I'm half Korean and my grandpa was one of the 300,000 korean auxiliaries sent to fight Vietminh on Lyndon johnsons request, I barely see him, nor do I know much about him because he is happily married and owns a soybean farm in Gwangju, and he's construction foreman who has business in Japan, Guam, Malaya, etc.

He is extremely happy-go-lucky and is an enlightened idiot like Paulie Walnuts. He only talked about his service twice, but I knew for certain he was in Saigon, I knew he saw combat but had always thought that his primary role was as an orderly or mechanic because of his jovial demeanor.

My grandparents flew over a few days ago like they do annually, and our family had some pork belly and leaf wraps and rice and shit. Then my grandpa pulled out two bottles of nikka whiskey that he got from his business in Japan. He poured everyone at the table a swig, and then after the dinner, I had an earnest conversation with him about our family history. He was already piss drunk from drinking 3 quarters of the second bottle, and was continuously taking swigs. He was in the most haggardly, vulnerable state I've seen him in.

He told me that his mother was a whore (his words) before she settled down with his father, and that she traveled across Manchuria after the Jap takeover. She fucked Jap soldiers, russian expats, native dongbei people, etc, and was a scholar who studied handheld photography. He loved his mother, and described vividly how strikingly beautiful she was, the babushka scarf and thick black heels she would wear. Apparently his father also lived in an area on the peninsula that was laden with Jap occupying forces before he was born, and that he was frequently domineered and bullied by them, despite being fluent in japanese and having a jap surname under the soshi-kamei policy. He told me that he was frequently beaten by his father, even in late adolescence, and he still had a rough scar around his cheek from the time his father got soju-drunk and beat him to a bloody pulp and slashed him with a dull knife after my grandpa stood up to him for fondling his mothers breasts.

Sometime after that he was conscripted, and was sent to Vietnam as infantry. He obviously had no say in whether he would or wouldn't, and he told me he fought in quy non, da nang, and hue in addition to being stationed in Saigon. I wont get into the details but he brutally murdered two Vietminh in a coastal village, and he talked about the men of his division committing some of the most depraved and vile acts ever befallen upon humanity, all with a look of distilled serenity in his eyes. He then began rambling about how he hates the Japs he does business with and how absurd their business customs are, etc. I'll always love him and respect his service, but I'm thinking of being slightly wary from now on.