Date published: Sunday, August 22, 2004
By Scott Beveridge, Staff writer

DANANG, Vietnam – The 9th U.S. Marine Regiment landed here in March 1965, setting the stage for Vietnam's 10-year war with America.

The seaport city was the launching site for Operation Rolling Thunder, air strikes that marked the escalation of the Vietnam War. On the Central Vietnam coast, Danang also would become the arrival and departure points for a steady stream of American troops that numbered 500,000 by December 1967.

Some Vietnamese would prosper in jobs in the city's laundries, hotels, restaurants and bars that catered to American soldiers and their paychecks. The military presence also led to a demand for prostitutes and drugs in this city along the South China Sea, whose beaches became a popular destination for Americans wanting rest and relaxation from jungle warfare.

As the war escalated, Danang's established industries foundered, and thousands of its villagers became refugees as its neighborhoods turned into slums.

The city, now home to 700,000 people, experienced more than two decades of economic strife after U.S. troops pulled out of the country when it fell to Communist forces April 29, 1975.

Today, the former III marine amphibious base across Cau Do River from center city is a run-down Communist military training academy. About a mile away, a sprawling former American army and marine airport has become overgrown with weeds and it is reportedly used as a top-secret Vietnamese air force base.

In the city's downtown, motorbikes by the thousand compete for space on bumpy, dusty streets with fewer numbers of cars, vans and bicycles. Their drivers haul everything from fruits and vegetables to panes of glass strapped to their passengers or vehicles.

The smell of burning josstick, or incense, wafts in the air at every corner, part of the popular Vietnamese custom of ancestor worship. Nearly everyone here burns incense and such items as paper money to send smoke to the sky in a ritual designed to bring good luck to the departed, said Vo Van Thang, a professor of English at Danang University.

The smell of raw sewage also fills the air circling Danang's downtown and its rows of crumbling, tree-lined sidewalks because of inadequate sewer systems.

"Vietnam's economy was horrible for 15 years after the war," said Nguyen Thi Lan, a relief worker with World Vision International, a Christian organization that ministers to children with birth defects in Danang's poor villages.

Residents, starving for food after the war, killed and devoured all the monkeys that once roamed the steep hills of nearby Monkey Mountain, said Le Xuan Toa of Danang, a former captain in the South Vietnamese army and liaison to U.S. troops.

Danang is slowly on the mend now that the collapsed Communist regime has initiated reforms to attract foreign investment.

A new, neon-lit bridge has been built, and better roads are under construction on the outskirts of the city, thanks to World Bank loans that have begun to pour into Vietnam.

New or remodeled homes are taking shape alongside a new boulevard that winds through the naval base. Similar improvements can be seen near the 7-year-old Furama Resort on China Beach, the only five-star hotel in Vietnam.