Book production is always a collective effort; this book in particular. The process began in one of those busy cafes near the Yale University campus and is now drawing to a close with its three authors spread around the globe. What started as close interactive collaboration ends through internet contacts. How the work world has changed! Nonetheless, the underlying process reflects three researchers working with one accord to piece together the meaning and memory of a decades-long violent conflict from the divergent perspectives of its various protagonists. Adding to the timeliness—and poignancy—of a project focussed on the trauma of whole societies is the fact that it is being released in 2023, which marks the 50th anniversary of the withdrawal of American combat forces in Vietnam. We look forward to the reception of these efforts.

A book like this is not only a collaborative endeavor among three authors. As we researched this project, we visited a multitude of museums, monuments, memorials, and galleries scattered across the United States and Vietnam, sites whose creation necessitated the collaboration of vast numbers of people and considerable resources. These sites range widely in terms of the way they tell the story of the American-Vietnamese War and the degree to which they continue to impact their visitors. But even more moving than our visits to these sites were the interviews and conversations we had with countless students, scholars, artists, journalists, veterans, and other community members who have been touched in some way by the American-Vietnamese War. Without the generous insights, reflections, and vulnerability of these individuals regarding what for many remains a deeply personal—and often painful—topic, this book would simply not have been possible. It is to you, with gratitude, that we dedicate this work.

As this project has taken shape, we have had the opportunity to present various portions of it at academic conferences across Europe, North America, and Asia, and we wish to express our thanks to the scholarly community that has offered us substantial feedback during these presentations. In particular, our thanks extends to the anonymous reviewers who offered their detailed and nuanced comments on our manuscript, and to the editorial staff at Amsterdam University Press, all of whom have helped improve the book.

At the close of the twentieth century, Vietnamese-American novelist Monique T.D. Truong claimed that “For the majority of Americans, Vietnam as a self-defined country never existed,” that its existence in the U.S. national consciousness emerged only when it became “defined by military conflict”—as the site of American warfare (1997: 220). Through the opening decades of the twenty-first century, little has changed to challenge this assertion. Twenty years after Truong made this statement, another Vietnamese-American writer, Pulitzer-Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen, wrote an op-ed for The New York Times where he asserted, “For most Americans and the world, ‘Vietnam’ means the ‘Vietnam War,’ and the Vietnam War means the American war” (NYT, 5/2/2017). This fact is also highlighted by the editors of a 2016 book on the war when they claim that “‘Vietnam’ is used as shorthand in the United States for the war, not the country” (Boyle and Lim, 2016: xv). And as if to illustrate this point, Karl Marlantes, the author of Matterhorn and a veteran of the American-Vietnamese War, titled an article in such a way as to make this equivalence of Vietnam-as-war explicit: “Vietnam: The War That Killed Trust” (NYT, 1/8/2017).

It should be clear by this point in the book that although the collective memories of the American-Vietnamese War share the same subject matter, the way those memories are narrated within each of our three main social groups differs substantially. In the case of the Vietnamese Americans, to whom we now turn our attention, the most radical differences in terms of content derive in part from two historical peculiarities. First, unlike both the Vietnamese communists and the broader American society, at the end of the war the South Vietnamese experienced the annihilation of their governmental and political institutions, military forces, economic system, and mode of social organization: their state—the Republic of Vietnam—was simply snuffed out. Second, also in contrast to the communists and the rest of the United States, the individuals who would become Vietnamese Americans were displaced from their homeland to a foreign country. As we pointed out in the book’s introduction, when a collectivity understands itself to have suffered a significant calamity, one that fractures its collective identity, then if it is to persist as a collectivity, it must reconstitute its identity.

As the North Vietnamese forces approached the outskirts of Saigon on April 29, 1975, approximately 1,000 Americans remained in the city. They were mostly support personnel, both military and civilian, left to administer American interests. Among them was a contingent of U.S. Marines hastily sent in to protect the American embassy and its staff.

April 30, 1975: The Moment of Triumph

On April 29, 1975, the North Vietnamese army initiated a heavy artillery bombardment in order to prepare its final attack on Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh). By April 30, the last line of defense northeast of Saigon broke down and the North Vietnamese army advanced. In a matter of hours, they took control over most of the strategic places in Saigon, including the presidential palace. A North Vietnamese T-54B tank, which later became iconic, broke the gates of the palace—a symbolic instance famously depicted by the war photographer Francoise Demulder. Saigon had fallen, and the war was over. Earlier that month, on April 21, President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam had resigned and was eventually replaced by General Minh, who on this day was serving his third and what would be his last day in office. Somewhat remarkably, there were no massacres and no ad hoc actions of revenge that day, and the takeover is generally described as being made in good order. This can partly be explained by the discipline that now marked the North Vietnamese Army (Hägerdal, 2005) but surely also by the fact that there was no longer any major resistance and that as many as 7,800 Americans and South Vietnamese had already been evacuated in the previous days.

Continuing with the organizational plan of this book, we will now proceed to examine the different arenas of memory that the Vietnamese-American community comprises and explore the ways in which the war-related narratives are handled in each of them. One of the unique characteristics of the Vietnamese-American collectively is its hybrid nature—situated as it is within and between two cultures. Pulitzer-Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen describes how the Vietnamese-American community “is the third force between the binary poles of Vietnam and the United States,” how it “simultaneously belongs to or in both countries” (2017: 566). We pointed in the previous chapter to the challenges many Vietnamese refugees faced upon their arrival in the U.S.; to that list, we now add the challenge of how to make sense of the American-Vietnamese War and how to understand one’s identity in relation to it. Thanh Tan, host of the Seattle-based Second Wave, a podcast exploring the Vietnamese-American experience, speaks for many second-generation Vietnamese Americans when she says the war “is the backbone of my identity. It doesn’t matter that I was born after the fighting ended. Whether I like it or not, the Vietnam War is my war, too” (NYT, 10/3/2017). And indeed, she has often not liked it. In the following, Tan explains how this struggle affected her in her formative years:

As discussed in the Introduction, cultural trauma occurs when the taken-for-granted foundations of a collective identity are fractured and are made the object of critical debate. Most commonly, there is some precipitating occurrence of great social and political disruption—a war or natural catastrophe—that acts as catalyst. This sets in motion a trauma drama, with collective efforts to locate the causes, to name those responsible, and to identify the necessary steps towards recovery and repair. The re-narration of collective identity is central to this process. The discourse around collective identity is intimately intertwined with collective memory. Such identity, or identification—be it with family, an institution or profession, ethnic group, or nation—is rooted in a reconstructed past as well as present and is as concerned with the future as the past. This selected and filtered past, lying somewhere between myth and history, takes form in a narrative, a shared story of who ‘we’ are and came to be, as well as being embodied in material objects such as memorials and museums and embedded in ritual practices like holiday celebrations and commemorations.

It was in the summer of 2020 when the plan of Belgrade city authorities to rename a number of streets was announced by Deputy Mayor of Belgrade Goran Vesić, who said that a majority of streets currently recalling places where ‘Serbia is not respected’ – especially locations in former Yugoslav republics – were set to be changed (Stojanovic 2020). Vesić declared that Belgrade should no longer name streets for ‘areas where everything reminiscent of Serbianness has been erased’ (Stojanovic 2020; Danas 2020). Efforts such as this to obliterate traces and legacies of the socialist Yugoslav past, undertaken over the last three decades across the region, are clearly still ongoing; and changes to street names and urban spaces represent just one manifestation of this process. Against this trend, however, research has shown that many who trace their roots in Yugoslavia engage with that socialist past not just in the context of how they or their families used to live, but rather, how they want to live now (Balunovic 2020). For some, looking backwards, Yugoslavia remains the symbol of a ‘normal’ life (Spasić 2012); but for some, looking forwards, it is a symbol of the potential for a better future (Palmberger 2008).

While the focus of this book is on the analysis of memories from the decade after Yugoslavia dissolved, this analysis inevitably addresses processes of continuation and change related to engagement with and the existence of the socialist Yugoslav past as a political phenomenon.

Dear friends, associates and supporters,

with all due respect for your contribution t our joint efforts towards achieving peace with justice, on this occasion we invite you to join us in the Women's Court. The final event – public testimonies will be held in Sarajevo/Bosnia and Hercegovina from 7th to 10th May 2015.

The process of organizing of the Women's Court – a feminist approach to justice began in late 2010 and has been ongoing, and will also continue after the afore mentioned event.

With the Women's Court – a feminist approach to justice we create space for women's testimonies on the experiences of injustice and violence they underwent during the wars and in peacetime. Above all, we wish to create space for all the unacknowledged, concealed and silenced crimes , and also to shed light on organized resistance.

The regional initiative Women's Court – a feminist approach to justice was launched by 7 feminist organizations from all the countries of the former Yugoslavia.

In the course of a four-year period (2011-2015), we were engaged in intensive activities preparing the organization of the Women's Court – a feminist approach to justice. These activities involved creating a women network of solidarity of witnesses, activists, therapists, experts and artists coming from all the successor states of the former Yugoslavia. The aim of these activities is to create a feminist model of peace, justice and accountability.

With the Women's Court – a feminist approach to justice we contemplate and and create new policies of knowledge, we reconsider the relations between theory and practice/experience , we build mutual solidarity and trust, alternative women-s history and collective historical memory.

In solidarity,

The Organizing Committee of the Initiative for the Women's Court – a feminist approach to justice:

The Movement of Mothers of the Srebrenica and Žepa enclaves, Sarajevo, Foundation CURE, Sarajevo, Women's Forum, Bratunac, (Bosnia and Hercegovina), Center for Women Victims of War, Zagreb, Center for Women Studies, Zagreb, (Croatia), Slovenian Women's Lobby, Ljubljana, (Slovenia), Center for Women's peace Studies, Kotor, (Montenegro), Council for Gender Equality, Skopje, (Macedonia), Kosovo Women's Network, Priština, (Kosovo), Women Studies Center, Belgrade, (Serbia),Women in Black, Belgrade, (Serbia).

March 2010 YIHR Announcement of ‘Action to commemorate crimes committed in Kosovo in March and April 1999’

It was August 2016 when a number of high-profile politicians in Serbia announced their intention to erect a monument in memory of Slobodan Milošević, the former head of state who died in his prison cell in 2006, in the midst of his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Their announcement came as claims circulated in Serbia regarding the ICTY verdict convicting former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadžić, which some interpreted as having acquitted Milošević of guilt for genocide and crimes against humanity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A statement from an official in Milošević's former party, the Serbian Socialist Party (SPS), read: ‘We all knew that Milošević was not guilty. He should get a street [named after him] and a monument in Belgrade’ (Dragojlo 2016). Another high-ranking politician remarked that, ‘when such a tribunal recognizes that Milošević did not participate in an organised criminal enterprise, it is clear that Serbia was right’ (Dragojlo 2016).

This rehabilitation of Milošević was followed by reactions in Serbian media and on social media, with some hailing the idea of a monument and others strongly critical of it. Among the harshest criticisms was the suggestion that sitting politicians were attempting to whitewash their own biographies (as they themselves had been active in the Serbian political arena in the 1990s and were in Milošević's party or government) and even seeking to erect a monument to themselves (Štetin Lakić 2016; Rašuo 2016).

This chapter examines the growing prevalence of digital memory activism and online commemorations on social media, emblematic of what Hoskins calls the ‘connective turn – the sudden abundance, pervasiveness, and immediacy of digital media’ (2018a, 1). I propose the #hashtag #memoryactivism framework as an analytical approach to studying digital memory activism and online commemorations, and define hashtag memory activism as the online commemoration of contested pasts on social media utilizing hashtags as a mnemonic practice. Thus, hashtag memory activism is a mnemonic tactic that enables and even strengthens the creation of alternative platforms for remembrance, through the sharing and disseminating of alternative knowledge about a contested past in the midst of or after conflict. I examine the ways memory activists use existing online platforms, particularly social media applications such as Twitter (as well as Facebook and YouTube), to innovate and complement their existing ongoing mnemonic practices. Indeed, hashtag memory activism, as well as online commemorations, are never isolated online actions but appear in connection to local memory politics unfolding onsite, demonstrating the inseparability of digital communications from the practices and processes of remembering (Merrill et al. 2020).

The use of hashtags as a mnemonic practice, and one that has become most common among the younger (second) generation of memory activists, is my focus here.

In Serbia, the decade of the 1990s is still referenced regularly in the 2020s. Though my main interest and focus here is on memories and memory politics related to the wars waged in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo following the break-up of Yugoslavia, they cannot be discussed in isolation from other memories that have emerged as legacies of that era. These include, but are not limited to, memories of a decade of the destruction of civility, of mass anti-regime demonstrations, of an absence of normalcy, and of ruptures in daily life. Indeed, in the early days of the outbreak and spread of COVID-19, during the lockdown period in the spring of 2020, I heard many people in Belgrade comment about how the experience brought up unpleasant memories of life under sanctions in the 1990s, when mobility was limited, leaving from or arriving in the country on an international flight was impossible, and life's routines were severely interrupted. Often, people in Serbia view the 1990s as a point of reference for how bad things can be, a symbol of unpleasant times people would rather forget and of ‘really ugly memories’ (Obradović-Wochnik 2013, 61).

Thus, this chapter begins by placing this discussion of memories of the wars of the 1990s in the broader context of experiences and memories of everyday life in Serbia at the time; those unwanted memories that people would rather avoid, and yet often reference anyway, almost in passing, especially in the context of unexpected disruptions to their daily routine.

YIHR Transitional Justice Calendar