Once Upon a Mulberry Field

by C. L. Hoang

As the melodic sound filled our hooch, I shook my head in disbelief. “Haven’t heard this in ages. It goes back a few years, old man.”

  Bob smiled. “‘In the Still of the Night.’ It’s our song. Nancy and I slow-danced to it at our senior prom. That’s when I knew she would wait for me.”

  “To Nancy and your little bundle of joy,” I made an impromptu toast, raising an imaginary glass. As the big man looked up with gleaming eyes, I nodded at him and smiled. “And to my hooch mate and buddy. A future All-Star dad.”

  Chapter Five

  All my life I’d believed I was born an average person destined for a simple existence, with not a seed of heroism or adventure in my heart. Nor had I come equipped with a lion’s share of talent or driving ambition, the kind that would have set me apart from other residents in my hometown of Lone Pine, California. Truth be told, as a child I had always considered myself a country boy, or more romantically, a “nature boy.” That shouldn’t have surprised anyone, least of all my parents—God rest their souls—since I had arrived in this world cradled in the long shadow of Mount Whitney, as native a creature of the Eastern Sierra as a black bear cub or a baby mule deer.

  From an early age, I learned my way around various nooks and crags in the local mountains and high desert, partly by picking up trail skills from my father and other grownups and partly through my own observation and experimentation. By the first summer in high school, I had developed a habit of disappearing for days into the wilderness with just a camping pack on my back. My time had come to sample the freedom and privacy teenagers so crave, and I found mine amid some of the most breathtaking scenery on earth. My favorite hero, the naturalist John Muir, figured prominently in my young adulthood, as I vowed to follow his credo to “climb the mountains and get their good tidings.”

  That same year, my parents were working hard to resurrect their slumping bed-and-breakfast operation. Out of desperation, they struck on the idea of putting my newfound hobby to use. In the summer of my sixteenth birthday, I began to serve as the nature guide to seasonal guests at Moon Meadows. My job was to take them hiking to Whitney Portal just outside of town or, for the more ambitious, into the wilderness beyond. This extra service proved a boon to our family business and helped turn things around.

  It never entered my mind to live anywhere but in the foothills of the Snowy Mountain Range, where my earliest memories were of the same serrated peaks captured by the camera lens of Ansel Adams. My parents and I recognized early on that unlike my older brother Jerry, who showed ample evidence of business acumen and discipline, I wasn’t cut out to follow their footsteps in the tourism trade. Thus freed up from family expectations, I had total flexibility in pondering options for my future. Because of my fascination with the natural wonders around us, it didn’t seem overreaching to branch into the life sciences, and it became clear by the time I left for college that medicine was to be my calling.

  In retrospect, it was proof of my immaturity to assume the future could be charted on a clear, straight path. What dream could be simpler than to spend my life as a country doctor in a mountain hamlet? Besides, I had a supportive partner who shared my outlook on life and my vision of the future and wanted to be part of it. She aligned her plans with mine, and we enrolled at UCLA in the fall of 1959, myself majoring in pre-med and she in nursing.

  Debbie Knowles was the girlfriend most mothers would wish for their sons. Pretty and radiant though not the beauty-queen type, congenial in a gentle, unassuming way, smart but down-to-earth, and best of all, discreetly traditional in her values. My mother was thrilled when Debbie and I became close friends in high school, and she did everything in her power to nudge us toward a more serious relationship. She shouldn’t have had to try so hard, seeing how compatible we were and how we enjoyed each other’s company. So, blame it on the moon, a premonition, or my lack of readiness, but it wasn’t until our senior year that my mother’s wish at last came true. I finally asked Debbie to go steady.

  “I knew all along that’s what I wanted,” she’d later confide in me, her arms wrapped around my neck. “But, boy oh boy, was it ever nerve-wracking waiting for you to come to your senses.”

  As I labored through the long years in medical school, Debbie finished her nursing degree and returned home to Owens Valley. She found work at the small local hospital in Bishop while waiting for me to conclude all my training, at which time we planned to get married. Then, with Debbie’s assistance, I could open my private practice in our hometown, and we’d settle into the pastoral lifestyle we both yearned for.

  If only life could be that simple. But in 1966, halfway through my last year in medical school, a letter arrived from the draft board detailing my two options. By enlisting “voluntarily” with the service branch of my choice, I would receive a reserve commission and a deferment until summer 1967, when I was due to complete my internship. Should I decline, I could be drafted any day but without either benefit and for a longer service time. The choice was easy. I promptly signed up with the US Air Force—where there should be the least chance of seeing combat, or so friends in the know had whispered in my ear.

  Until that time, I had never even heard of Việt-Nam. In my narrow view of the world, abroad simply covered Canada and Mexico, while overseas meant Western Europe, Japan, or South Korea. In truth, my study schedule hardly allowed me time to eat or sleep, much less follow the news. However, I couldn’t entirely escape widespread rumors of a war brewing inside a former French colony—a skinny piece of land with a funny name, squeezed between India and Red China. The US had taken much interest in it lately for reasons related to the Cold War and our fight against the spread of communism. But to me it might as well have been Antarctica, so removed was I from anything nonmedical.

  With my draft order, I was roused, once and for all, from my blissful ignorance.

  The only people of Asian descent I’d known were my childhood buddy, Dick Hayashi, and to a lesser extent, his family. Short and chubby, with a mob of unruly black hair and narrow eyes squinting behind thick glasses, Dick had the sweetest disposition of all the kids in my class. Always smiling, he was nonetheless quiet and preferred to listen in on other kids’ conversations than participate. As I also tended to be somewhat reticent then, we gravitated toward each other, spending time at each other’s house doing homework or just hanging out. His parents and older sisters always treated me with friendly courtesy, but they seemed even more quiet as they moved noiselessly about their small house like shadows from the past. Only later, when Dick and I had grown to trust each other enough to share our secrets, did I begin to understand this enigmatic trait of his family, which I’d wrongly attributed to their culture.

  In the process, I learned of Manzanar.

  This pretty word means apple orchard in Spanish. But the wasteland that still bore this name was an orchard no longer. A stone’s throw north of downtown Lone Pine, Manzanar appeared even more forsaken than the gold-mine towns that still littered the Old West. A handful of wooden barracks were all that remained, scattered across a desert landscape that looked incapable of sustaining life.

  Yet during World War II, more than ten thousand Americans of Japanese ancestry, under suspicion of disloyalty, were uprooted from their homes and relocated to an internment camp built on that very site, the first of ten such camps around the nation. Among the early prisoners were the Hayashis, who arrived from Los Angeles in May 1942. My friend Dick, a two-year-old toddler at the time, was blessed with no recollection of those traumatic years. His parents and older sisters, on the other hand, could not erase the painful memories from their minds even decades later. After the war, with no home to return to, the family had decided to stay in the Owens Valley and start over from nothing. Not a word of bitterness ever passed their lips in my presence, but their dark eyes, I sometimes imagined, still spoke volumes of this heartrending betrayal.

  Although Dick and I had parted ways since high school, eac
h pursuing his own dreams, my thoughts harked back to him and his family as I pondered my impending departure to Việt-Nam. Our earlier acquaintance had inevitably colored what sketchy notions I had of Asia with a shade of grief and despair. The three weeks of combined officer training and medical service orientation I attended at the Lackland and Sheppard AFBs in Texas in early summer 1967 only served to reinforce this bleak impression. Through training films and photographs, Việt-Nam emerged in its total misery. A strip of tropical land laid bare from centuries of colonial exploitation by the Chinese, the French, and the Japanese, mired in poverty and ravaged by civil war, about to be submerged in the rising red tide of communism.

  Until the USA, leader of the free world, stepped in to help.

  Thus, it was with a clear sense of purpose tempered by vague apprehension that I said good-bye to my loved ones and headed to Việt-Nam in July 1967. Stuck in my mind through the seventeen-hour flight to Biên-Hoà was a catchy tune I’d heard over the radio on my last night with Debbie: Scott McKenzie’s new hit single, “Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair.” The hippie movement was in full bloom. One could almost smell change in the air. But not once did it enter my mind on that summer evening that an entire way of life was indeed passing.

  Biên-Hoà AFB, 5 Aug 1967, 2100 hrs

  Dear Debbie,

  My first hello to you from Việt-Nam, and I’m still learning to get all the name spellings correct. How’ve you been, sweetie? Seems like weeks since I last saw you, though it was only a few days ago. I am missing you something awful already.

  Now, where to start? There are a million things I want to share with you, but I’m still processing them myself, so just bear with me. First off, Biên-Hoà is a small town only 19 miles northeast of Sài-Gòn, the capital. Its name means “peaceful borders” in Vietnamese. Maybe true in some distant past, but the place is anything but peaceful these days. For starters, we’ve built a huge base here, the busiest airport in the world, I was told, all carved out of a gigantic dust bowl. You wouldn’t believe how dusty and windy it is around here. Comparable to Owens Valley in the worst days of summer. Same with the heat. The one big difference, though, is the humidity. We’re registering 100% humidity during the monsoon season, which is now and the next four months. It pours every day, sometimes hard and fast for thirty minutes or so, other times on and off all day long, turning the red dust into mud. Can you imagine, 100°F with 100% humidity? That’s why I had to wait till bedtime to write you. It’s simply too steamy in here during the day. And guess what, it’s still raining as I write.

  I share a cozy 8’x20’ “hooch” with a mate. Real nice fellow from Minnesota named Bob Olsen. Not sure how to describe our hooch, except that it looks to me like a chicken house. The lower half is wood, the upper half some type of screen to allow air circulation while keeping the bugs out. There are louvered windows we can crank open in sunny weather to let in more breeze (or hot air), and a corrugated tin roof that makes even the lightest rain shower sound like pea-sized hail. Not the best amenities, for sure. But hey, we’re at war after all, and I’m not complaining.

  There’s a Vietnamese woman who comes in every day to clean the place for us. She makes the beds, does the laundry, and polishes our shoes. All for $4.25 a month, which converts into 500 đồng for her, handsome wages by local standards, according to Bob. She’s our “mama-san,” a nickname first used by American GIs in Japan for a maid or service provider. But her actual name is Bà Bảy, which means “Mrs. Seven.” You know why? As tiny as she appears, Bà Bảy is the mother hen to a brood of seven, or so she claims. At least as best I can make out her broken English.

  She sometimes brings her youngest with her, a cute little boy of five. He’s the most inquisitive little squirt I’ve seen. If I happen to be in the hooch when he and his mommy arrive, he’ll fall in step right behind me wherever I go, staring, giggling, and not bashful about touching my arms either. A hairy foreigner! I must be quite a novelty to the tyke. Bà Bảy calls him Cu Bόng, or “Little Cue Ball,” for his bald head. You should’ve seen his eyes open wide like saucers when I gave him a pack of gum the other day. Which reminds me. If it’s not too much to ask, would you drop a small toy in the next package you might be sending me? A toy car, a fire truck, or GI Joe, anything like that would do. I bet Cu Bόng has never owned a toy in his young life, and you’d make him so happy by sending one for him.

  Well, sweetheart, the night is getting on, and you must be bored silly with my ramblings. You understand, though, I want to share this experience with you as I go along. It’s such a different world over here, Debbie, and not a pretty one either, as I’m already finding out in a few short days. Anyway, my dear, when you take your lunch break every day at noon (that’s 3 a.m. my time), walk over to our favorite park by the lake and enjoy a peaceful moment in the gazebo overlooking the water. That’s where I want to visit you, in my dreams.

  Love, R.C.

  In those early days, I didn’t fully grasp how worried my family was for me. Back when I was still safely sequestered behind the walls of medical school with my nose to the books, they’d been following with growing concern the latest developments in Indochina. With the superpowers getting more involved by the day, amid political unrest in the US, everyone could feel this international conflict was fast reaching critical mass. The relentless reporting of war casualties only heightened the tension.

  Once I had departed for Việt-Nam, my family, like countless others all across America, waited in suspense for news of their loved one overseas. My mom kept every single letter I sent from Biên-Hoà so she could reread it during those busy spells when I couldn’t find time to write. Years later, long after we turned our backs and ran from that nightmare, she’d present me with an unexpected gift when she handed me back the complete set of my wartime mail, neatly secured in a bundle. Her words at the time were, “Don’t be in a hurry to dispose of these letters, son. They’re a journal of your past. Who knows, you just might want to revisit it some day.”

  My mother wasn’t the only one to feel this way. Debbie, too, had preserved the few pieces of mail she’d received from me during that tumultuous year.

  Biên-Hoà AFB, 7 Aug 1967, 2030 hrs

  Hi, Mom and Dad,

  A nice big hug from your son, finally! Sorry I couldn’t write sooner, but it really has been a whirlwind so far. Both of you and Jer must also have had your hands full at Moon Meadows, this being the peak season and all. Please make sure you hire plenty of extra help so you don’t get all worn out by the end of summer.

  Now let me set your minds at ease, one more time. I’ve been assigned as a general medical officer at a secure airbase in the rear, so don’t worry yourselves sick over me going out on patrol in the bush, because I’m NOT. Our clinic here is not very large, as we only handle sick calls and minor injuries, with rare overnight stays. Major cases are stabilized then immediately med-evac’ed by chopper to larger field hospitals in Sài-Gòn, Long-Bình or Cam-Ranh. Don’t get me wrong. We’re still shorthanded in providing 24-hour care to the on-base personnel of several thousand, and six-day workweeks are the norm, in addition to pulling calls. During hectic times when the shifts all run together, we live on black coffee and APC tablets for aches and pains so we can keep going, same as the pilots and ground crews around here.

  On Sundays, many of us participate in various civic projects to offer much-needed medical service to the local population, which is constantly swelling with refugees from the countryside. These poor souls live in such squalor you can’t imagine, and every bit of help goes a long way in improving their lot. We’ve written to pharmaceuticals back home to solicit donations of antibiotics, pain relievers, vitamins, and whatever else they can spare, and they’ve all responded with an outpouring of generous support.

  One final note on this subject: if you guys have stuff you want to get rid of, anything at all—old clothes, shoes, toys, blankets, sleeping bags, canned
foods etc—pack it all up and ship it to me. We’ll put it to humanitarian use, down to the very last item. That’s how immense the need is among these destitute peasants. The following will show you what I’m talking about:

  Most of our guys detest C-rations, which they deride as “dog food left over from WWII.” Among their least favorite items in the C-rat boxes is the tropical chocolate bar, nicknamed the “John Wayne Bar” because it’s made extra hard so that it won’t melt in the heat. It’s regularly discarded without so much as a thought, but now we’re starting to collect every bar we can get our hands on. It’s for the kids in local orphanages, since we hear they fight over it for what little sweetness it does contain. So you see, Mom and Dad, you could really help promote our cause by spreading the word when you get a chance, in church or at town hall meetings, if you feel so inclined. Tell the folks at home: don’t toss anything out. Send it our way and it’ll be used to assist some unfortunate person over here, in one small way or another.

  Still on the subject of food. Gosh, Mom, I’m absolutely starved for your home-fried pork chops with real mashed potatoes and fluffy biscuits, corn on the cob with gobs of butter, and a generous side of green beans. I even dreamed about all this the other night, which scares me. How will I survive a whole year without your scrumptious home-cooked meals?

  You know what else I dreamed of? Our mountains and meadows, and the pine forests and snowmelt streams in late spring. I woke up one recent morning smelling the heady fragrance of damp pine needles drying out in the sun, thinking for one ecstatic second I was back on the trail again. Speaking of smells, we have the foulest air around here, for lack of a sewage system. The outhouses are built atop recycled 55-gallon drums that serve as collecting tanks, and once a day a crew is assigned to remove those drums with their precious contents and replace them with empty new ones. The old tanks are then doused in diesel fuel and set ablaze, and the designated “honey-dippers” must stir and mix that burning mess until it’s rendered to ashes. Such crappy detail, poor kids! The billowing black smoke from the fire permeates the air day and night, and I’ve got a sneaking suspicion this distinctive odor of Biên-Hoà AFB will stick in my memory for as long as I live.