SAN FRANCISCO – A highly decorated Vietnam War veteran who received some of the highest recognitions and awards recalled his complex experience 50 years after the end of the controversial war. 

Warren W. Chan, a Distinguished Service Cross recipient, received several awards for his extraordinary heroism during his six years in the Army. The Distinguished Service Cross is second only to the Medal of Honor. 

He is also a Purple Heart recipient, after shrapnel injured his leg. 

Chan spent one year in Vietnam as a paratrooper and a ranger, and worked as a radiotelephone operator for the unit.

In 1966, the Chinese American became one of the roughly 2 million men drafted into the Vietnam War. 

At just 19 years old, the native San Franciscan was part of a unit called the Geronimo Battalion.

“Some days you’d walk several thousand meters and through the rice paddies and jungles, and it’s so hot,” said Chan. 

Often engaged in combat, Chan said his unit worked as a team against the Vietnamese soldiers.

“Everything was like clockwork, perfect timing, with precision.” 

However, it was a complicated job for him.

“The enemy, they looked like my friends,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Gee, I went to a school with a guy who kind of looked like that,’ you know.” 

Despite being one of the few people of Asian heritage in his unit, Chan said his fellow soldiers were like family.

“We were just all brothers. You live, and you fight for your brother next to you, and you watch after him,” he said of his colleagues. “[But] if I got mixed up in a different unit or a different unit joined us in combat, they might have mistaken me for an enemy.”

Trung Nguyen, assistant professor of Asian American studies at San Jose State University, said during the Vietnam War, racism against Asian Americans was rampant, both back in the states and in the military.

“Many of their leaders would use them as target practice, maybe their colleagues would say, ‘Oh, you look just like these Vietnamese that we’re trying to kill,’” he said.

Chan said some of these complex experiences contributed to the PTSD he would later battle. He recalled a trip to Hong Kong when he was granted R&R during the war.

“The first thing that struck me, I said, ‘Wow, look at all these Asian people… I’m looking for my gun. I don’t have my weapon with me.’ And I said, ‘Maybe I’ll walk normal, or I’ll blend in,’” he said. 

“I was going in and out of doorways, trying to avoid all these Asian people, and I forgot to look in the mirror that day to see that I was Asian too.”

For many Asian American veterans, this was enough motivation to join the anti-war movement, but for Chan, politics state-side didn’t change his mission. He remains proud of his service.

“It’s been 50 years, and I’ve yet to get a free cup of coffee for all that,” Chan said.

Chan went on to build a meaningful life after the war, despite not being well-received when he returned to San Francisco.

Chan went on to have a decades-long career in construction, met his wife Patricia, had three children, and is now a grandfather to four.

His son Travis, following in his footsteps, went to war after 9/11.

Accounting for everything he went through, when asked if he would do it all over again, Chan said, “Oh, in a heartbeat.”