Larger military facilities resembled small towns. They had chapels, PXs, barbershops, service clubs and even fast food restaurants. Camp H had a pizzeria run by a Korean gentleman that I will call Kim.
We noticed a spike in gastroenteritis cases in the tsunami of clap and tracked the outbreak to Kim’s pizzeria. A superficial walk-through of the kitchen revealed gross violations of ordinary health codes. The place was unscreened and full of flies. There were filthy dishes everywhere and the garbage can was open inside the building. There was no provision for handwashing for the cooks and no one knew where the restroom was located. I, and two other physicians went to Post’s commanding officer to ask him to shut that cesspool down. The Sgt. “chief of staff” refused to allow us to talk to the Colonel, no matter our rank or health implications. Our Medical Service Corps Officer (who may have been in the know) told us to try again the next day. By the next morning, our inspection revealed Kim’s pizzeria as a model of modern culinary sanitation. Copper pipes had been installed to deliver hot and cold water, the cooks and servers wore hairnets. There was a new refrigerator in the corner.
How Everything Became ...
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What?
We soon found the answer; it seemed that Kim had a nifty financial arrangement with the sergeants. He operated pizzerias on three large American posts, and these were at first blush, his main businesses. He also owned a brothel in the Cholon district of Saigon which was the clean, prosperous and militarily secure Chinese colony. He had enrolled all of the sergeants on the three posts in a scheme for them to refer enlisted men to spend their three-day in country R and R at his whorehouse and charge each of them $150. He would in turn kick back $75 (the dollar was strong in those days) to the referring Sergeant. Booze, women and rooms were free to the grunt. The sergeants easily arranged flights down to Saigon on military aircraft at no cost to the soldier. The sergeants had every incentive to keep Kim’s pizzeria in business. They had worked all the previous day and most of the night to bring the pizzeria up to code. (I had involuntarily contributed to this folly. One of the sergeants in my medical detachment had been permanently posted to Kim’s whorehouse. He made sure that the young ladies were free of contagious diseases. He also enforced civility on enlisted men released from usual company discipline while on leave.)
We physicians settled back into our usual narcotized existence, but our lethargy was destined to deepen. Every evening, six to eight personal pizzas of various kinds appeared at the back door of the clinic, “Special for the doctors.” We slipped into caloric comas. Kim bought our souls with cheap carbohydrates and fat.We acquiesced to Kim’s chicanery. The sergeants were too powerful for us to shield the grunts from crass commercial exploitation by their enlisted overseers. The issue as we then understood it languished for about three months.
It was the JAG officers, self-termed legal beagles, who finally outed Kim.
An explanation of the economic and financial system in Vietnam is necessary at this point. The currency circulating among the Vietnamese was the Dong. It was also referred to by the name used under the French of Piaster or “P.”The piaster was virtually worthless in world markets and served only for minor purchases among the Vietnamese themselves.
At the opposite extreme of the financial hierarchy was the US dollar, the storehouse of wealth and standard of exchange. The US Armed Forces did not want the purchasing power of the US dollar or greenbacks to be acquired by our enemies in North Vietnam or by the Vietcong.. We were forbidden under severe penalty from importing or having American money while in country.
In order for Americans to pay for junk at the Px, haircuts, fund bank accounts and the like, the Armed Forces issued an artificial currency called the Military Pay Currency, termed “MPC.” Banks on the larger posts enabled us to send MPC, converted to US currency, back to the “world” to pay bills or to invest. On leaving Vietnam, we could convert our MPC into greenback. There was an officially sanctioned program for us to exchange MPCs for P so that we could do business with the Vietnamese. My recollection was that the official rate was sixty P for one MPC, but that the black market rate was around 300 to one. Any Vietnamese who did substantial business with Americans in brothels, restaurants, and jitneys accepted MPCs freely. MPC was worth substantially less than the greenback, but it served as the backbone of the financial system for the Armed Forces. (I still don’t understand why my checks denominated in Greenback would not have been usable by the VC.)
Out of the Silent Plan...
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To return to Kim’s commercial dealings on three large American bases. He required several kinds of licenses from the American military. He had to have franchises to operate his three pizzerias. There was a separate authorization to export his profits and to pay for importing the raw materials like large quantities of cheese, pepperoni, sausages, flour and the like that were not available in Vietnam for making his pizzas. He also had to pay his workers in P so he needed authorization to convert large quantities of MPC in and out of the local currency.
Kim’s main business was that of a currency manipulator. He took the MPC that he claimed as revenue from his pizzerias (plus the brothel in Saigon) and converted them into greenback-cash in Hong Kong. He smuggled some of this greenback back into Vietnam and exchanged it for virtually worthless Ps in the local Vietnamese currency markets. He could turn this P into MPCs in the black markets. The MPCs were then run through his three businesses to repeat the cycle. In order to increase his cash flow, he padded the sales figures in his pizzerias so that it appeared (at least at Camp H) that every one of the 2,500 men on that large base bought one pizza at a dollar per every day for over a year. The legal beagles estimated that he had been able to clear over three-million dollars in this scheme. Kims pizzerias and his hotel in Saigon were mere fronts for his currency operation. He funneled enormous amounts of money to our enemies, corrupted our sergeants and physicians, and caused several dozen soldiers to be sickened with diarrhea.
But in his favor, Korea was untroubled by his knavery for a few years And he did a lot more than I did to prevent venereal diseases among the enlisted men.
