Vietnamese Veterans is a project about the personal stories, memories and feelings of the men and women who fought for Vietnam in four different wars throughout the past century, and focuses on how these wars have influenced their lives. The project acknowledges and gives a voice to those people who have played such crucial roles in Vietnamese history, and yet whose stories have remained largely unknown.
The project was initially inspired by the realization that in contrast with the media popularity of American veterans from the USA-Vietnam conflict the Vietnamese ex-soldiers who fought in the war to defend Vietnam today have little or no recognition. The war against the USA and the Southern Vietnamese forces however is only one of the fights that Vietnam had to undergo over the past century in order to maintain its independence.
Photographer Ruben Hamelink (1992, The Netherlands) travelled around Vietnam together with anthropologist Julia Zaremba (1985, Italy) photographing and interviewing Vietnamese veterans in the areas around Din Biên Phü, Hà Noi, Hô Chi Minh City and the province of Quäng Tri. The resulting portraits speak out a medley of emotions and feelings such as pride, nostalgia, fear, and pain.
The book consists of 29 portraits combined with short texts about their lives during and after the wars they fought. It also includes a preface written by Julia Zaremba who shares some insight gathered whilst working on the project and an introduction to Vietnamese history by University of Amsterdam historian Rimko van der Maar, who explains Vietnamese military history from a Vietnamese perspective.