Santa Barbara Middle School - Saigon

Day 2 
By Zac

I woke up this morning around 6 in the morning. We all took showers and went off to eat breakfast in the
hotel.

Then we went on a bus ride to the War Remnants Museum (formerly known as the museum of American War Crimes.) I was disturbed by the horrifying images of effects of the Vietnam war. As we drove away from the museum through a sea of motorbikes, I couldn’t help but think about the terrible pictures that showed the terrors of war.
For lunch, we ate at another westernized restaurant, and we also had a birthday celebration for Nick Ut where we sang to him and enjoyed some birthday cake. After coming back to the hotel to change clothes, we went the US Consulate, where we attended an honoring of Nick.

He is the photojournalist who took the picture of Kim Phuc who was nine years old at the time.  She was running from an explosion where napalm bombs were dropped on the temple in her village where her family was hiding.  This famous photograph helped put a “human face” on the war. Nick enlightened us on the power of photojournalism. He explained how anyone can change the world by standing up for what is right and documenting injustice. We then went to dinner, where we had coconuts, fresh fruit, rice and fish, and chicken at a fancy, government-owned Vietnamese restaurant. Alex and I were dared to eat the fish’s eyeballs for five dollars. They were disgusting. Then we went back and wrote in our journals and had a deep conversation about war that made us all think differently about the Vietnam War.