>I don't know Gordon's age, so I don't know what direct experience, if
>any, he has had with the "war for the hearts & minds" of Americans
>during the Vietnam War. It was fairly obvious in the '60s that perhaps
>the biggest barrier we faced was that of breaking through the almost
>spontaneous assumption that the Vietnamese simply didn't count on the
>one hand, on the other hand that they were almost certainly barbarians
>indifferent to human pain. (Some big shot in Washington claimed that we
>had to remember that death simply wasn't the same to "asians-in-general"
>as it was to "us." And LBJ _did_ speak of having Ho by the balls. There
>was a cartoon (drawn I believe by an army man in Vietnam) that ran in
>the local paper called Sergeant Something -- it was a cartoon that
>simply made no sense except in a context of racist responses by the
>viewer. And then, a report from the front as it were:
>
> Time on Target
> by W. D. Ehrhart
>
>We used to get intelligence reports
>from the Vietnamese district offices.
>Every night, I'd make a list
>of targets for artillery to hit.
>
>It used to give me quite a kick
>to know that I, a corporal,
>could command an entire battery
>to fire anywhere I said.
>
>One day, while on patrol,
>we passed the ruins of a house;
>beside it sat a woman
>with her left hand torn away;
>beside her lay a child, dead.
> * * *
>When I got back to base,
>I told the fellows in the COC;
>it gave us all a lift to know
>all those shells we fired every night
>were hitting something.
>
>(W. D. Ehrhart was a marine badly wounded at Hue and one of the founders
>of VVAW).
>
>One of the seedbeds of PTSD in Vietnam was that the racist contempt for
>the "enemy" which saturated the homefront and with which the Army
>carefully indoctrinated the troops prevented that respect for the enemy
>which can make victory "glorious" and defeat honorable. See _Achilles in
>Vietnam_, and some of the works cited there. And also remember that the
>war was only two decades away from the War in the Pacific and the Korean
>war, both of which had been characterized by extreme racist attitudes
>toward the "oriental" enemy. A friend of mine in college had been in the
>Army at Okinawa. At the end of that battle, when Japanese troops were
>surrendering in large numbers, men in his unit turned a flamethrower on
>surrendering troops. As my friend put it to me at the time, "And the
>officers didn't even reprimand them."
I just found this in my in-box:
***** Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2001 10:41:33 EDT Sender: Discussions on the Socialist Register and its articles <SOCIALIST-REGISTER at YorkU.CA> From: "B. Skanthakumar" <BSkanthakumar at AOL.COM> Subject: Allies' Pacific war atrocities | The Observer
Film exposes Allies' Pacific war atrocities Horrific footage shot during battle with Japanese shows execution of wounded and bayoneting of corpses. Jason Burke
Sunday June 03 2001 The Observer (London)
For more than half a century they have been portrayed as wholesome heroes who fought in terrible conditions to save the Western way of life from Japanese aggression. But now the savage acts that Allied soldiers were driven to commit in the Pacific theatre are about to be exposed.
Researchers for a TV series to be broadcast on Channel 4 this month have unearthed disturbing and previously unseen footage from the Second World War which had languished forgotten in archives for 57 years. The images are so horrific senior television executives had to be consulted before they were considered fit for broadcast.
The film, shot in colour, was taken by an unknown combat cameraman in 1944 during fighting on the Pacific Island of Peleliu. It includes scenes of American soldiers shooting Japanese wounded as they lie prone on the ground.
In another scene on the Japanese island of Okinawa a year later, a US soldier is filmed dragging a wounded enemy from a hiding place. Although the man has his ankles tied together, two bullets are fired into his knees and then, while he is still moving, shots are fired into his chest and head.
Other footage from Hell in the Pacific shows American soldiers using bayonets to hack at Japanese corpses while looting them. Former servicemen interviewed by researchers spoke of the widespread practice of looting gold teeth from the dead - and sometimes from the living.
Others spoke of units throwing away their bayonets to avoid being ordered by 'over-enthusiastic' officers to charge, and of machine-gunning villages full of civilians and clubbing wounded Japanese soldiers to death as they tried to surrender.
In an incident related by a former marine, soldiers killed a shell-shocked comrade with a shovel for fear his screaming would give away their position.
The revelations will shock many accustomed to the heroic image of American soldiers, particularly given the romantic myth boosted by blockbuster films such as Pearl Harbor, which goes on general release this weekend.... *****
On the other hand:
***** This article is from The Chronicle of Higher Education (http://chronicle.com) from the issue dated October 20, 2000:
The Antiwar Movement We Are Supposed to Forget
By H. BRUCE FRANKLIN
...When did Americans actually begin to oppose U.S. warfare against Vietnam? As soon as the first U.S. act of war was committed. And when was that? In 1965, when President Johnson ordered the Marines to land at Da Nang and began the nonstop bombing of North Vietnam? In 1964, when Johnson launched "retaliatory" bombing of North Vietnam after a series of covert U.S. air, sea, and land attacks? In 1963, when 19,000 U.S. combat troops were participating in the conflict and Washington arranged the overthrow of the puppet ruler it had installed in Saigon in 1954? In 1961, when President Kennedy began Operation Hades, a large-scale campaign of chemical warfare? In 1954, when U.S. combat teams organized covert warfare to support the man Washington had selected to rule South Vietnam? Americans did oppose all of those acts of war, but the first American opposition came as soon as Washington began warfare against the Vietnamese people by equipping and transporting a foreign army to invade their country -- in 1945.
Those Americans who knew anything about Vietnam during World War II knew that the United States had been allied with the Viet Minh, the Vietnamese liberation movement led by Ho Chi Minh, and had actually provided some arms to their guerrilla forces, commanded by Vo Nguyen Giap. American fliers rescued by Giap's guerrillas testified to the rural population's enthusiasm for both the Viet Minh and the United States, which they saw as the champion of democracy, antifascism, and anti-imperialism. American officials and officers who had contact with Ho and the Viet Minh were virtually unanimous in their support and admiration. The admiration was mutual. In September 1945 the Viet Minh issued the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, which began with a long quotation from the U.S. Declaration of Independence, proclaiming the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The regional leaders of the O.S.S. (predecessor of the C.I.A.) and U.S. military forces joined in the celebration, with General Philip Gallagher, chief of the U.S. Military Advisory and Assistance Group, singing the Viet Minh's national anthem on Hanoi radio.
But in the following two months, the United States committed its first act of warfare against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. At least 8 and possibly 12 U.S. troopships were diverted from their task of bringing American troops home from World War II and instead began transporting U.S.-armed French troops and Foreign Legionnaires from France to recolonize Vietnam. The enlisted crewmen of these ships, all members of the U.S. Merchant Marine, immediately began organized protests. On arriving in Vietnam, for example, the entire crews of four troopships met together in Saigon and drew up a resolution condemning the U.S. government for using American ships to transport troops "to subjugate the native population" of Vietnam.
The full-scale invasion of Vietnam by French forces, once again equipped and ferried by the United States, began in 1946. An American movement against the war started to coalesce as soon as significant numbers of Americans realized that Washington was supporting France's war against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.... *****
A fascinating story. Maybe the crews who protested against using American ships to transport U.S.-armed French troops & Foreign Legionnaires "to subjugate the native population" of Vietnam were led by those who were members of the CP or deeply immersed in the Popular Front culture?
Yoshie