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AAA2006
Week6-Lecture2-TheVietnamEra.pptxThe Vietnam Era: Bringing the War Home
Jiajia Duan
PhD student in the History Department
Teaching Assistant
Discussion Questions (2min)
What is the Cold War? What is “Cold”? What is “War”
Whose war was it? When did it start, when did it end?
2
Class Agenda
Student will have a general understanding of some of the major historical moments in the Vietnam War
Geneva Peace Conference (1954) - Gulf of Tonkin (1964) - Tet Offensive (1968) - Vietnamization (post-1969) - Fall of Saigon (1975)
Student will understand the context, evolution, and multiplicity of anti-war movements
3
A Prehistory of the War
The Geneva Peace Conference in 1954
The Domino Theory (Eisenhower administration)
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident in 1964
The Tet Offensive
30 January 1968 (Lunar New Year name “Tet” in Vietnamese)
Simultaneous attacks against over 100 cities/ towns/ military bases
Military, Political, and Psychological outcomes
North Vietnamese Loss: 58,000, failed to take/maintain control of any South Vietnam stronghold
South Vietnamese Loss: 14,000; US Loss: 4,000
“Vietnamization”
Vietnamization: Nixon’s policy in response to the nationwide anti-war sentiment and the increasing casualty of US military in Vietnam.
The Bombing of Cambodia: “the mostly heavily bombed country in history”
Kent State University protest against the bombing of Cambodia
National Guard entered Kent State University on May 4, 1970, and opened fire on unarmed student protesters, killing four.
Jackson State College protest against the bombing of Cambodia
Police opened fired on May 15, 1970, 12 were wounded, 2 were killed (far less media coverage of this tragedy compared of Kent State University)
Anti-War Movement: Bringing the War Home
Mass movement that mobilized over 6 million Americans between 1965-1975.
Why was there such a powerful, nationwide anti-war movement and sentiment mobilized during the Vietnam War?
Is there an (singular) anti-war movement?
April 17, 1965, March on Washington to End the War in Vietnam, around 20,000 to 25,000 protestors showed up (Organized by SDS/SNCC)
What are you fighting for (1965) by Phil Ochs
Oh you tell me that there's danger to this land you call your own And you watch them build the war machines right beside your home And you tell me that you're ready to go marching to the war
Oh, I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?
Before you pack your rifle and sail across the sea Just think upon the southern part of the land that you call free Oh, there's many kinds of slavery and we've found many more
Yes, I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?
And before you walk out on your job and answer to the call Just think about the millions who have no job at all And the men who wait for handouts with their eyes upon the floor
I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?
Turn on your TV, turn it on so loud And watch the fool a smiling there and tell me that you're proud And listen to your radio, the noise it starts to pour
Oh, I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?
Read your morning papers, read every single line And tell me if you can believe that simple world you find Read every slanted word till your eyes are getting sore,
I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?
And listen to your leaders, the ones that won the race As they stand right there before you and lie into your face If you ever try to buy them, you know what they stand for
I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?
Put ragged clothes upon your back and sleep upon the ground And tell police about your rights as they drag you down And ask them as they lead you to some deserted door
Yes, I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?
But the hardest thing Ill ask you, if you will only try Is take your children by their hands and look into their eyes And there you'll see the answer you should have seen before
If you'll win the wars at home, there'll be no fighting anymore
A Wide range of Political Viewpoints and Strategies
Call for negotiations, or withdrawal?
Focus only on ending the war, or try to create a ”revolution” within the belly of the beast that would fundamentally change the oppressive system?
Engage only in peaceful protest, or is resistance with violence also justified?
Radicalization: The Rise of Third World Internationalism
Third World Liberation Struggle at University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco State College
Transnational Solidarity? Radical Orientalism?
“Radical Orientalism”
(Judy Wu, Radicals on the Road, Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era, 2013)
“…the Cold War complicities of these intellectuals were not simply accidental, uninformed, or retrospectively justifiable…To this day, I regularly enter into disagreements with my Marxist-informed colleagues and friends, about both the nature of leftist sympathy with the Communist Party of Kampuchea [the communist regime ruled Cambodian which committed large scale genocide resulted in the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people from 1975 to 1979, nearly 25% of Cambodia’s population] during the Cold War…
My position these days is that I am no longer interested in centering these people in this conversation, whether he was or was not justified in his sympathy for the [Communist regime], a circular discourse that merely displaces the injury done to Cambodian lives once again.”
(Y-Dang Troeung(張依蘭) (ទ្រឿងអ៊ីដាង), Refugee Lifeworlds: The Afterlife of the Cold War in Cambodia, xx)
I’m try to not make a black/white binary - but give your a more complete picture of the history - recognize the complexity and nuances of history that it’s never a moral play with clear villain and hero
The Fall of Saigon: The End(?) of the War
When did the war end?
Who defines when the war ends?
What are the different temporalities for people experiencing the war?
What did the “anti-imperialist revolution” or “war of freedom and democracy” mean for people on the ground?
“So we keep going and going that boat and we in the ocean like, for a week. For a week. We’ve been hungry. Actually just no one dying. We just hungry and no food to eat. And we can’t eat because so tired and it’s so scary. When the more you go to the ocean, the boat, it keeps shaking. It keeps moving and I feel like the boat is going to be upside down because the ocean at that time, it’s raining. And the wave is so big. The more rain, the more waves is big and is going up and down like this, shaking like this, and we just pray, just hold hand, each other and pray. Everybody keep praying to God, and I’m so scared because, God, I thought like the boat going to be upside down……
One day, we saw there’s a big ship…we start to climb up to the boat, by the string ladder, keep climbing slowly everybody lining up and just go up there and when we go up there…Oh my God! Packed! Where all these people on big ship? It’s packed and we don’t have no place to stay too!...We start to find a place to have our family…it’s so freaking out, so scary! Oh my God I think we’re leaving, we really lost the country…
But, when we looked down to the ship, and my mom and dad, we so cared for two dogs. We so cared for two dogs, we took them with us everywhere, from Phan Thiet, where we lived, beginning, to Vung Tau, and now Vung Tau we go to the ocean, go to the military ship. And then they said, “you cannot bring your dog up here.” So, the dog can’t go up, and we just say good-bye to them one last time. The more I looked down we go up there and the more I looked down, the boat getting farther and farther and that two dogs get farther and farther and keep going farther and farther. So, that’s the story I’ll never forget my two dog.”
(Interviewee: Annie Thuy Tran; Interviewer: Suzanne Thu Nguyen, Vietnamese American Oral History Project, UC Irvine)
“Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells the Story?”
Southeast Asian Archive
