News-Info-Alerts

Re: Looking For Loved Ones

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: September 26, 2002

"Vietnamese turn to psychics to find soldiers' graves

By KAY JOHNSON

HANOI -- They were childhood sweethearts who fell in love at 18, married at 21 and were swept apart by war. Now, all Nguyen Thi Gai has to remember her husband by are wedding photos and a carefully folded death certificate.

But nearly 30 years after her husband was killed in battle with U.S. soldiers, Ms. Gai has new hope of burying him in his native village. Like thousands of other Vietnamese, she has turned to a psychic grave-finding service to locate the remains of a loved one who went missing in action during the country's decades-long war.

"I've never been superstitious before, but I'm willing to try anything," said Ms. Gai, 55, fingering a hand-drawn map. "With this map, I really hope I can find Tien's grave."

About 300,000 Vietnamese soldiers are still missing in action after what Vietnamese call "the American War." While Washington has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to find the remains of fewer than 2,000 U.S. servicemen, the Vietnamese get little official help.

Hoping to put the remains of their loved ones on the ancestral altars that are in nearly every Vietnamese home, more and more families are turning to decidedly unofficial assistance.

Since the humbly named Office for Grave Searches opened in Hanoi five years ago, more than 5,000 Vietnamese families have consulted its three resident psychics, who churn out as many as 20 maps a day.

State media have warned of con artists who dupe relatives of the missing by having accomplices bury fresh bones -- some not even human -- at the appointed site. But that doesn't stop families, who refuse to give up hope.

The grave-finding service is a mixture of mysticism and modern technology, spiritualism and politics, housed in a wooden building with incense burning in the courtyard and an altar with a gold bust of revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh.

Hopeful relatives wait on straw mats outside until they are called up to a desk to see the centre's head psychic, Nguyen Van Lien, who goes into a trance and begins speaking in verse while his hands sketch out a colour-coded map on a length of poster paper.

"I see your brother, who died very young. He was so handsome," Mr. Lien tells an old man and his son as he draws green whorls on the map. "You should go to Quang Nam province and ask for village No. 3 in Dien Tho commune. There, you will find someone to help you reunite."

Fees for missing-in-action psychics start at 50,000 dong -- about $5. Mr. Lien insists that he's not in the business for the money and that anything grateful families want to donate is up to them.

Still, families have been known to spend hundreds of dollars in travel costs and other expenses. Not everyone comes out a believer.

Dinh Thi Bai, 61, consulted Mr. Lien in 1997 in hopes of finding her long-lost husband. On his instructions, she and her whole family travelled to the province of Quang Binh, 400 kilometres south of Hanoi, dug up a grave, then transported the remains to a family plot outside Hanoi. Although there was no way to be sure, she believed without question that she had found her husband.

But earlier this year, Ms. Bai got a shock when an official came to her door and said that a government search team had found a body bearing her husband's identity tag. It was one of the first times Hanoi had been able to return the remains of a lost soldier, but it left Ms. Bai feeling betrayed by the psychics.

"We spent a lot of money and went through many hardships just to find a fake body," she said. Nevertheless, the family left the mystery body where it was, burying the family patriarch next to it.

"The other man may not be my husband, but he's still a war martyr," she said.

Nguyen Duy Doan, who sits waiting his turn to see Mr. Lien, hopes to find the body of his brother, who died in 1968 in Quang Binh. He said his cousin's body was found by his family last year using the same agency. He's heard stories of fraud, but said he is willing to keep an open mind about the supernatural grave-finders.

"It's a mystery that can't be explained scientifically," he said. "Some people want to believe because it gives them peace."

Copyright © 2002 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc."