By GARRICK FELDMAN
Leader editor-in-chief
Pham Quoc Toa, the vice chairman of the Vietnam Journalists Association and chief editor of the group’s magazine, looked comfortable sitting behind Jacksonville Mayor Gary Fletcher’s desk at city hall Thursday afternoon.
Fletcher’s small office was crammed with nine south Vietnamese journalists and three interpreters from the U.S. State Department. Fletcher gave the journalists certificates that made them honorary Jacksonville citizens.
“I would appreciate your vote,” the mayor said.
They smiled and nodded their heads and thanked Fletcher, who then took them inside the council room, where they sat down behind the long table where council members meet.
Fletcher pounded his gavel to open the meeting. The journalists, who work for state-controlled media, had a glimpse at how democracy works.
The visitors are top journalists who work on colorful dailies and weeklies and on TV in Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Dak Lak, Khanh Hoa and elsewhere. They’re a friendly group, mild-mannered, eager to take notes—seven men and two women journalists, along with three Vietnamese-American interpreters.
The delegation included:
n Phu Xuan La, head of propaganda, Dong Nai Newspaper;
n Dinh Kien Luong, editor-in-chief of Khanh Hoa newspaper;
n Loc Duc Mai, editor-in-chief of Da Nang newspaper;
n Ha Thi Minh Nguyen, managing editor of Laborer Newspaper, Ho Chi Minh City;
n Lien Duc Nguyen, chief representative of Vietnamnet, Ho Chi Minh City;
n Loan Thi Bich Nguyen, chief representative of Phap Luat Vietnam (Vietnam Law) Newspaper, Ho Chi Minh City;
n Toan Quoc Pham, vice president of Vietnam Journalists Association;
n Hoang Minh Phan, editor- in-chief/director of Binh Phuoc Radio and Television;
n Thang Minh Truong, editor-in-chief, Dak Lak Newspaper.
They arrived in the U.S. on Monday on a goodwill tour sponsored by the State Department as part of the international visitors leadership program. Their first stop was in Washington, where they met diplomats and journalists and visited the Newseum, a museum about the history of American journalism.
The Arkansas Council for International Visitors welcomed the journalists to Little Rock on Wednesday. They toured the downtown area and then came to Jacksonville.
They stopped at The Leader, where they saw a framed front page from Aug. 26, 1998 on the wall. The headline reads, “City to mark end of Vertac cleanup: $150 million Superfund project closes long chapter in Jacksonville’s history.”
They looked at the picture of the old Vertac chemical plant site and took copious notes in front of the wall.
Agent Orange was manufactured at the plant and was widely dispersed over Vietnam during the war.
Their country is still recovering, but many in the group are too young to have first-hand memories of the war.
The health effects are felt more than 35 years after the war’s end, they said. They reported babies born with birth defects and millions of gallons of defoliants still contaminating their nation.
They said the U.S. is subsidizing the cleanup of millions of gallons of Agent Orange in many sections of the country.
Their driver, a friendly Ukrainian named Felix Shidlovich, took the Vietnamese to the plant site, which now has a recycling center and a fire and police training center. The brownfield designation prohibits most other uses on the site.
They then went up the road to the C-130 display in front of the air base. They read the citation that said it was the last cargo plane out of Saigon in April 1975.
Lam Phan, a 75-year-old interpreter originally from Hue, looked at the 54-year-old plane and said he fled Vietnam on another C-130 two days before the fall of Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City.
He and his five children were flown to the Philippines and then to Guam. “There were three relocation centers in the U.S.,” he said. “We were flown to Fort Chaffee in Fort Smith. We later settled in Washington state.”
Before going back to Little Rock, the Vietnamese journalists said goodbye and invited their American counterparts to visit Vietnam soon.
