As a young U.S. intelligence analyst in Saigon during the Vietnam War, Chuck Searcy never thought that 50 years later he would be living in Communist Vietnam and helping its people fight a different war against unexploded mines.

Five decades after the end of the U.S.-led war in Vietnam, Asian American and Pacific Islander veterans are reflecting on the life-changing ordeal that was at time made more complicated by their race.

Of the 58,220 U.S. military service members who died in Vietnam, more than 1,300 were from Massachusetts. These are the stories of the men who were among the first and last to die on Vietnam soil.