Dave Ionao

Dave Ionao

Vietnam History

Dave talks about his life during the Vietnam war through the 1970's and talks about the peace for Vietnam group that he is apart of.

Heritage Fiesta Group and with the coordination of Prof. Coronado

CCSU

April 23, 2022

Nate

The rights are held by Nate in his personal collection.

Nate: Ready to get Started alright.

Nate: Alright thank you thank you for sitting down with us today.... uh my name is Nate and this is Jocelyn she wil be just taking notes and stuff.. uhhh

Dave: Okay

Nate: And so we are both CCSU students... uh I am a history major with a public history minor.

jocelyn I'm a psychology major.

Dave: Oh that's good. I graduated from Central in 97 with a history degree and I am an alumni and a minor in communications.

Nate: Oh your an alumni. awesome.

Nate: Alright well we can start by what is your name.

Dave: Dave Ioano.

Nate: Can you spell that for me?

Dave: I O A N O

Nate: Okay... Uhh if you are comfortable telling us how old are you or your date of birth

Dave: Yeah I'm 71 I was born February 15th 1951 I'm an army brat.

Nate: Okay

Dave: I grew up in the military and my dad was career. So we lived all over the United States plus I spent four year living in Asia Okenua Japan and Taiwan. And my wife is an army brat.

Nate: okay.

Dave: We met on Fort Lewis Washington high school we are high school sweethearts we're still married 52 years 4 daughters and 1 grandson. [Laughs]

Nate: Nice!

Dave: But I enlisted in the United States military in 1969 because I believed what was happening. Because I enlisted for 3 years at Sam Houston. And uh I volunteered for Vietnam. I wasn't drafted I was enlisted and I volunteered for Vietnam and after I've been there for 6 and 7 months I realized that this war was wrong was a mistake it was a brutal destruction of someone else's country.

Nate: Yeah so you have a dozen or so 20 photos here that you uh took are these did you take all of these.

Dave: Yeah these are all from a polaroid camera that I carried around with me I... we carried a camera around. Some of the guys would take this kind of pictures of dead bodies but I never did that.

Nate: RIght

Dave: I was more into the countryside and also the guys I was with

Nate: Yep yep yeah I can see a lot of pictures with your buddies.

Dave: Yeah you can see that we were medics and myself. We were in ambulance platoon. You can notice how young we were we were all 19.

Nate: Yeah

Nate: Yeah that was you right there on patrol

Dave: We were out on convoy duty

Nate: Yeah so uh yeah I know she took pictures so I'll let her scribe them. But but yeah it looks like we were you sending these pictures home ah to your family to your wife?

Dave: I was more like collecting them to take them to become with me

Nate: Okay.

Dave: But you know you can sense some things home but.... a lot of your mail was subject to

Nate: What they look at yeah yeah yeah.

Dave: If they wanted to. The only thing they wanted to put stamps on them and could write free on the upper corner and it would be mailed to the stamps that was the benefit they gave us you know but as the war got stranger and stranger heroin addiction was rampant. I was there from 70 to 71.

Nate: Okay.

Dave: They would like to tell you that maybe 10 or maybe 15% of troops were using heroin but it was more like 40% and a lot of medics were indulging in it and taking morphine.

Nate: Right yeah.

Dave: Because

Nate: You had access to it.

Dave: We had access to it.. it was one way to dampen the pain.

Nate: Um what uh... so obviously your're in New Britain now you said that you were an army brat that grew up all over the place what um.. is there a reason that you settled in Connecticut? That after the army?

Dave: Well we lived in California during the 1970 to 75 we lived in San Francisco and then the economy collapsed with the gas embargo and the oil embargo southeast did that and I lost my job. And so we decided to come back home in the east coast where my folks were.

Nate: Okay

Dave: We came back to Connecticut my folks were living in Hartford at the time and I bought a house in Hartford and I lived in the family home here my parents have passed away but um.

Nate: Was your family originally from Hartford?

Dave: They are from Connecticut they were from Stratford and my father was born in uh upstate New York Skintike.

Nate: Okay.

Dave: But uh they chose here my mother was a nurse she was czech slovakina and my father was Italian. And uh they met each other and married my dad went to medical school after he got out of the Navy after the war and he decided to enlist a career in the U.S. army and got orders from two and a half years to move out in a different base.

Nate: yep

Dave: So we had our life on the move.

Nate: Alright but in the end you went back to where your family is from.

Dave: Yeah yeah you know I like Connecticut its a beautiful state you know and I like the people of Hartford.... has been good for us to grow in and my girls all went to the local public schools and went to Hartford High and I do not know if any of you went to Hartford high but uh.

Nate: What uh so... sorry you said you graduated from Central right with a history degree.

Dave: Yep.

Nate: So did you teach or?

Dave: No what happened was um I was working part time..... but before I started.. before I went to school at Central I worked at Hue blind in the city in a factory.

Nate: okay

Dave: I made smearmoff vodka.

Nate: Oh.

Dave: I was a union member a truck driver I loaded trucks. Then they kept threatening to shut the plant down so I said you know I got to find something else to do. I had to go back to school part time on the GI bill

Nate: Mhm

Dave: And um I got a job at the Hartford public Library part time and then I got a full time job at the Hartford public library and I stayed there for 28 years.

Nate: Awesome that's great.

Dave: So I just retired 4, 5 years ago.

Nate: Nice, Awesome.

Dave: So I didn't teach a teach.. you know in school I did teach because I was invited into classrooms to speak about my experience in the Vietnam I spent 25 years going to local high schools.

Nate: That's great uh... let's see... is there is there anything else you like to add or?

Dave: Well.. I came home from Vietnam and joined Vietnam veterans against the war.

Nate: Okay

Dave: And I felt that the only way we can stop the war was to show them the damage not only to the people of Vietnam but to ourselves. As soldiers. So there was a lot of factions within the veteran community that were that had different ideas about that but some of us decided that Vietnam veterans against the war we started marching veterans day parades we got called traitors we had trash and garbage thrown at us but we persisted and at one point over 50,000 I don't know if you ever heard soldier hearings right back in 71?

Nate: mhm

Dave: There were over 50,000 veterans Vietnam Veterans against the war. And I believed that my own thought that that was the imptist putting an end to the war. We become part of the peace movement and they were scared of us because we were the guys fighting the war and we were telling you it was wrong.

Nate: uh so when you did some of these marches and stuff were you going to Washington were you doing them locally?

Dave: We went to D.C. we did that I marched in the first veterans day in Seattle in 72 after I being home from the war and then I after that when I came here I joined veterans for peace and I organized us to march to the veterans day parade that use to be held in Hartford.

Nate: Oh wow okay.

Dave And first time we saw a sign to march up into the parade trying to keep us out.

Nate: Course

Dave: And so we told them "well that's fine we'll march at the end of the parade we'll be the last thing everyone see's."

Nate: [Laughs]

Dave: So they said "well okay we'll just gonna let you in cause you are veterans you should have spot on the parade." So after that pretty much every year we got enough people together we marched in the parade and people were happy to see us there we got a lot loud applause and cheers when we march by or walked by with our veterans for peace banner and then I was part of hope out aloud I don't know if you heard of that?

Nate: No

Dave: Its an organized peace movement during the war in Iraq which I understand you were part in.

Nate: mhm

Dave: We were hoping to shut the war down shut the wars down I hoped that Obama would do it but his hands were tied to the military industrial complex. So while he did slow them down and start drawing troops down he let the wars go on. And then Trump became President and the one thing I did like about him he kept saying he was going to bring everyone back from Afghanistan I was happy to hear that but a lot of other things he did I was not happy about and I don't know were your politics are but you know Trump was definitely not good for the country .

Nate: Hmm

Dave: So he we are today there is a group called IVAW Iraq Veterans Against the War. Which Afghan veterans and they changed there name to about face. That's what they are called now. I don't know involved with those things?

Nate: No I've heard of them.

Dave: Okay I don't know where your politics are Nate but you know you can tell me to be inclined. So here we are today Jim has been really great at organizing things we've been attending to and uh he's been good for uh veterans for peace groups he's actually got more guys to join so that's good and me plus another veteran named Steve F we do a television show called voices of veterans on Hartford Public access television you can see that on Youtube there there digitized and put on the website so if you interested what I do in the show is I interview veterans like I interview Bill Potman a former American Marine who was an Afghan veteran and I read from books written by veterans its a half hour program and I read from the books and Steve works with the cameras and then we put the show up every Thursday 4 O'Clock our local cable access.

Nate: Wow how have you been doing that?

Dave: 2 1/2 years. We just took a break from it because this war in Ukranine has kinda like really dreaded up a lot of memories are not good.

Nate: mhm

Dave: So

Nate: Well thank you for sitting down and talking to us. Bringing all these pictures as well. Is there anything else you think of you like to add or.

Dave: I want t know your take on this service.

Nate: Well uh end the recording here.

[Audio ends]

English

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