California LI

It is nice today to be back, if even briefly, to my original goal of writing about memorials. 

Today, from Westminster, California a memorial built by the large Vietnamese population there. I have posted before about the memorial honoring American and Vietnamese partners and at the site in the ensuing years several additional memorials have been added. 

You can see the first memorial honoring Americans and Vietnamese here.

This adjacent memorial honors the 74 Vietnamese lost in a sea battle with China in January of 1974.

In reading more about this Battle of the Paracel Sea, it is hard to connect it to the war in 'Nam except that the dates coincide. Also, as I will point out in a future post, there are several plaques seen in the third picture address U.S. involvement in some way or another. It is confusing, but, war always is.

Next time on the 19th we will return to Colorado, so join me there, as usual at 9:00am. 

If you are following along at all, you will have seen that a number of you, like Joan from Wisconsin, Tony from Texas, Mike from Maryland, Ron from Florida, Tim from Virginia, Molly from Florida, Colleen from Pennsylvania, Elli from Maryland, and Peg and Ray from Florida, among others, have responded to my request to send me memorials you have seen in your area or where you may have traveled. I even got one from Ireland! These submissions help expand the knowledge of how we have remembered the men and women who served and/or were lost in 'Nam and you help to honor them. If you have any such photos, I would love to see them. Please send them along to the email at the left and I will gladly share them here.

I hope all those listed here will encourage you to send along photos and join the group.