Memorial Day will not pass unnoticed in certain parts of Southeast Asia. After all, the American military has made a huge impact in the region - "Joes" are remembered fondly in the Philippines, less so in Vietnam.
American soldiers liberated the Philippines from the Japanese during World War II, while U.S. forces were perceived as foreign invaders in Communist-held Vietnam. In any case, several key sites in Southeast Asia commemorate the battles fought by American servicemen - all of them are open to visiting veterans and ordinary tourists alike.
American Cemetery, Philippines
Work of the U.S. Government - Public Domain.
The American Cemetery in Manila is the final resting place for the 17,000 American and allied servicemen who defended the Pacific in World War II. The dead and missing in the war's Pacific Theater are honored here, with sprawling cemetery grounds, two marble hemicycles, and a simple chapel bearing the graves of the honored dead and the names of the missing.
At 152 acres, this American Cemetery is one of the largest overseas cemeteries for American World War II soldiers. Only the Normandy American Cemetery in France is larger in size. Even Normandy places second to the Manila American Cemetery in terms of number of graves.
Corregidor Island, Philippines
Mike Aquino, licensed to About.com.
Corregidor Island was the U.S. Army's most heavily-defended outpost during its colonial heyday in the Philippines. Set at the mouth of Manila Bay, Corregidor served a vital role in safeguarding the country's capital in the days of battleships and artillery. Air warfare made Corregidor's guns obsolete; nevertheless, Corregidor also became America's last line of defense in World War II.
Corregidor fell to the Japanese in 1941, and was subsequently retaken when General MacArthur kept his promise to return to the Philippines in 1945. Today, Corregidor serves as a memorial to the valiant defenders who stayed on and fought to the last.
Cu Chi Tunnels, Vietnam
Image © Jake Robillo, used with permission.
The Cu Chi Tunnels are a network of hand-carved underground tunnels 55 miles northwest of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). Back in the 60s, Cu Chi was hotly contested territory, one point of the Iron Triangle that served as a communist hotbed in the heart of American-allied South Vietnam.
The U.S. Army was deployed several times to flush the rebels out of the Cu Chi Tunnels, with little success and a high price in American lives. Many parts of the tunnel network were bomb-proof, and booby-traps in the tunnels killed many "tunnel rats" sent into the darkness.
Today, Cu Chi Tunnels has been renovated to provide visitors with an evocative (if biased) look at Vietnam War history.
War Remnants Museum, Vietnam
Mike Aquino, licensed to About.com.
The War Remnants Museum - formerly the "Museum of American War Crimes" until Vietnam normalized relations with the US in 1993 - hosts exhibitions explaining the American involvement in Vietnam from the Vietnamese point of view.
The Museum building houses photographs, artwork, models, and text describing the progress and escalating horrors of the "American" War. (Until recently, jars of deformed fetuses were on display, side-effects of Agent Orange.) The yard around the building is littered with captured weaponry from the American Armed Forces - APCs, aircraft, artillery, and unexploded bombs, among others.
