Letters: Back to Vietnam

Re “Buried history in Hanoi,” Opinion, Jan. 20

My wife and I just returned from Hanoi, my first visit since serving as a battalion surgeon in the Marines during the war. We stayed at the Metropole hotel, which Op-Ed article writer Tom Hayden visited recently, but we didn’t enter the bomb shelter.

Rather, we were impressed by the resilience of the Vietnamese people, who remember the “American war” but nonetheless look forward. The cities we visited were energetic and growing. We saw a country not burdened by the past but advancing to the future.

There is no need to go back into a bomb shelter.

Stuart Fisher

Los Angeles

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