Early in his first term, President Donald Trump signed the Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act of 2017, establishing March 29 as National Vietnam War Veterans Day. The law honored the women and men who served in the military during the Vietnam War, and, as Trump put it, “were spit on and treated like dirt for serving.” It was clear that Trump envisioned himself that day righting an age-old wrong. After decades of neglect and disdain, Vietnam Veterans Day would offer these Americans the heroes’ welcome home they never received.
That is one way of telling this story. But it unfortunately obscures a great deal more than it reveals.
U.S. involvement in Vietnam officially began on November 1, 1955, with the establishment of the American Military Assistance Advisory Group for South Vietnam, and ended on April 30, 1975, with the fall of Saigon and the departure of the last remaining American personnel. Between these mileposts, 8.75 million American men and women served in uniform around the world, 40 percent of them stationed in Vietnam and adjacent Southeast Asian countries. More than 58,000 of those would die in the war.
The so-called “police action” in Vietnam evolved over time to become the most challenging war in American history. Although World War II resulted in nearly seven times as many American deaths, Vietnam has come to occupy a place of unique anguish in the national psyche. Its vague and conflicting goals, its protracted nature, its ballooning unpopularity at home, and its eventual end in ignominious defeat conspired to make honoring, celebrating, and remembering service in the war difficult and messy.
Efforts at honoring Vietnam veterans cannot be understood apart from the experiences and memory of their parents’ (“Greatest”) generation who served in World War 2. The war their father’s fought was clear in its aims, short in its duration, virtuous in its achievements, and victorious in every sense. Surviving veterans returned home, en masse, to the open arms of a jubilant and grateful nation. American military service in all future wars would be compared to these images and experiences. Anything short of ticker-tape parades would raise questions of honor and gratitude.
This helps us understand how the image of the scorned Vietnam veteran became a mainstay of American oral tradition in the years following the war’s end. This image portrayed him returning home from Southeast Asia not to adoring crowds or fanfare but to derision, anger, and contempt. The notion gained traction through various anecdotal accounts in circulation and was all but “confirmed” thanks to widely read memoirs like Ron Kovic’s Born on the Fourth of July (1976) and Robert Mason’s Chickenhawk (1983), along with comparable depictions in film including William Devane’s in Rolling Thunder (1977) and Jon Voight’s in Coming Home (1978).
The reality on the ground was more complicated. A Harris Poll commissioned by the Veterans Administration in 1971 found that only 1% of returning veterans described their reception upon their arrival home as “unfriendly.” The best scholarship on the home front amid the Vietnam War has challenged popular depictions of the derided returning veteran. Historians like Jerry Lembcke and Eric T. Dean could find no evidence of spitting on veterans, and very few incidents of ridicule or hostility. They conclude that the trope of the reviled Vietnam veteran is a historically dubious, yet politically useful myth.
By contrast, examples abound of communities throughout the war welcoming veterans home with euphoric celebrations—even parades! Despite the war’s strange complications—and a vocal anti-war movement—Americans, by and large, remained patriotic backers of American military operations in Vietnam, showing particular support for military personnel risking their lives. Richard Nixon understood this dimension of the American public when he appealed aptly to the “great silent majority” in a November 1969 televised speech.
None of these observations are meant to imply that returning veterans didn’t experience challenging, even painful homecomings seasoned with feelings of alienation, loneliness, dissonance, or post-traumatic stress. Many obviously did. But so too did veterans of previous wars—even the “good” ones. Even so, the feeling that Americans lacked gratitude for Vietnam veterans lingered and became its own cause célèbre.
Because Vietnam veterans never received massive or triumphant homecomings like those fondly remembered from 1945, groups began lobbying public officials to give this younger generation the honor they deserved. No one wrote more letters, lobbied more members of Congress, or traveled more miles on behalf of this cause than Alfonso Sellet, a building superintendent from tiny Pine Bush, New York. Sellet deserves title as the true father of Vietnam Veterans Day.
Born in 1920, Sellet immigrated to the United States from Italy as a small child with his parents just before the restrictive Immigration Act of 1924 went into effect. He spent his formative years in Brooklyn. While living an otherwise ordinary American life, Sellet had the rare distinction of serving and seeing action in World War II (earning a Bronze Star), Korea, and Vietnam. He thus experienced personally both the exhilaration of a celebrative welcome home in 1945, and the humiliation of arriving returning (injured) from Vietnam in 1966 to a quiet, abandoned Air Force base. No one there to greet or thank him or his fellow returnees. Something had to be done.
In 1968, he founded the Committee to Honor Vietnam Veterans, and began lobbying state and federal officials to, among other things, observe a special “Honor the Vietnam Veteran Day.” He quickly won over his congressman, Hamilton Fish (R-NY) who would sponsor a bill in 1971 to this end. Despite receiving what Fish reported as “letters and newspaper articles by the hundreds acknowledging the need for recognition of these brave men—AND NOT ONE DISSENT,” it would take until 1973 for the bill to be considered, passed, and signed. Just before Christmas, President Nixon signed a resolution declaring March 29, 1974, “Vietnam Veterans Day,” marking the one-year anniversary of the last American serviceman to withdraw from South Vietnam.
In the meantime, cities and states issued dozens of their own “official” Vietnam Veterans Day, held often on March 29 and sometimes, confusedly, on March 30. While the March 29 was not (and still isn’t) recognized as a federal holiday, various congresses and presidents through the years have episodically recognized the day with their own proclamations of gratitude and honor of the millions who served in uniform during the Vietnam era. In some cases, such as the congressional resolution passed in 2009 and the bill signed by President Trump in 2017, these proclamations were set forth as though the day was being recognized for the very first time.
It is good that Americans honor our military personnel who have served our nation in seasons of both peace and war. And it is especially important that we recognize the sacrifice of those who risked and gave their lives amid a conflict that was complicated and unpopular. But the story of Vietnam Veterans Day is a telling reminder that American memory—especially when it comes to military service—is always tinged with politics. It is also short and prone to amnesia.
Jay D. Green is Professor of History at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, where he has been on the faculty since 1998.
