This post is about An Khê which is a town 70km east of Pleiku via the Mang Yang pass and 55km west of Quy Nhon via the An Khê pass. Situated between these two difficult mountain passes, the town has always been an important gateway to the insulated highland interior of Gia Lai and Kontum. It was of strategic importance during the Vijayapura Champa kingdom (11th-15th century) and it’s location was used to the advantage of the Tây Sơn uprising in 1771.
The town’s role as a staging ground for military operations continued into the French colonial era and the American Vietnam War when An Khê took on a unique identity. Amid the conflict, this highland town became the home to the unusually named places of “Disneyland East,” and “The Golf Course,”. During Tet holiday, I made a stop in An Khê to learn more.
Camp Radcliff and the Origins of “The Golf Course”
Wright [Brig. Gen. John M. Wright Jr.] pointed across the dirt airstrip where a day earlier we had landed in C-130s. “Triple-canopy jungle,” he said. “Big trees about 200 feet high. Then secondary growth up to about 80 feet. Under that, bamboo, thorn thickets, shrubs, and vines. And beneath all that is grass—turf. If we could magically pluck out all that foliage, it would look like a golf course…“If we scrape away the jungle with bulldozers, in a month we’ll have a giant dust bowl. That dust will be sucked into helicopter engines and turbines. This is the end of the longest supply line in the world. Every turbine blade, air filter, every fuse—every spare part—has to travel 12,000 miles. If our heliport is a dust bowl, we’ll wear out our ships faster than we can fix them. “So we’ll create a golf course. Chop down the trees, pull out the bushes and cut the bamboo, elephant grass, and the wait-a-minute vines—but leave the turf. – Marvin J. Wolf
In 1965 the US army established Camp Radcliffe at An Khe. The helicopter landing strip there got the nickname the golf course due to the grass. Although there never really was a golf course, it’s a strange word to see associated with 1960s Gia Lai (despite several attempts in recent years, Gia Lai still does not have any golf courses as of 2025).
Click here to watch a video of An Khe from 1966
“Disneyland”
Nowhere was the shock of massive encampment greater in Viet Nam than in the sleepy little town of An Khe in the barren Central Highlands. Late last summer, 21,000 troopers of the U.S. 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) set up tents and helipads near An Khe. Prostitutes and profiteers swarmed into the town; prices for everything from beef to beer soared, as did the incidence of disease among the Americans. Dysentery and other intestinal diseases multiplied fourfold within four months; venereal disease soon afflicted nearly a third of the G.I.s.
It was the Vietnamese village elders who came up with a solution, which Kinnard reluctantly accepted as the best among unhappy alternatives: the first brothel quarter built exclusively for American soldiers in Viet Nam. Half finished, An Khe Plaza, as the sign at the M.P. gatehouse declares, or “Disneyland,” as the G.I.s call it, is a 25-acre sprawl of “boum-boum parlors” built of concrete blocks and surrounded by coils of concertina barbed wire. Each parlor consists of a bar with eight cubicles opening off the back. Eventually there will be 40 parlors, bearing such rubrics as Paradise, Caravelle, Golden Hind, Hill Billy, Washington and the Moderate Tearoom.
The price of a “short time” varies with the demand from $2.50 to $5 and inevitably has produced grumbling. “General Kinnard ought to put his foot down,” complained one cavalryman last week. “Five bucks is too high. He oughta make three bucks the standard price.” The plaint is, of course, misdirected. An Khe Plaza is a creation of the Vietnamese and run by the Vietnamese, albeit for Americans.
Vietnamese girls who want to work in Disneyland must obtain a special entertainer’s card and visit An Khe’s clinic once a week for a medical examination by Vietnamese doctors and a U.S.-provided shot of a long-lasting penicillin-type drug to suppress disease. Forced to choose between morality and the morale of their men, the division’s officers are clearly troubled by Disneyland. But, as one colonel explained, “We wanted to get the greatest good for our men with the least harm.” For visitors to An Khe, even clerics and chaplains, Disneyland is as hard to condemn as it is to condone. In that respect, it is not unlike war itself, of which Disneylands—and far worse—are an inevitable accompaniment.
An Khê Today
An Khe is one of the largest towns in Gia Lai outside of Pleiku. It might seen sleepy by most people’s standards but I had a great time here for a few days with some locals and some foreign English teachers.
Although I couldn’t get anywhere near the golf course because it’s a military area, I did go to where I believe disneyland used to be, there is no sign of it’s sorded past but a local cafe owner did give me a free coffee.
links
- film footage https://archive.org/details/gov.dod.dimoc.27012
Eastward Ho! 