They came together to console each other, the war's other victims.
In a wrenching scene, Jill Hubbs, a first-grade teacher from Jacksonville, Fla., handed 79-year-old Tran Thi Lac a small photo of her father.Tran Thi Lac placed the photo between two larger photos of her two sons, one dead, the other missing in action, on a small altar decorated with flowers.
"Oh, my sons," she wailed in Vietnamese.
She lighted candles not only in memory of her children but also for Navy Lt. Cmdr. Donald Hubbs, the pilot of a reconnaissance plane who has been missing in action for more than 25 years.
Jill Hubbs learned Monday that her father was listed on two North Vietnamese records of registered graves.
At 3 a.m. Tuesday she was riding a pedicab through the darkened streets of Hanoi in search of a telephone to tell her mother in Jacksonville the bad news.
"It's not what I wanted to hear," she said. "I feel relieved in a way and I think that's the way my mom felt, too. At least we're getting some information. We've always known there was a strong possibility he died at the time the plane disappeared."
The information was relayed to her for the first time Monday during a meeting with U.S. MIA specialists in Hanoi. But it emerged through archival research a year ago.
"I just don't understand why we were never told that," she said. "It's kind of odd that in three days here, I've gotten answers that we haven't had in 25 years."
Hubbs said she had traveled to Washington a half-dozen times in the past two years, met with senators and wrote letters to the president in her search for information on her father.
MIA specialists said they follow strict procedures to ensure that family members are given information but conceded some cases fall through the cracks.
"We make the assumption the process works," said Gary Flanagan, one of the MIA officials. "We have no way of knowing if in that specific instance the individual received and understood the information. It should have been made available to the next of kin."
Hubbs arrived in Vietnam on Saturday with 13 other members of the Friendship Force from Florida and Georgia, seeking to mend the wounds of war. The Atlanta-based organization promotes friendship among nations through exchanges of citizens.
Now 36, Hubbs was only 10 when her father was shot down over North Vietnam in 1968.
Three days later the cover of a radar dome similar to the S-2 Tracker he was flying was found at sea.
She had held out slim hope he was still alive. Her mother, Bereth Hubbs, never remarried and still uses the name of her husband, Mrs. D.R. Hubbs. Mrs. Hubbs, 72, has been beset by health problems resulting from the stress of living in limbo all these years, her daughter said.
"There's nothing that I'd love more than for Dad to come home," she said. "If they can find the remains, I'd like to bring them back and bury them in the United States where they belong."