I wrote this essay for one of my history classes. Looking into military wives from Vietnam for this essay made me realize just how little appreciation they were given for the hard work they suffered through. I just wanted to further share this story:
Any history textbook that includes the time period of 1954-1973 classifies it as the time period where Americans took part in a war against Vietnam. This was a war not widely discussed in the classroom and is usually something breezed through in a textbook. This war was one America was not proud of being a part of, but also is one that should not be left out when discussing details of wars for the nation. For the men and women involved in military families during that time, there was a clear separation of gender roles. Women were able to volunteer to be a part of the war, most being nurses in Vietnam, but some taking on roles in intelligence, photography, data processing, supply, and air traffic control. While this was allowed, most women did not volunteer because of the lack of civilian support towards the war. The draft began in 1969 because of the growth of the war as well as the need for more military hands. My grandfather was among the 600,000 men drafted for the war, but along with him, was his wife, my grandmother, who was not drafted, but had her life changed forever by my grandfather’s assignment in the Vietnam War. The part textbooks really leave out about that time period are about those who were in support of the war bound by love. Military wives were some of the most important support for the men fighting for the United States.
According the Eric Foner in Give me Liberty!, after the North Vietnamese fired at an American ship in August 1964, “[…] Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, authorizing the president to take ‘all necessary measures to repel armed attack,” as a response. President Johnson took action during this time and sent 22,000 American troops to Vietnam. When reading through the textbook, it was very hard to pinpoint a specific section that spoke of the war itself in detail. This was an embarrassing time for the United States to look back on as a whole due to the overall controversy of the war. According to Wesheider, the controversy came from “[…] nature of the war itself, but also due to inequities in the Selective Service law […] which meant that while most middle- and upper- class men could avoid induction, the draft fell heaviest on minorities, the poor, and the working class.” The draft took young men fresh in college and put them into the services. This included my grandfather; he was 22 at the time he was drafted.
While some college men were drafted, others protested the war. Foner speaks about how college students took initiative in radical protests against the war. I am starting to wonder if these are the same people that stood on the floor of Oakland Airport in California and waited for the men in uniforms (since they were required to wear them in travel) and their wives to board planes to fight for their freedom. Instead of these people thanking the military families, these people spit on them and threw things at them. I wonder if these are the same people that called my grandfather a “baby killer” and a “monster” and proceeded to spit on him afterwards. The lack of respect towards people like my grandpa was utterly disgusting during a time were the nation was divided between those fighting for the nation’s freedom and those who sat back and watched.
My grandfather was stationed in Oahu, Hawaii in October of 1968 on a small island off of Hawaii called Fort Island, where the engineering and intelligence units were located. He was part of the topographic unit, where he made the maps for the men fighting in Vietnam in order for them to know where the enemy was. No one knew that there was an army base off Hawaii and my grandfather recalls sleeping in airplane hangars because that was all they had to stay out of sight without building shelters. Jerold Starr states in The Lessons of the Vietnam War that, “a more popular way to stay out of Vietnam was to go to college. Virtually every student who maintained satisfactory progress toward his degree was classified II-S, whereby the ‘registrant [was] deferred because of active study.’” While my grandfather was working days and going to school at night, he did not carry enough credits to avoid being called for the draft.
In 1969, my grandmother, Joyce Peneno, made the decision to quit her high paying job in production control at a printing company and leave behind her family and friends to be with her husband in Oahu, Hawaii. Just eleven months into my grandfather draft in June of 1968, my grandparents became engaged and married in May of 1969. They drove across country to Oakland, California where they flew to Hawaii to start their new married life together. This life was not an average citizen of the United States’ life, but rather one of sacrifice, tiresome days, and traumatic experience. To civilians living in the United States at the time, there was a war happening in a different country and it did not directly concern them, but for military families, they were being relocated to new areas, some in the United States, some to new countries, and it was not easy. What came easy to civilians was reading about the war, was listening to people on the radio speak of the war, watching it on the television, or discussing it with friends and family. What was not easy was physically being a part of the war. What we sometimes overlook though, in the midst of the men fighting for our own freedom, are the women who stood behind them through it all.
My mother always told me that my grandmother, her mother, hated driving. She told me she really never drove anywhere and did not get her license until she absolutely had to. I never really understood this because she used to drive my sister and me to go shopping all of the time when we were younger. My mom told me it was because she loved us very much and her love was able to rise above her fear of driving in order to make us happy. This concept was something that went right over my head until I learned a very important role my grandma had while living with my grandfather in Oahu. She woke up every single morning around five or six in the morning in order to drive my grandfather to the ferry or launch so he could get to Fort Island for 7am. My grandmother did this for about five months, every single morning, just so that my grandfather could tend to his duties at his base. She would then go back to the apartment and get ready for her job in an insurance office. The job was an hour from the apartment and she was paid $1.70 an hour to sell auto or homeowners insurance to clients by herself. This became insanely difficult when my grandma became pregnant with her first child, my mother, at the age of 21.
My mother was born in the middle of March in 1970 in Tripler Army Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii. To understand how different this hospital was from hospitals here, my grandma explained her checks ups as picturing hundreds of people waiting in a delicatessen section of a super market to pick up their meat. She explained to me that every woman there had a number and they needed to wait for their number to be called in order to be checked out. There were a total of twelve gynecologists there checking out over seven hundred women who were pregnant at the time and she waited almost six hours just to be examined. When it was time for her to deliver my mother, there were about four-hundred women, three-hundred of them flew home to give birth, and six women were assigned to one room. Twenty-four hours after giving birth to a baby, the mother received the baby to sleep with her and the baby stayed with the mother for the duration of the hospital stay, which was four days. Because of this, sleep, privacy, and quiet were unattainable. This hospital was complimentary to military families and since my grandparents could not afford health insurance, they needed to go there. After giving birth to my mother, the nurses placed a set of sheets on the end of grandmother’s bed and told her to change her own sheets. If she wanted something to eat, she was instructed to walk to the dining room and get her meals herself.
Due to poor hospital conditions, my grandmother ended up getting sick ten days later with a kidney infection and was back in the hospital. My mother, ten days old, was not allowed to go back into the hospital with my grandmother and could not be left alone at home. My grandfather explained the situation to his head officer and the officer told my grandfather that the army did not issue him a wife or a child and he needed to figure out this situation on his own. He was granted a leave from a Wednesday to the following Monday, but the doctors at the hospital could not figure out what was wrong with my grandmother, so she had to be stay there, but my grandfather had to get back to work. As my grandfather’s sister-in-law was flying down on Easter Sunday of 1970, my grandfather had to take the risk of handing my mother over to the neighbor for them to watch her. My grandmother was alone and detached from caring for her newly born child in a foreign state. In fact, my grandmother was alone a lot during this time of her life due to my grandfather always being away at base. She was forced to make something out of the nothing that they had.
Leaving her cozy home in New Jersey with family, friends, and job stability, my grandmother traded her middle class life for a low, working class life. The apartment that the got was three roomed, but semi safe and clean. Since the walls were made out of cinderblock, the rooms resembled jail cells and were very cold and unwelcoming. To spruce up the apartment, my grandmother put puzzles together, taped them together, and stuck them on the walls as pictures. Even when not being able to afford decoration, my grandma was still able to make artwork. They also could not afford a Christmas tree during Christmas time, so my grandma cut one out of wrapping paper and used construction paper and holiday cards as ornaments. One would think that compensation for being drafted would be an amount sustainable for life since the draft included relocation, fear of the unknown, and uncertainty. My grandfather’s paycheck paid the rent for the month, so all they had left to spend on food for the month was the stipend of $165.00 for my grandmother being my grandpa’s wife. My grandmother acquired bookkeeping skills when in Oahu, which helped my grandparents save a lot of money and make the most out of the little they received.
It is safe to assume that there is a difference between those who lived during the time of the Vietnam War and those who lived directly affected by the war. It is evident that my grandparents, who were directly affected by the war, are who they are today because of it. This war not only affected my grandfather mentally and emotionally, but it clearly affected my grandmother as well. I was brought to tears listening to the way both of my grandparents were treated during this time period. My grandmother does not regret any of her choices during this time of her life though. In fact, she says that this time in her life helps her appreciate military families more. She understands the sacrifices of not only those going into the military, whether by choice or draft, but she also can relate to the families that also have to go through sacrifice as well. An important point I took away from the interview with my grandmother is that even with the little that her and my grandpa had, they were still able to enjoy it all. There was a twinkle in her eye when she showed me the photographs of her wrapping paper Christmas tree and her small apartment. She told me that the position she took on as a military wife helped show her that sometimes the things we think we need are just really wants and there needs to be a distinction between that. There is something admirable about how she is able to appreciate more and see the things we think are so small as large blessings. Kingston simply stated “War affect all of our lives,” when speaking of how a veteran can be anyone and you might not even know who they are. It is important to understand that the war does not just affect the person fighting in it, but their loved ones as well.