Oklahoma Heritage exhibit to feature ‘art' from Vietnam veterans

Her dad didn't talk about that war much, she said.

He never talked about his Bronze Star or the commendation he received from the government of Vietnam. He never talked about the tank units he commanded or the letters he wrote to families of soldiers who died.

“I feel like in a way that the Vietnam War was the forgotten war,” she said. “I feel like if my dad felt that way, so many other Vietnam veterans must feel that way, too.”

Baker said she hopes a museum exhibit will give Oklahomans a new chance to talk about the war that many soldiers have kept quiet about for years.

The exhibit, “Marking Time: Voyage to Vietnam,” will feature about 16 canvases from the General Nelson M. Walker troopship that transported troops from America to Southeast Asia.

The canvas fabric on which the soldiers slept is covered in soldiers' signatures, drawings and personal notes, said Baker, the community outreach manager for the Oklahoma Heritage Association.

The exhibit will be open from October to January 2012 at the Gaylord-Pickens Oklahoma Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.

The exhibit was organized by the Vietnam Graffiti Project, a nonprofit organization based in Virginia. The canvases were rescued from the ship by Art and Lee Beltrone of Virginia.

Baker worked with the couple to bring the exhibit and some special Oklahoma canvases to the Heritage Museum.

Baker said she can't wait for the exhibit to come.

“October can't come fast enough,” she said.

Art Beltrone couldn't believe what he saw.

The rusted, deserted troopship he was aboard was like a time capsule, he said.

Beltrone was working as a military artifacts adviser for the World War II movie “The Thin Red Line” in 1997 and agreed to go with the production designer to film the inside of one of the military ships floating in the James River in Virginia.

The General Nelson M. Walker was nicknamed the Okinawa Express during World War II, when troops rode the boat from the West Coast to Okinawa, Japan. The Walker was active during the Korean War and brought home the first shipload of former American prisoners of war in 1953.

During the Vietnam War, it transported thousands of soldiers and Marines to Vietnam. Then the boat was given to the Maritime Administration in 1970 and sat unused in the James River for decades.

He boarded the Walker and saw everything as it was nearly 30 years before. Dirty dishes sat in the sink. Papers sat untouched on desks. Forgotten cigarettes, paperbacks and comic books rested on thousands and thousands of canvas bunks.

But those bunks are what Beltrone fell in love with.