CU CHI TUNNELS: TAPROOT OF THE VIETNAMESE COMMUNITY TO ESTABLISH PEACE IN THE WAR

Abstract

The appearance of Vietnam to the world view was the war especially the war between Vietnam and United State of America, and it was being known as “the Second Indochina War”. It happened from December 1955 until April 1975 and Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City had been destroyed including 1,463,277 people were killed at that time. Vietnamese has never forgotten that painful situation. This article aimed to propose the taproot of the Vietnamese community to establish peace in the war from a case study of Cu Chi Tunnels. The Cu Chi Tunnels were part of a massive war museum in Ho Chi Minh City and were connected to the main areas of the country like the underground network. The site has over 120 kilometers of underground tunnels, with trapdoors, living areas, kitchens, storage facilities, armory, hospitals, and command centers. Viet Cong used these tunnels to be the main cantonment while they were fighting with U.S. soldiers until they retreated from the South Vietnam area. The war results damaged everything, but Vietnamese had never thought that U.S. soldiers were their enemy. They only thought that U.S. soldiers fought for their country, and Vietnamese soldiers also fought for their government. Therefore, while U.S. soldiers injured and got lost into the tunnel, the only way of Vietnamese soldier’s reaction were to heal and treated them instead of killing them. The Cu Chi Tunnels were becoming the symbol of humanity, it was not just only the place for Vietnamese to stay for survival during the war, but it was also being the place for peace to transform enemy to be friends as well. From this reason, peace was expected to happen at the end of the tunnels.