VietNamNet Bridge – Nguyen Y Chi, a former police officer, has kept the belongings of an American pilot who died in Quang Ngai province over 40 years ago. He wished to hand over the keepsakes to the pilot’s family on the Day for Reconciliation (September 9). 

A Day for Reconciliation

Veteran Nguyen Y Chi.

What made this veteran keep the belongings of an American pilot for over four decades, even during the war?

Mr. Chi told this story to VietNamNet on the Day for Reconciliation 2010, which shows the altruism of a Viet Cong soldier in the war that came to end nearly 40 years ago.

Chi was born in Tam Vinh Commune, in the central province of Quang Ngai. At the age of 17, he joined the army. He later became a security officer in charge of protecting the Party Committee of Military Zone 5 in the war of resistance against the US.

After the country’s unification in 1975, he continued to work as a security officer until his retirement in 1987. Since then, without telling anyone, he has been searching the central battlefield for the remains of his fellow soldiers.

He told VietNamNet about an American pilot who he buried on an afternoon in May 1966, one of his saddest memories of the war.

“On a May afternoon in 1966, an American F105 plane that bombed Chu Lai military base in Ky Tra commune, in Quang Nam province was shot down by local guerillas. The plane fell down near the area where my unit was stationed,” Chi recalled.

To protect the agency, Chi was ordered to find the shot plane. After three days of searching the nearby forest, Chi found it. There it was, on a small plot of burnt trees, broken into two pieces. The body of the pilot lay some 20 metres away.

“At the beginning, I thought that this enemy pilot deserved to die because he had bombed many villages and caused many heart-rending deaths of Vietnamese people,” Chi said.

“But as I was looking at his dead body, I thought that when he was alive, he committed many crimes but as a dead person he was also a human being. I decided to bury this ill-fated pilot so he could rest in peace,” Chi recalled.

When laying the pilot into the grave, Chi found a ball-point pen and a flick-knife in his pocket. After that, he discovered his Zodiac watch around 10m from the place where he had found the pilot.

He took theobjects as war keepsakes and carried them with him until the end of the war. He lost the pen during a battle. Only the watch and the knife remained with him until now, as souvenirs of the fierce wartime.

The fate and the remains of the American pilot left in the forest of Quang Nam became Chi’s obsession after the war, as he witnessed the pain of  families whose relatives were missing.

He tramped through the jungle in search of the remains of his comrades but also buried body of the American pilot. he finally found it one day in 1990.

He brought the remains to his home and burnt incense following the traditional Vietnamese ritual

for him every day. He also reported to the local authorities. However, nobody came to receive the remains.

“I only thought that if I don’t bring the remains home to preserve them, someone could take them away and the pilot’s family would never be able to find it. At that time, it was rumored that anyone who has remains of American soldiers would be allowed to settle in the US,” Chi said, explaining why he took the remains home.

He said many people from Da Nang, HCM City, etc. visited him and asked to buy the remains but he refused. He only wanted to hand them over to appropriate agencies who would then return them to the pilot’s family.

Nearly three years later, in April 1993, a group of experts went to Quang Nam to search for the missing pilot. They accidentally met Vu Ngoc Lam, Chi’s nephew and through him, they leartn that Chi was keeping the remains.

“They came to my house on April 29 1993,” Chi said.

The American pilot's keepsakes.

Chi told the story to the group which consisted of four American and two Vietnamese and took them,  to a small room where he kept the pilot’s remains and burnt incenses for him.

“At that time, Stephei E-Thompoon, the group representative, cried and thanked me. He said he was very surprised that a former Vietnamese security officer burnt incenses for an enemy American pilot following the Vietnamese custom and habits,” Chi told VietNamNet.

The group met with the local authorities and received the remains at 6:30pm, on April 29 1993.

They asked Chi whether he wanted to ask for anything back but Chi said no and that he only wished that the remains could return to the pilot’s family.

They promised to tell him about the DNA test result of the remains. But since then, he has not received any information.

Chi still keeps the two keepsakes of the pilot – the watch and the knife. On the Day for Reconciliation, he contacted a VietNamNet correspondent to ask him for help in finding the pilot’s relatives to give them the remaining keepsakes that he had kept for 44 years.

He said that wars mean losses, pains and separation. Thousands of his comrades are still missing in the forest. He decided to devote his remaining days to search for their remains. To date, he has found hundreds of sets of remains of both Vietnamese and American soldiers.

In the talk with VietNamNet correspondent on the Day of Reconciliation, Chi said that through VietNamNet, he wanted to find the relatives of the American pilot to give them the remaining belongings.

Vu Trung