My life is framed by war. My Marine father was killed in action on the beachhead of Guam, on July 22, 1944, while he was attempting to get his platoon dug in for the defense of a hill. Visibility was poor, and the enemy launched a surprise attack. My dad suffered a grave chest wound; he died before the next morning. My mother received a telegram delivered by Western Union on August 14:

I deeply regret to inform you that your husband, —— USMCR, was killed in action in the performance of his duty and service of his country. No information available at present regarding disposition of remains. Temporary burial in locality where death occurred probable. You will be promptly furnished any additional information received. To prevent possible aid to our enemies do not divulge the name of his ship or station. Please accept my heartfelt sympathy. A. Vandergrift, Lieutenant General USMC Commandant of the Marine Corps.

It took years to locate his remains.

War, for me, is very personal. World War II is a war I’ve lived my whole life. It was a war in which my father felt he had to do his share and give something to this world. He did, and I never knew him except through pictures and letters and the memories of others. It was a war that destroyed my mother and her hopes and dreams for the future.

My mom never got over his death. She once told me: “The pain has come again and it flows over me in an endless succession of wave after wave. I feel weak and sick as though after a long illness—but this time is not the convalescent period for it won’t release me from its tenacious grasp. It is brutal and heavy and dominating. The waves pound on my brain and there is no strength to combat this terror.”

April 30, 2025, is the fiftieth anniversary of Reunification Day in Vietnam, commemorating the end of the American war on Vietnam and the reunification of the country. I wonder about the people of the country we Americans tried to bomb back to the Stone Age, tried to destroy for eternity, of whom we murdered over three million, caused untold pain and agony, left scars on the bodies and souls of the living. I wonder, how do we ask for their forgiveness?

Why remember the last war when we still haven’t learned its lessons?

In 1967, I graduated from Stanford University, wearing a black armband signifying my objection to the War in Vietnam. I had become a nurse, and I joined the Navy Nurse Corps to care for the wounded from war, to heal them and return them back home to family and friends.

From the summer of 1967 through June 1969, I was a nurse at the Oak Knoll Navy Hospital in Oakland, California. I was assigned to the surgical and orthopedic wards—World War II barracks crowded with 35 to 40 patients, all young men who had been wounded in Vietnam. They were very young—17, 18, 19 years old. Some were missing limbs; some were so shot up they had tubes coming out from various parts of their body, draining excess fluids. I couldn’t protect them—from the war, from their fear, from dying—and knew that this war had to stop. These were the years 1967 and 1968, during the height of the war. I watched the battles on TV and lived the war at work.

But I learned that simply healing the soldiers from the war was not enough—that my being a part of the military machine enabled the war to continue.

In early October 1968, I began working with GI and Veterans March for Peace on publicity for our anti-war march in San Francisco. A friend was a pilot; we rented a plane and filled it with flyers announcing the October 12 GI Peace March, which we dropped over five military bases in the San Francisco Bay area, including an aircraft carrier. I then marched in the demonstration in my uniform and spoke out against the war. I was tried by general court martial, dismissed from the Navy, and sentenced to six months’ confinement.

Today, it is an honor for me to be part of an extraordinary and special group of people, Veterans for Peace. They are GIs and veterans who returned from war and armed conflict—from Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq—to work for peace and social justice in the United States. For them it’s been a wrenching, painful journey from war maker to peacemaker—to be able to question both themselves and their country, which has participated in unjust and immoral conflicts; to look at their adolescent selves and question their very identity; to take a moral journey back to a time when they were transported into a country thousands of miles beyond U.S. borders, members of a destructive military force tasked with killing the people in those far away countries.

The end of the American war on Vietnam occurred with the signing of a peace agreement on January 27, 1973, ratified by Congress in June 1973. But it was not until April 30, 1975, that the final U.S. diplomats, military personnel and civilians left Vietnam.

Why remember the last war when we still haven’t learned its lessons?

The lesson that should have been learned from the war in Vietnam was not to interfere in the way another country wanted to define itself. Instead, even as Henry Kissinger and President Nixon were playing the peace card in Vietnam, they were already heavily involved in the destruction of the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende.

As the Chilean government began to nationalize their industries to fund social programs, the World Bank refused to lend Chile money to assist their fruit-growing economy. Chile initiated a land-reform program, nationalized copper mines, and increased workers’ wages, which caused commercial banks to cut off credit to Chile, as the United States directed disruption of the Chilean economy. When bread shortages occurred in the fall of 1973, the United States refused to provide the assistance that it later gave the government formed by the military coup it supported. On September 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet and his military took control of the country—following years of U.S. involvement in destabilizing Allende and his presidency, because he was a Marxist.

More than 10,000 Chileans were rounded up in the national stadium in Santiago and brutally, systematically tortured and murdered. Seventeen years of the torture of Chilean citizens followed; young people “disappeared,” their bodies dumped from planes into the ocean. It was estimated that more than 60,000 people were “disappeared” with the support of the U.S. government. Chilean citizens were routinely picked up off the streets by the police and military and incarcerated, tortured, and killed.

Today I am reminded of that connection between the Vietnam War and our interference in Chile, as the tactics we encouraged against dissidents in Vietnam and Chile—and Nicaragua and Guatemala and El Salvador—are now being applied right here. We are seeing Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officers (dressed in black uniforms, faces covered with masks) routinely picking people up from their homes, from work, in front of their children, whisking them away to detention centers or to a notorious prison in El Salvador, denying them due process and communication with family. We have a president who publicly stated he would use such tactics on American citizens, a president who is destroying the economy and disappearing people. American fascists are moving us toward a police state, promoting racism, creating poverty, taking away health and medical care for the poor, disabled, and elderly, and putting more money and power in the hands of the corporate class and the arms industry. How did we become a society that supports the murder of children? The murder of medical aid workers? That destroys hospitals—that sends arms and 2,000-pound bombs to a country that is committing genocide against civilians in Gaza?

Why remember the last war when we still haven’t learned its lessons?

As a veteran who cared for soldiers during the American war in Southeast Asia—I have seen how war, even if it is survived, injures all who participate. It kills the body and soul, it damages communities and families. It impacts generations. And who profits? The war industry—merchants of death that produce and distribute armaments to the world.

Today I am left with the words my father wrote in his last letter: “I feel as though I have done my share and helped to give something to this world. In that respect I have been happy and regret nothing.”

But we have additional work to do. We must pledge to work together toward healing the lasting destructive legacy of American wars, to cleanse the lands of the contaminants we left behind in Southeast Asia, to heal the people. And we vow that we will continue our struggle for peace and justice in our own country, against fascism and against control by an oligarchy so fortified with money and power. We will fight together to stop this government from picking up new immigrants from the streets, from their places of worship, from their homes, from their work. And we will overcome.

Susan Schnall is president of National Veterans for Peace, as well as for its New York City chapter, a member of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign and Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In 2006, Susan was awarded the medal for peace and friendship between peoples by the Vietnam Union of Friendship Organization. For 31 years, Susan was executive administrator responsible for the departments of Quality/Risk/Care Management, Regulatory Affairs, and Medical Records in public hospitals in New York City. Susan Schnall was assistant adjunct professor, New York University, School of Professional Studies, Healthcare Management for 25 years. In April 2015, she was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humanities by Ohio Wesleyan University.