As a Marine Officer who served in combat in Vietnam in 1968 – 1969, I have often been asked what the real legacy of the Vietnam War is.  That is a difficult question to answer.

  • To some it is a lifetime of pain and sorrow: to the wounded, the families who lost loved ones, the POWs.
  • To some who served, the nightmares have never ended.
  • And, to still others, it is the remembrance in bitterness of coming home to a hostile America; where the legacy is the desire to forget it ever happened to them.
  • While to millions who did not serve, it is the loss of American innocence.  We had never before been in a war where it is widely believed that we “lost.”  All military action since then has filled the media with words and images from that conflict with phrases like “another Vietnam”, and “quagmire.”

However, even from this most deadly conflict, there has emerged a legacy that is seldom discussed; one that deserves recognition.  And, that is the lasting legacy of the growth of the Gospel throughout the Pacific Rim.

In the late 1940s and 1950s, in the aftermath of World War II and Korea, U.S. servicemen, government support personnel, and their families established a semi-permanent presence in the Far East.  But, with the U.S. entrance into the Vietnam War, and the build up of U.S. military personnel in Vietnam that process was accelerated as we poured billions of dollars into the economies of Japan, Okinawa, Taiwan, Korea and other countries and islands in the military theater of operation.  It required logistical support of supplies and equipment both for the war and for reconstruction, and experts in all kinds of disciplines: infrastructure construction, military support facilities, telecommunications, teaching and training in modern industry and government, etc.

Hundreds of thousands of personnel poured into the Far East from the U.S. setting up facilities, bases of operations, supply depots, transit facilities, R&R travel and leisure operations, hotels, and countless other needed goods and services. Each of these disciplines – and hundreds more – required highly specialized personnel, training, and support facilities of their own.  This multiplied the 150,000 actual troops “in country” in Vietnam at any given time by ten fold.  In total, more than 3,000,000 U.S. servicemen and women served in Vietnam from 1959 thru 1975.

Even the Air Force personnel who provided supply and combat support into Vietnam were stationed in neighboring countries, many with their families in tow.  These families required schools, recreation, food and housing, churches, all of the amenities expected in the USA (even if all were not available.)

And, in the mix of those hundreds of thousands of personnel and their families were faithful members of the Church and their families, bringing their way of life both on base and off.  They required chapels of worship, organization into branches and districts, and then wards and stakes.  Their children mingled with the local populations, the professionals worked with their local counterparts.  Soon converts began to emerge locally to supplement the largely American church members.  Missionaries followed, and expanded the local Church membership.

When I was in the Far East in 1965 for the first time, there were only a few hundred Church members in Korea and Taiwan.  Japan was not much larger at a few thousand.  The Philippines was even smaller.  But, the permanent Priesthood leadership gleaned from the U.S. military and support personnel soon moved the hundreds into thousand, and thousands into tens of thousands.  Military officers and enlisted men and their families became ward and stake leaders. 

As they transitioned out of the Far East and moved on to other professional assignments, their trained local counselors became the leadership, and their children the missionaries.  And once again today in Vietnam, there has reemerged small but vibrant communities of Saints who gather weekly to hold services in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and Hanoi.  This mix of Vietnamese saints, U.S. Embassy personnel, and civilian businessmen and their families demonstrates the reach of the Gospel in this corner of God’s earth.

Now there are nearing one million members of the Church in the Pacific Rim (not counting Australia and New Zealand where the U.S. presence is strong as well.)  The five largest countries by Church membership in the Far East are the Philippines, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Table 1: Church Statistics in Selected Far East Countries – 2010

Country                             Number of          Number of            Missions    Temples
                                    Members – 1965    Members – 2010      2010            2010

Philippines                         1,900                      632,000                  15                       1
Japan                               10,000                      124,000                    7                       2     
South Korea                      2,600                        82,000                    4                       1
Taiwan                              3,200                        51,000                    2                       1
Hong Kong                       2,400                        24,000                    1                      1     

From this membership have come General Authorities, Area Seventy, Stake and Ward leaders, missionaries, and faithful saints serving in callings throughout the region.  There are 29 missions, six temples, and a remarkable infrastructure to support those saints.  The scriptures have been translated into 31 Asian languages, and there are branches of the Church in 40 countries in Asia.

President Spencer W. Kimball, in his wonderful book Faith Precedes the Miracle1, has a chapter (Chapter 8) titled “Tragedy or Destiny.”  In it he raises the question of whether God causes tragic things to happen to us, or whether they are caused by human decisions or earthly forces.  Then, he goes on to observe that:

Could the Lord have prevented these tragedies? The answer is, Yes. The Lord is omnipotent, with all power to control our lives, save us pain, prevent all accidents, drive all planes and cars, feed us, protect us, save us from labor, effort, sickness, even from death, if he will. But he will not.

If we looked at mortality as the whole of existence, then pain, sorrow, failure, and short life would be calamity. But if we look upon life as an eternal thing stretching far into the premortal past and on into the eternal post-death future, then all happenings may be put in proper perspective.

If all the sick for whom we pray were healed, if all the righteous were protected and the wicked destroyed, the whole program of the Father would be annulled and the basic principle of the gospel, free agency, would be ended. No man would have to live by faith.

Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.2 (Hebrews 5:8-9.)

The extension of that is that while God may not cause these terrible and tragic things to happen, He is always ready to utilize each one to reaffirm Gospel principles, and to extend the Gospel into the “four corners of the earth” whenever He can.

The American presence in the Vietnam War was actually an extension of the French Indo-China War (also called the First Indochina War) that followed World War II.  But, just the American years of 1965-1974 saw 150,000 U.S. military wounded, 58,000 dead, and millions of Vietnamese on both sides dead or wounded.

  I have met many of them since then, and have found them to be without rancor toward America.

  In fact, I have only received welcome from them to me.  That alone is a miracle.

I cannot weigh the damage of the Vietnam War to all involved against the outpouring of goodness that has become the Gospel legacy, and judge whether the cost outweighed the benefits.  But, I can say with some certainty that without the Vietnam War there would not have been the conditions (that have led to the growth that has occurred in the Church throughout the region) had not the United States made the decision to enter the war when it did, made the commitment and sacrifice it did, and stayed for so many years.

Today, as we are witnessing the presence of U.S. and Western European military and support personnel in the Middle East, one could expect that there are a considerable number of members among them.  The recent Church announcement about the Church’s budding organizational structure in countries in the region, reinforces this.  The process of organizing the members in the various enclaves into normal Church structures has begun, and the result will inevitably be the same as that which began in the Far East just one generation ago. 

So, when I am asked “what is the legacy of the Vietnam War?” I am reminded of the story of Saint Lawrence of Rome, an early Christian martyr and deacon of the early church, who, when ordered by Roman authorities to reveal the church’s treasures, showed them the hungry and the sick.  For me, the treasures of the Vietnam War . . . its lasting legacy . . . can be found in the wards, stakes, missions and temples in the countries that welcomed and hosted the United States in those growing years for the Church throughout the Far East, where U.S. leadership (before the Church there became self-sufficient) eventually became local Priesthood-led Saints in the Kingdom . . . just as it will where our troops and families are now.

1 Spencer W. Kimball, Faith Precedes the Miracle, Deseret Books, 1972.

2 The Holy Bible, The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews 5:8-9.