----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2001 1:00 AM Subject: Re: Ideology and "Psychology", was Re: identifying with the enemy
> Carrol wrote a while ago:
>
> >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
>