vietnam, though. The varieties of wounds, the constant low roar of injured, maimed and dying men, the thrum of helicopters bringing in still more wounded men, at times it almost became too much. Like Ms. Strange, Ms. Pugsley eventually stopped learning the names of her patients as a coping mechanism.
After nurses, the next largest number of servicewoman who went to Vietnam deployed with the Women’s Army Corps. Like nurses, the first WACs went to Vietnam to train personnel in South Vietnam’s Women’s Armed Forces Corps. About 700 WACs served in the war, mostly in clerical jobs, but that did not shield them from combat.
Photo
Recent college graduates joined the Red Cross to serve refreshments and present recreational programs to American servicemen in Vietnam. Credit Larry Ray/American Red Cross
Linda McClenahan grew up in Berkeley, Calif., and joined the WAC after her high school bus was rerouted one day because of an antiwar protest. She worked in the Army’s communications center from 1969 through 1970, and one of her jobs was to process casualty reports. She often was one of the first to read the names of men who were killed in action. Lt. Col. Janie Miller, a career WAC who served in Korea and Vietnam, managed an Army mortuary in Saigon. She rotated her staff through every three months because of the work’s emotional toll. When Pinkie Houser, a WAC who volunteered for Vietnam in 1968, lost her commanding officer in battle, she processed his records and sent his personal effects to his family. It was one of the hardest things she had to do during the war.
Combat, that traumatic, life-shattering, experience of war, remains central to the American memory of the Vietnam War. Women who served in Vietnam were small in number compared with the men who served, but because of that, their exposure to combat and its consequences was concentrated. They were there to help lighten the burden of servicemen, but they had to be so much to so many, without any release for themselves.
Heather Stur
VIETNAM '67 JAN. 31, 2017
Joyce Denke was 19 years old when her fiancé, Cpl. David Ives, received his orders for Vietnam. It was early 1967, and he had only six months left in the service. The young couple, who lived in Temple, Tex., just south of Waco, decided not to let the war dampen their excitement about their future life together, and they started making plans to get married when he came home in November.
Photo
Nurses with wounded American soldiers as they prepare to depart from Vietnam. Credit Bettman, via Getty Images
After just seven weeks in Vietnam, Ives was killed in action on April 23, 1967, at the age of 20. Ms. Denke still has the last letter he wrote to her, dated April 19, 1967. He signed it, “my very deepest love, Dave.”
Ives’s death inspired Ms. Denke to join the American Red Cross and go to Vietnam. She wanted to do something to honor his service, and so in 1970 she deployed with the Red Cross as part of its Supplemental Recreational Activities Overseas program. It was one of several ways American women participated in the war.
The Vietnam War story is a tale of combat: walking point, ambushes, booby traps, seeing friends die, narrowly escaping death. Too often, though, our idea of “combat” is male-centered — we think about the men firing the weapons, flying the planes and taking casualties. We forget that thousands of women also played a central role in that story.
Military nurses, Women’s Army Corps personnel and civilians who served with the Red Cross regularly saw the consequences of combat. For nurses, and to some degree for S.R.A.O. women like Ms. Denke, dealing with combat was their job. Nurses treated soldiers’ physical wounds, and Red Cross women worked to boost the morale of troops, tending to their emotional wounds.
Photo
A Red Cross worker with servicemen in Vietnam. Credit Larry Ray/American Red Cross
Women were not subject to the Vietnam-era draft, but thousands volunteered. For some women, the war offered an opportunity to travel and postpone marriage and motherhood, still the expected roles for young women in the 1960s. Some military women offered to go to Vietnam because they wanted to support the war effort or to see for themselves what was really happening on the ground. Others enlisted in the military for college and employment benefits after recruiters promised they would not be sent to Vietnam.
The Red Cross had sent teams of women overseas to work with troops since World War II. They served coffee and donuts, which earned them the nickname “Donut Dollies.” In 1965, fearing the impact on troop morale of what was already looking to be a long war, Defense Department officials asked the Red Cross to establish an S.R.A.O. program in Vietnam. From 1965 through 1972, nearly 630 women served in Vietnam through the program. Some staffed recreation centers on large bases where servicemen could shoot pool, listen to music, read, play games, write letters, or sit and talk. Others traveled, usually by helicopter, to fire support bases in remote areas where troops waited to go into battle. S.R.A.O. women traveled in pairs and brought with them games, snacks, soda and juice.
In the pre-departure training session, Red Cross instructors told the women that they were meant to be a “touch of home” for the troops, a reminder of wives, girlfriends, mothers and sisters. They should be the girl next door — cute, friendly and caring. Not sexual. Their powder-blue dresses projected a perky innocence but were impractical in Vietnam’s heat, dust and mud. Most of the women were in their early 20s, a few years older than the average enlisted man.
Smiling was a job requirement for Donut Dollies, so they had to compartmentalize their own fear and sadness about the war. Many grew close to the men they worked with. Emily Strange, a Donut Dolly who was stationed in the Mekong Delta with the Ninth Infantry Division and Mobile Riverine Force, became friends with a soldier named Michael Stacy. She had become close with Stacy because they both played guitar, and they often strummed folk tunes together. But after he died in a helicopter crash in March 1969, she realized that she needed to put distance between herself and the guys she worked with. So she stopped learning their names, and stopped becoming their friends.
Long after the war, she says she believed that there were probably guys she had encountered whose names went onto the Vietnam Wall. But she would not have to face the pain of knowing for sure. It was Ms. Strange’s job to make lonely, frightened soldiers feel better, and she had to show up and do her job despite the fear and isolation she herself felt. She called it putting on her “Eleanor Rigby” face that she kept in a jar by the door.
Of the military women who served in the war, the majority, about 5,000, did so through the Army Nurse Corps. They were there from the beginning: As the historian Kara Dixon Vuic has shown, the Army began deploying nurses to Saigon in 1956 to train Vietnamese nurses. As the war deepened, they had the double duty of treating the physical wounds of servicemen, and sometimes Vietnamese civilians, and offering an emotional salve to injured and dying troops. Some nurses held men as they cried out for their parents and took their last breaths. They broke the news that a man would never walk or see again. Literally and figuratively, nurses carried wounded servicemen across the threshold from combat to a drastically altered life, or death.
Some nurses wore perfume because it reminded their patients of home. In a military hospital in a war zone, it was at once utterly incongruous and a desperately needed bit of normalcy. Lynda Van Devanter, a nurse whose memoir, “Home Before Morning,” was the inspiration for the television drama “China Beach,” wore ribbons in her hair to uphold the feminine image her patients expected and needed. At the same time, she suppressed her emotions and steeled herself to cope with the mental burden of being soothing and pretty to broken and dying men.
Linda Pugsley was a 22-year-old registered nurse working at Boston City Hospital when she joined the Air Force in 1967. She went through basic training and flight school and was commissioned a second lieutenant. At the time, she had no political feelings about the Vietnam War, but she wanted to help take care of American servicemen who were injured there. She figured she could handle it, with good reason: A weekend shift at Boston City Hospital usually included gunshot and stab wounds, car wrecks and other sorts of bloody trauma.
Nothing could have prepared her for Vietnam, though. The varieties of wounds, the constant low roar of injured, maimed and dying men, the thrum of helicopters bringing in still more wounded men, at times it almost became too much. Like Ms. Strange, Ms. Pugsley eventually stopped learning the names of her patients as a coping mechanism.
After nurses, the next largest number of servicewoman who went to Vietnam deployed with the Women’s Army Corps. Like nurses, the first WACs went to Vietnam to train personnel in South Vietnam’s Women’s Armed Forces Corps. About 700 WACs served in the war, mostly in clerical jobs, but that did not shield them from combat.
Photo
Recent college graduates joined the Red Cross to serve refreshments and present recreational programs to American servicemen in Vietnam. Credit Larry Ray/American Red Cross
Linda McClenahan grew up in Berkeley, Calif., and joined the WAC after her high school bus was rerouted one day because of an antiwar protest. She worked in the Army’s communications center from 1969 through 1970, and one of her jobs was to process casualty reports. She often was one of the first to read the names of men who were killed in action. Lt. Col. Janie Miller, a career WAC who served in Korea and Vietnam, managed an Army mortuary in Saigon. She rotated her staff through every three months because of the work’s emotional toll. When Pinkie Houser, a WAC who volunteered for Vietnam in 1968, lost her commanding officer in battle, she processed his records and sent his personal effects to his family. It was one of the hardest things she had to do during the war.
Combat, that traumatic, life-shattering, experience of war, remains central to the American memory of the Vietnam War. Women who served in Vietnam were small in number compared with the men who served, but because of that, their exposure to combat and its consequences was concentrated. They were there to help lighten the burden of servicemen, but they had to be so much to so many, without any release for themselves.
Carlosa
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Vietnamese fishermen reportedly captured by Indonesia in Vietnam’s waters
http://tuoitrenews.vn/society/39475...edly-captured-by-indonesia-in-vietnams-waters
TUOI TRE NEWS
UPDATED : 02/10/2017
Vietnamese authorities are urgently looking for a way to assist a group of local fishermen who were reportedly arrested by Indonesia authorities while operating in Vietnam’s waters.
The fishing boat BV 4771 TS was detained by Indonesian authorities while sailing just off the southern Vietnamese province of Ba Ria- Vung Tau on Wednesday afternoon.
Pham Trung Ton, 50, co-owner of the ship from Long Dien District, Ba Ria- Vung Tau, stated on Thursday that he had reported the incident to the provincial border guard office.
According to Ton, the fishermen began their journey on Monday, before being arrested by an Indonesian vessel with serial number 354 in Vietnam’s waters at 06040’00” North and 1060 51’00” East.
The boat was carrying nine crew members, including 44-year-old captain Nguyen Van Nham.
Captain Nham made a phone call on Wednesday evening following his arrest, Ton said, adding that he has been unable to contact the ship since Thursday.
During an interview with Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper, an official from the Ba Ria- Vung Tau Border Guard Office confirmed that if the location provided by Ton was accurate, the fishermen were indeed arrested in Vietnam’s waters.
The location is about 15 nautical miles away from the Vietnam- Indonesia maritime border, the official elaborated.
The situation has been submitted to higher authorities for prompt assistance in bringing home the fishermen, he added.
http://tuoitrenews.vn/society/39475...edly-captured-by-indonesia-in-vietnams-waters
TUOI TRE NEWS
UPDATED : 02/10/2017
Vietnamese authorities are urgently looking for a way to assist a group of local fishermen who were reportedly arrested by Indonesia authorities while operating in Vietnam’s waters.
The fishing boat BV 4771 TS was detained by Indonesian authorities while sailing just off the southern Vietnamese province of Ba Ria- Vung Tau on Wednesday afternoon.
Pham Trung Ton, 50, co-owner of the ship from Long Dien District, Ba Ria- Vung Tau, stated on Thursday that he had reported the incident to the provincial border guard office.
According to Ton, the fishermen began their journey on Monday, before being arrested by an Indonesian vessel with serial number 354 in Vietnam’s waters at 06040’00” North and 1060 51’00” East.
The boat was carrying nine crew members, including 44-year-old captain Nguyen Van Nham.
Captain Nham made a phone call on Wednesday evening following his arrest, Ton said, adding that he has been unable to contact the ship since Thursday.
During an interview with Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper, an official from the Ba Ria- Vung Tau Border Guard Office confirmed that if the location provided by Ton was accurate, the fishermen were indeed arrested in Vietnam’s waters.
The location is about 15 nautical miles away from the Vietnam- Indonesia maritime border, the official elaborated.
The situation has been submitted to higher authorities for prompt assistance in bringing home the fishermen, he added.
Viet
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there is a ancient proverb in Vietnam: dân giàu, nước mạnh. rich people, strong country.
the opposite is true, too. when we are poor and weak, we are trampled by everybody, by every hooligan. but there is hope. today in the news. the consulting company PWC assumes if VN grows on average of 5.1 pct per year, we would reach GDP PPP at $1.3 trillion in 2030, and $3.17 trillion in 2050. if the growth rate is higher, the goal is reached with shorter time span. I hope the government loosens all unnecessary restrictions to business, so the companies have more rooms to expand.
the opposite is true, too. when we are poor and weak, we are trampled by everybody, by every hooligan. but there is hope. today in the news. the consulting company PWC assumes if VN grows on average of 5.1 pct per year, we would reach GDP PPP at $1.3 trillion in 2030, and $3.17 trillion in 2050. if the growth rate is higher, the goal is reached with shorter time span. I hope the government loosens all unnecessary restrictions to business, so the companies have more rooms to expand.
Nike
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Vietnamese fishermen reportedly captured by Indonesia in Vietnam’s waters
http://tuoitrenews.vn/society/39475...edly-captured-by-indonesia-in-vietnams-waters
TUOI TRE NEWS
UPDATED : 02/10/2017
Vietnamese authorities are urgently looking for a way to assist a group of local fishermen who were reportedly arrested by Indonesia authorities while operating in Vietnam’s waters.
The fishing boat BV 4771 TS was detained by Indonesian authorities while sailing just off the southern Vietnamese province of Ba Ria- Vung Tau on Wednesday afternoon.
Pham Trung Ton, 50, co-owner of the ship from Long Dien District, Ba Ria- Vung Tau, stated on Thursday that he had reported the incident to the provincial border guard office.
According to Ton, the fishermen began their journey on Monday, before being arrested by an Indonesian vessel with serial number 354 in Vietnam’s waters at 06040’00” North and 1060 51’00” East.
The boat was carrying nine crew members, including 44-year-old captain Nguyen Van Nham.
Captain Nham made a phone call on Wednesday evening following his arrest, Ton said, adding that he has been unable to contact the ship since Thursday.
During an interview with Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper, an official from the Ba Ria- Vung Tau Border Guard Office confirmed that if the location provided by Ton was accurate, the fishermen were indeed arrested in Vietnam’s waters.
The location is about 15 nautical miles away from the Vietnam- Indonesia maritime border, the official elaborated.
The situation has been submitted to higher authorities for prompt assistance in bringing home the fishermen, he added.
hmm 354 is pennant number for KRI Oswald Siahaan, one of our retrofitted Van Speijk class
Svantana
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Bennedict
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There's been a huge ID military (army, navy, airforce) presence in Natuna islands since chinese intrusion 2 years ago and the navy are patrolling that area non stop, perhaps there's a mistake in identifying foreign fishing vessel. hope this issue can be solved peacefully.Vietnamese fishermen reportedly captured by Indonesia in Vietnam’s waters
http://tuoitrenews.vn/society/39475...edly-captured-by-indonesia-in-vietnams-waters
TUOI TRE NEWS
UPDATED : 02/10/2017
Vietnamese authorities are urgently looking for a way to assist a group of local fishermen who were reportedly arrested by Indonesia authorities while operating in Vietnam’s waters.
The fishing boat BV 4771 TS was detained by Indonesian authorities while sailing just off the southern Vietnamese province of Ba Ria- Vung Tau on Wednesday afternoon.
Pham Trung Ton, 50, co-owner of the ship from Long Dien District, Ba Ria- Vung Tau, stated on Thursday that he had reported the incident to the provincial border guard office.
According to Ton, the fishermen began their journey on Monday, before being arrested by an Indonesian vessel with serial number 354 in Vietnam’s waters at 06040’00” North and 1060 51’00” East.
The boat was carrying nine crew members, including 44-year-old captain Nguyen Van Nham.
Captain Nham made a phone call on Wednesday evening following his arrest, Ton said, adding that he has been unable to contact the ship since Thursday.
During an interview with Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper, an official from the Ba Ria- Vung Tau Border Guard Office confirmed that if the location provided by Ton was accurate, the fishermen were indeed arrested in Vietnam’s waters.
The location is about 15 nautical miles away from the Vietnam- Indonesia maritime border, the official elaborated.
The situation has been submitted to higher authorities for prompt assistance in bringing home the fishermen, he added.
Carlosa
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Yes, we all know about that, I don't think anything serious will develop from this situation.
Aqsuperman
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Navy exercise, from shore batteries to torpedoes.
Viet
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Yes I hope too. That is very regrettable.
Viet
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Emperor, empress of Japan to meet Vietnamese wives of ex-Japanese soldiers
February 10, 2017 (Mainichi Japan)
In this Dec. 23, 2016 file photo, Emperor Akihito, left, waves to well-wishers at the Imperial Palace on the occasion of his birthday, as Empress Michiko looks on. (Mainichi)
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko will meet the Vietnamese wives and children of former Japanese soldiers during their first trip to the country from Feb. 28, the Japanese government said Friday.
The imperial couple will be making a weeklong tour to promote international goodwill that will also take them to Thailand to mourn the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
The planned meetings with the wives and children of the former soldiers in Hanoi on March 2 reflect the 83-year-old emperor's hopes for peace. He has traveled to former World War II battlegrounds on past trips, including to the Philippines last year, to mourn those who fell in the war.
Of the Japanese troops deployed to French Indochina during the war, an estimated 600 remained in what is now Vietnam after Japan's surrender in August 1945, according to the agency.
Many of them joined the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, the founder of the country, and fought against French colonial rule in the First Indochina War between 1946 and 1954.
Half of them were killed fighting in the war or died of illness, according to the agency.
Vietnam was separated into north and south under the 1954 Geneva Agreement, which brought an end to the war, at which time most of the Japanese soldiers returned home.
Many of the soldiers had married local women and had children, but they were not allowed to bring their families to Japan. The number of their children is estimated at several hundreds and many of them faced discrimination because of their ethnic background.
In other events in Vietnam, the imperial couple will meet with President Tran Dai Quang on March 1 and attend a banquet sponsored by the president, the agency said.
They will also stay in the ancient city of Hue in central Vietnam from March 3, where they will meet members of the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers and other Japanese living there.
February 10, 2017 (Mainichi Japan)
In this Dec. 23, 2016 file photo, Emperor Akihito, left, waves to well-wishers at the Imperial Palace on the occasion of his birthday, as Empress Michiko looks on. (Mainichi)
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko will meet the Vietnamese wives and children of former Japanese soldiers during their first trip to the country from Feb. 28, the Japanese government said Friday.
The imperial couple will be making a weeklong tour to promote international goodwill that will also take them to Thailand to mourn the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
The planned meetings with the wives and children of the former soldiers in Hanoi on March 2 reflect the 83-year-old emperor's hopes for peace. He has traveled to former World War II battlegrounds on past trips, including to the Philippines last year, to mourn those who fell in the war.
Of the Japanese troops deployed to French Indochina during the war, an estimated 600 remained in what is now Vietnam after Japan's surrender in August 1945, according to the agency.
Many of them joined the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, the founder of the country, and fought against French colonial rule in the First Indochina War between 1946 and 1954.
Half of them were killed fighting in the war or died of illness, according to the agency.
Vietnam was separated into north and south under the 1954 Geneva Agreement, which brought an end to the war, at which time most of the Japanese soldiers returned home.
Many of the soldiers had married local women and had children, but they were not allowed to bring their families to Japan. The number of their children is estimated at several hundreds and many of them faced discrimination because of their ethnic background.
In other events in Vietnam, the imperial couple will meet with President Tran Dai Quang on March 1 and attend a banquet sponsored by the president, the agency said.
They will also stay in the ancient city of Hue in central Vietnam from March 3, where they will meet members of the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers and other Japanese living there.
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