This is the best you could do to describe someone from Vietnam? Or does the quotation marks make it ok?
I'm taking your question in good faith. It is an interesting question coming from someone who felt it acceptable when faced with a picture of white, red haired children to say:
Was that the best you could do? Have you said "Kick them all" to pictures of Black men or Inuit Children? Or was it ok because they were White?
Words have meaning, not only the literal meaning but the society, culture and feelings that they convey. It's important when looking into historical accounts/situations to look at the mindset/context of the time. At the time your 18 year old White American came from a Nation that was still rocking the success of WW2, had hysterical views on Communism, was significantly richer than South East Asian nations and was a deeply segregated nation along racial lines.
"The god damn gooks" tells us a lot. A superiority complex exists with some racist/nationalist/they're the enemy thought processes. This in turn can impact how the equipment used by the other side is viewed. Surely as a superior white man from the richest nation on earth that wins all wars and is rightly fighting the evil of communism of course anything that THE ENEMY a bunch of peasant gooks is using must be REALLY good if it works in their hands when my American made rifle is failing me.
Black Americans that were involved in the Vietnamese conflict likewise expressed similar attitudes.
Here is a magazine cover from the time where a White American Soldier is telling a Asian American Soldier to "Kill that Gook!, you Gook!"
The Mere Gook Rule is another example of how killing "Gooks" even when unconnected to Enemy forces had very little consequence.
Here is a fantastic video by an Austrian (Or German, I forgot) Historian who outlines
The British view on the Japanese army. The video covers how the WW2 era Japanese were essentially seen as "barbaric little yellow monkeys" and this enormously impacted the perception of equipment, tactics, capabilities etc. That attitude swiftly changed.
If we as a society are afraid to write out the words that were spoken at the time while talking specifically about the views of those people then we have fallen to a very low place.
I hope this helps you understand the reasons why these statements while not something we would choose to say about people today are important to not hide. Perhaps you will also reflect on your own heinous racist abuse against redheads, such comments are only expressed by those without souls.
Here's an article to help you combat your evil ways.
In my view this is one of the major failings of recently films/documentaries/series and society as a whole. How we have reached the point where we are comfortable with people being killed on screen but not with people saying historically accurate mean phrases is a separate conversation for another thread however.
