Asia Society HostsViet Nam's President

 

Recognition of 30th Anniversary of the United States-Vietnam Diplomatic Relations & 1st Anniversary of the United States-Vietnam Comprehensive Strategic Partnership

On Sunday, Asia Society hosted the official 30th anniversary of the normalization of relations between Vietnam and the United States and the first anniversary of the signing of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement. Among those who delivered remarks were H.E. To Lam, President of Vietnam and General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam; Hon. John Kerry, former U.S. Secretary of State; Dan Sullivan, U.S. Senator (R-AK); Dr. Kyung-wha Kang, Asia Society President and CEO; H.E. Nguyen Quoc Dzung, Ambassador of Vietnam to the U.S.; and H.E. Dang Hoang Giang, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Vietnam to the UN.

“Even the most optimistic observers could not have imagined how Vietnam and the U.S. would transcend the scars of war to build a robust, positive relationship,” said General Secretary Lam. “This result is a testament to the efforts of many individuals, including key figures of leadership and other working quietly behind the scenes.”

Secretary Kerry likewise emphasized how far the bilateral relationship has come since he was deployed to Vietnam in the 1960s.

"Anniversaries have a value, not in and of themselves, but what they can actually produce. Anniversaries can often be action-oriented events, forcing moments of redefining or improving or readjusting a relationship between countries,” said Secretary Kerry. “So as someone who invested many years in finally making peace, I hope you won't mind if I suggest something unconventional for next year. Next year let's mark those two anniversaries not by looking back, but by making sure that we are looking forward. Ending the war and making peace two decades later were never ends in themselves, they were hard fought openings to put the bitterness behind us and to work together as countries.”

In the midst of increased tension with China, Senator Sullivan emphasized the importance of multi-sector cooperation between the United States and Vietnam. “The Indo-Pacific is more important than ever. I think one of the key things we need to be looking at, is when we look at the first anniversary of the comprehensive strategic partnership, looking at the different areas that we can continue to work together. I think these areas are endless. It's of course security, it's economy, high-tech, it's energy,” he said.

The celebration featured several performances from Vietnamese and American singers and musicians, underscoring the evening’s theme of “unity through art.” Among the performers were Vietnamese classical pianist Quynh Nguyen and American saxophonist Henry Threadgill, who, like Secretary Kerry, fought in Vietnam.

Before the celebration, General Secretary Lam joined Dr. Kang, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Krintenbrink, U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Mark Knapper, and others for a private roundtable to discuss U.S.-Vietnam relations.

https://asiasociety.org/new-york/recap-un-general-assembly-week-asia-society-lam-s-jaishankar-and-ban-ki-moon

Antiwar Internationalism: Asia

Opposition in Australia, Japan, and South Korea to the U.S. War in Indochina

Wednesday October 23 at 8:00 pm ET

Register by clicking here  

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__IzsPuZCTdG_LhDowHDIOQ

During the 1960’s and early 1970’s sustained popular opposition to U.S. intervention in Indochina developed in countries thought of as U.S. allies.   US bases in Australia, Japan and South Korea supported the war effort.  Australia and South Korea sent troops.  In the case of Australia, opposition advanced beyond forms of verbal dissent to include a significant degree of draft resistance.   Three knowledgeable observers of, and participants in, opposition will share their experiences in peace movements that were not well known to US activists.

 

Rowan Cahill is a graduate of the universities of Sydney, New England, and Wollongong. Conscripted for military service in 1965 in the recently introduced selective National Service scheme, he became a Conscientious Objector and prominent in the Australian student, anti-war and New Left movements of the 1960s and 70s. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation began its dossier on him in 1967. He has variously worked as a farmhand; as a teacher in schools, the prison system, universities; as a freelance writer; and for the trade union movement as a publicist, historian, and rank and file activist. He has published widely in mainstream, trade union, social movement, and academic publications. Author of numerous books his most recent, co-authored with Terry Irving, are Radical Sydney: Places, Portraits and Unruly Episodes (UNSW Press, 2010) and The Barber Who Read History: Essays in Radical History (Bull Ant Press, 2021). Currently he is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Wollongong (New South Wales).    (photo by Monica Donoso)

Blog: http://radicalsydney.blogspot.com.au     https://rowancahill.net/

Associate Professor Bobbie Oliver is an Honorary Research Fellow and Director of the Centre for Western Australian History at the University of Western Australia. Although old enough to have been snared in the last few rounds of the notorious birthday ballot had she been male, her peace activism dates from a later period after studying Gandhi's peace movement in India. She taught and researched in Australian labour history and civil liberties at Curtin University from 1997 until 2018, and has published two books and several chapters and articles on the Australian peace movement.  Her most recent publication is Hell No! We Won't Go! Resistance to Conscription in Postwar Australia (Interventions Publishing, Melbourne, 2022). An earlier book, Peacemongers, which tells the history of Australian conscientious objectors to military conscription from 1911 to 1945, is being republished by Cambridge Scholars, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK, and should appear in late 2024 or early 2025.

Book Review Editor, Labour History

Vice President, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History

Terry Provance  Moderator After graduating from college in 1969, I became involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement first organizing locally in Pittsburgh and then eventually with national groups like Harrisburg Defense Committee for Dan and Phil Berrigan, Pentagon Papers Trial and Medical Aid for Indochina.  I began working with the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia in 1973 to oppose US nuclear weapons until 1983 when I went to graduate school in Berkeley, California.  I received a fellowship and then studied two years in South America and worked with human rights groups in Chile. I returned to Pittsburgh where I pastored a local United Church of Christ congregation for 5 years and then worked in its national office on peace and justice issues for 10 years.  I then worked 12 years with Oikocredit, an international anti-poverty organization, as its Executive Director in the United States.  I retired in 2012.  

Tim Shorrock is a journalist and writer based in Washington, DC. He grew up in Japan and South Korea during the Korean and the Vietnam wars and was actively involved in the antiwar movement from the time he was in high school. During the 1970s, he was active in the Indochina Peace Campaign in California. Starting in the 1980s, Shorrock reported extensively on the Japanese and Korean labor and peace movements and broke important stories about the interventionist role of the US military and the CIA in both countries. In 2015 he was given an honorary citizenship by the city of Gwangju for his reporting on the secret background role played by the US government and military in the events surrounding the 1980 Gwangju Democratic Uprising in Korea and the imposition of martial law by the infamous general Chun Doo Hwan. This year, the city’s archives published a three-volume book translating into Korean the 3,000 US documents Shorrock obtained under the Freedom of Information Act to write his stories. Over the past 45 years, he has published in numerous US, Korean, and Japanese publications, including The Progressive, Salon, Hankyoreh, Sisa Journal, Newstapa, and Sekai. He was a correspondent for The Nation magazine from 1983 to 2023 and is the author of SPIES FOR HIRE: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. Shorrock is now working on a book about the tripartite US military alliance with Japan and South Korea and last visited Japan, Okinawa, and South Korea in 2023.

https://timshorrock.com

The Women: Our Impact on the Vietnam Antiwar Movement

September 19, 2024, 4-5:30 PM ET

View the webinar on youtube by clicking here

and share this link   https://youtu.be/dvOFA4VQUaA

Please also share the link for this page with friends, colleagues and on social media  

https://vnpeacecomm.blogspot.com/2024/09/women-and-antiwar-movement.html

The ultimate success of the movement to stop the war in Vietnam was due to the mobilization of multiple segments of society, such as students, academics,businesspeople, lawyers, religious activists, unions, veterans, and humanitarians.  Not least of these were traditional women's peace organizations such as the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom and Women Strike for Peace that redirected their efforts toward stopping the war, and newer Vietnam War specific groups such as Another Mother for Peace and Gold Star Mothers for Peace.  This webinar features the experiences of women peace activists who helped to transform the movement into a broad coalition that reached into a majority of American households and influenced the movement for women's liberation. 

Moderator:

Linda J. Yarr is a Research Affiliate of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the journal Critical Asian Studies, successor to the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars published by The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars. Previously she was a research professor of international affairs at George Washington University and served as director of Partnerships for International Strategies in Asia. She has authored articles, book chapters and reviews on Vietnam and Southeast Asia. As a student in France during the war in Vietnam, she was a member of the Paris American Committee to Stop the War. She holds a master’s degree from Cornell University, an advanced degree in international relations from Sciences Po in Paris, and a B.A. from D’Youville College (now University).

Speakers:

 

Leslie Cagan has organized peace and justice movements for more than 60 years. From nuclear disarmament to lesbian/gay liberation, from the Rainbow Coalition to Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, support of Palestinian rights to normalizing relations with Cuba, fighting sexism to confronting police brutality to climate justice, she’s been a central organizer in many struggles.

Her organizing began in the early-1960’s at NYU in the student wing of the movement against the US war in Vietnam. She served on the Coordinating Committee of the National Student Mobilization Committee Against the War in Vietnam and was part of the NYC Fifth Ave. Peace Parade Committee. Her antiwar work continued in St. Louis and Cambridge.

Leslie was the National Coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of 1,400 groups central to the movement against the war in Iraq. Her coalition-building and organizing skills have mobilized millions of people in many of the nation’s largest demonstrations, including the 1982-million-person Nuclear Disarmament demonstration in NYC; the1987 lesbian/gay rights march on Washington; massive mobilizations against the Iraq War from 2003 to 2007; the 2014 People’s Climate March in NYC; and the 2019 Queer Liberation March in NYC on the 50th anniversary of Stonewall.

Her writings appear in ten anthologies and in scores of print and online outlets; she has done more workshops, conference presentations, and speeches at rallies than she can count. 

 

Le Anh Tu Packard's first significant antiwar talk was to a group of skeptical U.S. naval officers in 1969 at an Episcopal church in Wickford, Rhode Island. They were surprised to learn that their “enemy” Ho Chi Minh was allied with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the CIA) toward the end of World War II. While a student, Tu participated in demonstrations organized by Asians Against the Vietnam War and encouraged the student body at her college to support the People’s Peace Treaty. In 1971 she joined the National Action/Research on the Military Industrial Complex (NARMIC), a project of the American Friends Service Committee. She spoke at peace actions that included the Womens March Against the Presidio and the Winter Solder Investigation at Faneuil Hall. In 1972 Tu and Marilyn McNabb co-authored “Aid to Thieu”, a NARMIC report on the use of U.S. military and economic aid to prop up the Thieu government. Tu also worked closely with Peggy Duff, Gabriel Kolko and Richard Falk in a successful campaign to oppose secretive efforts by the U.S. government to use World Bank funds to aid the Thieu administration.

Vivian Rothstein was introduced to activism through the civil rights movement of the 1960s. She was a Mississippi Freedom Summer volunteer in 1965 and later a community organizer in Chicago working to build “an interracial movement of the poor”.

In 1967 Vivian participated in a conference in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia co-sponsored by Liberation Magazine which brought 45 diverse American peace activists together with representatives of North Vietnam and the insurgents in South Vietnam, represented by the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG), to build understanding of the American war in Vietnam.  Following the conference, she and 6 other participants travelled to North Vietnam to witness the impact of U.S. bombing on the country and people of North Vietnam. The delegation, headed by Tom Hayden, spent 17 days visiting bombed sites including schools, villages and hospitals, reviewing the American weaponry used against the Vietnamese people, and learning how the North Vietnamese mobilized to survive the onslaught.  They also met with American POWs being held in Hanoi and brought back letters from them for their families.

Upon returning to the U.S. Vivian spoke widely to audiences in the Midwest to share what she had learned in North Vietnam about our country's intentions.  She helped organize the Jeannette Rankin Brigade in January 1968, the first national women's march in Washington D.C. against the Vietnam War, as well as subsequent meetings between American and Vietnamese women in Toronto, Canada.

In 1994 Vivian returned to Vietnam on a women’s delegation, coordinated with the Vietnamese Women’s Union, to highlight the need for normalized relations between the U.S. and Vietnam.  Vivian donated her anti-Vietnam War posters to the Women’s Museum in Hanoi. 

Cora Weiss has spent her life in the movements for human rights, civil rights, women’s equality and peace. She was the UN Representative of the International Peace Bureau (Nobel Peace laureate 1910), which she led as President, 2000-2006; is among the founders of the Global Campaign for Peace Education and was a civil society drafter of what became UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women Peace and Security unanimously adopted in 2000. Her dedication to peace and peace education has garnered several nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize. Adelphi University awarded her the Honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

During the war in Vietnam, she represented Women Strike for Peace (WSP) as the only woman of 4 co-chairs of the National Mobilization which organized the Nov. 15, 1969 demonstration in DC against the war in Vietnam. With Rev. Richard Fernandez she tried to bridge  the Mobilization with the Moratorium. She was co-Director with David Dellinger of the Committee of Liaison which arranged for the monthly exchange of mail with prisoners of war and their families, increased the number of packages POWs could receive, returned with the first list in Dec. 69 of those alive, and brought home 3 pilots in 1972. The Committee arranged for 3 Americans to travel to NVN every month carrying mail and who returned with eyewitness accounts of the war. She was a leader of the Jeannette Rankin Brigade, linking WSP with the religious and African American communities which called for Ending the War in Vietnam and Poverty and Racism at Home.  She was a director of Friendshipment, which helped to rebuild Bach Mai Hospital; served as Consultant to Church World Service organizing a shipment of 10,000 tons of wheat and was a member of the delegation which delivered it to reunified VN (1978).

Resources

The Movement: How Women's Liberation Transformed America, 1963-1973, Clara Bingham, One Signal Publishers/Atria, 2024  includes interview with Marilyn Webb

Revolutionary Feminism: The Women's Liberation Movement in Seattle (Duke U Press, 2023) by Barbara Winslow

 I have an entire chapter about feminist anti Vietnam and anti imperialist organizing. I think it is one of the only academic/popular discussion of this topic. Using mainly primary sources, I write about the involvement of women in the anti-draft and anti-war movement; how we brought a gendered analysis of war and imperialism into the anti war movement, how we fought and won to get more women's speakers at anti-war rallies. We brought a gendered analysis into the anti‚ draft movement; we worked in the GI coffee The Shelter Half in Tacoma and worked with Jane Fonda when she brought her FTA show to Tacoma, close to an airforce and army base.  - Sea Tac airport was then the second largest disembarkation‚ point to Vietnam; women regularly leafleted at the airport.We were involved in meetings with Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian women in Canada many times. 

Women's Anti War Diplomacy During the Vietnam War by Jessica M. Frazier, University of North Carolina Press, 2017

Hanoi Journal 1967, Carol Cohen McEldowney, edited by Suzanne McCormack and Elizabeth Mock University of Massachusetts Press 2007

Women Strike for Peace by Amy Swerdlow, University of Chicago Press, 1993

Radicals on the Road -- Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era by Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Cornell Press 2013

Mrs. Van's Video Message to American Women Patriots -- The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides by Christian G Appy, Viking Penguin 2003 ( in Antiwar Escalations page 274 "What? Meet separately with women?" Vivian Rothstein)

Speech by Vietnam Women's Union Representative:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18rbqJT9bOFfICmkzJQh24Fjfowdi9_xS/view

Draft itinerary and costs for 50th anniversary program in Indochina

(revised 10/14/24)

Below is the current version of the itinerary of the program the Fund for Reconciliation and Development (FRD) will organize in Viet Nam hosted by the Viet Nam - USA Society (VUS) for people who participated in the antiwar movement, worked on normalization of relations, or have addressed war legacies, including family members and friends.  Persons with a professional or collegial interest are also welcome.  There is personal flexibility at the beginning and the end, including the option to add a visit to Cambodia and Laos.

Participants will be responsible for international travel and for domestic costs of a fifteen day guided program in Viet Nam .  The estimated domestic cost for sharing a room in a group of 20 is $2,800 each.   A single room is $3,300.  Costs will be adjusted by number of participants.  Payment is in cash (USD or Vietnamese dong) on April 15th in Ha Noi. 

Breakfast, lunch and two dinners are included.  All other dinners are on our own.  FRD/VUS will suggest locations and often will invite guests.  Participation in group meals will be at an equal share cost.  Some menus will be pre-set and others a la carte.  P 

The maximum size group is 25.  Inclusion is by order of registration and payment of administrative contribution of $200.  If numbers dictate, additional groups will be created and adjustments may be made to the itinerary.

For planning purposes, expressions of individual, family and organizational interest are appreciated as soon as convenient.  No committment is required prior to January 5, 2025.  Write to jmcauliff@ffrd.org

If you are ready to commit, please complete a registration form and donate for FRD organizing costs at least $200 per person.  We are facilitating this trip but are not a travel agent or tour operator.  FRD is not legally liable for trip cancellation, transit or in-country illness or accidents.  We strongly recommend obtaining travel insurance when you book your flight.  International flight costs are usually less expensive if booked sooner.  Transit destinations include Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Korea, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and the Phillipines.

Registration forms are available by clicking here https://form.jotform.com/73274097780970  The deadline for receipt with copies of passport page is January 5, 2025.

FRD is ready to assist local and national peace organizations that wish to schedule their own autonomous program in cooperation with the Viet Nam - USA Society under the 50th Anniversary umbrella.

 

Proposed itinerary of FRD’s delegation to visit Viet Nam

From 15  April - 1 May, 2025

 

 

Sunday, April 13-15, 2025:     

Arrive in Noi Bai Airport

[option for jet lag recovery pre-program tourism April 13-14:  overnight in Ha Long Bay/ Ninh Binh/ visit to pottery village, etc. to be arranged by VUS on request] 

 

Tuesday April 15, 2025: HA NOI

arrivals for program

08:00pm  orientation meeting at hotel

Wednesday, April 16, 2025: HA NOI

08:00am       Visit Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, his House and Museum, Literature Temple

02:00pm      Visit Ethnology Museum, Hoa Lo Prison

06:30pm      Water Puppet Show

07:30pm       Welcoming dinner with VUS/VUFO

 

Thursday, April 17, 2025: HA NOI

08:30am       Presentation “Viet Nam: 40 years of Construction and Development” by

                     President of the Viet Nam Union of Friendship Organizations

10:00am       Meeting with current officials on US-Viet Nam relations

02:30pm      Visit Women’s Museum

04:00pm    Conversations with retirees from the war and pre-normalization era (with option to continue the conversation over bia hoi or dinner)

 

Friday, April 18, 2025: HA NOI

09:00am       Visit Garco 10 equitized garment factory 

     

11:15am       Meet with US Embassy

03:00pm      Meet with American business community

 

Saturday, April 19, 2025: HA NOI - TUYEN QUANG – HA NOI

08:00am       Travel by bus to Tuyen Quang

Visit Tan Trao where OSS assisted Ho Chi Minh 

04:00pm      Travel back to Ha Noi

 

Sunday, April 20, 2025: HUE

08:00am       Check out of Hotel.

Flight to Hue. Check in Hotel

02:00pm      Visit Khai Dinh Tomb & Hat Village

 

 

Monday, April 21, 2025:

08:00am       Visit Thien Mu Pagoda & Hue Imperial Citadel

02:00pm      Meeting with VUFO of Thua Thien Hue province

03:00 pm     Visit Hue National University

 

Tuesday, April 22, 2025: QUANG TRI 

08:00am       Check out of hotel.

Leave Hue for Quang Tri by bus

11:00am       Visit war legacies (land mines, UXO)

03:00pm      Meet with VUFO of Quang Tri province

Check in Hotel

 

Wednesday, April 23, 2025: QUANG TRI - DA NANG

                    Check out of hotel

08:00am       Leave Quang Tri for Da Nang by bus

02:30pm      Meet with VUFO of Da Nang city

04:00pm      Visit Da Nang Center Supporting for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin

                     Check in hotel in Da Nang or Hoi An

 

Thursday, April 24, 2025: DA NANG

08:00am       Visit Cham Museum

                     Lunch on own, free time at market

02:30pm      Visit East Sea Museum

04:00pm      Meeting at Dong A (private) University

                     Dinner with Da Nang People’s Committee to discuss economic and social

changes since 1975 and Doi Moi.

 

Friday, April 25, 2025: DA NANG - MY LAI - HOI AN

07:30am       Travel by bus to My Lai, Quang Ngai by bus

Visit Son My Village - war legacies (mass atrocity) in Quang Ngai 

Afternoon    Leave Quang Ngai for Hoi An.  Return to hotel

 

Saturday, April 26, 2025: HOI AN / DA NANG – CON DAO*

07:00am       Check out of hotel. Travel to Da Nang Airport

10:10am       Flight to HCMC. Arrive in Tan Son Nhat Airport

Transit to fly to Con Dao (Luggage checked through to Con Dao)

Check in Hotel, enjoy the beach, volunteer for turtle protection

 

Sunday, April 27, 2025:  CON DAO - HO CHI MINH CITY

Morning       Check out of hotel. Leave luggage at hotel

Learn Con Dao history, East Sea issues / Visit Tiger Cage Museum

Drop by hotel to pick up luggage.

                    Travel to Con Dao Airport

03:45pm      Flight to HCMC. Arrive in Ho Chi Minh city. Check in Hotel

 

Monday, April 28, 2025:   HO CHI MINH CITY

08:30am       Visit Reunification Hall & War Remnants Museum

02:30pm      Meetings with current and retired officials & Con Son prisoners

Tuesday, April 29, 2025: HO CHI MINH CITY – BEN TRE

08:00am       Travel to Ben Tre province and Luong Quoi Coconut Factory  

01:00pm      Lunch with business community; drive through of export processing zone

04:30pm      Meet with US Consulate

 

Wednesday, April 30, 2025: HO CHI MINH CITY

07:00am       Participate State/official events (parade and celebration)

Thursday, May 01, 2025: HO CHI MINH CITY Options

                     

                     1)  Depart Viet Nam for home or other countries, or

                     2)  Shopping/personal activities, or

                     3)  Cu Chi tunnels/Cao Dai Temple

 

Friday, May 02, 2025:  

.         Depart for home, Cambodia or other countries

Optional additions

May 2  Cambodia (by bus?); program in Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat

May 7  Flight home or to Vientiane, Laos with options of visits to Plain of Jars and Luang Prabang

If you are potentially interested in participating, please send a note to jmcauliff@ffrd.org to receive updates.

Registration forms are available by clicking here https://form.jotform.com/73274097780970  

The deadline for receipt with copies of passport page is January 5, 2025. 

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*  https://vietnamnet.vn/en/visitors-flock-to-con-dao-to-participate-in-sea-turtle-conservation-2327259.html

The history of Con Dao is as turbulent as it is transformative. Once known for its infamous prison system during French colonial rule and later the American presence in Vietnam, Con Dao witnessed the suffering and resilience of thousands of prisoners who were confined on its shores. These prisons have now become places of pilgrimage and remembrance, a somber reminder of the past that shapes the collective memory of the nation.

In a remarkable twist of fate, the very isolation that once made Con Dao an ideal location for a penal colony has today turned it into a sanctuary for biodiversity. The islands have been reborn as a national park, with efforts to preserve their pristine nature and protect the rare species that call it home. Con Dao’s transformation from a place of confinement to a bastion of environmental conservation highlights its unique position in Vietnam’s narrative—a story of redemption and natural splendor that now defines this tranquil tourist destination.

https://asiapioneertravel.com/blog/con-dao/

"U S Navy challenges Vietnamese claims to seas around resort island in South China Sea" 

By CAITLIN DOORNBOS STARS AND STRIPES • December 28, 2020

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/navy-challenges-vietnamese-claims-to-seas-around-resort-island-in-south-china-sea-1.656609

Grass Roots Education by IMEP

The Indochina Mobile Education Project

Education and Activism at the Grass Roots

Tuesday, July 23, 2024   

Click here to view youtube recording  https://youtu.be/89rcAyJzgJw

The Indochina Mobile Education Project (IMEP) played a key role in educating people in communities throughout America about war damages and the human impacts of the U.S. military intervention in Vietnam and Laos. Its other purpose was to highlight an estimated 200,000 political prisoners held by the U.S. funded Saigon regime and to encourage letters to Congress.

From the fall of 1971 through 1976 following the end of the war, IMEP toured the country with large photo exhibits, films, slide shows and educational materials designed to help citizens understand the toll of the war.  Two people who had experienced the war as soldiers, humanitarian agency volunteers or journalists traveled with each exhibit visiting hundreds of communities in every state making thousands of presentations to churches and synagogues, civic organizations, schools and fraternal groups like Lions and Kiwanis Clubs.  At each stop, IMEP introduced audiences to Vietnamese food and music.  People were encouraged to reach out to their elected officials to call for the end of U.S. military aid and Saigon's repressive government. 

Ambassador Graham Martin reported to Congress  in 1976 that the indochina Resource Center and the Indochina Mobile Education Project had carried. on "one of the best propoganda and pressure campaigns the world has ever seen".

This webinar will feature people who traveled the country as IMEP organizers and tour speakers as well as local exhibit hosts in Colorado, Missouri and Massachusetts.

• Brewster Rhoads, Moderator, Massachusetts host for IMEP team
• Willi Meyers, Professor Emeritus, University of Missouri
• Sally Benson, national staff, IMEP
• Jacqui Chagnon, traveling speaker, IMEP
• Bob Chenoweth, former POW; traveling speaker, IMEP
• Judy Danielson, Colorado host for IMEP team

Sally Benson began her work with Ecumenical Voluntary Services on Ishigaki Island in the Okinawa Ryukyus in the summer 1961  She taught English in Tai Tung Middle School in Hong Kong 1963-64 and at the National Institute of Administration in Saigon with International Voluntary Services1967-1968.  She was a staff member of International Student House in Washington 1970-1973 and of the Indochina Mobile Education Project 1973-1976.

From 1975 to 1977 she was part of Mid-Atlantic Clergy and Laity Concerned's  "RRR" focus on diplomatic relations,  reconciliation, and reconstruction with Viet Nam. 

Sally worked with the  Asia Resource Center and was involved with organizing the Asia Pacific Center for Justice and Peace, and the Campaign to Oppose the Return of the Khmer Rouge.

Dick Berliner, John Schafer, Bob Minnich, Steve Nichols and Sally bought an old house in the wake of the Washington DC MLK Riots.  It became home for some IVSers returning home and for activists involved in trying to stop the American war in Southeast Asia It was a guest house for early delegations visiting from Vietnam

For over 20 years Sally and Steven Nichols with others have managed a foundation to help fund post conflict reconciliation and Agent Orange, UXO and environment related programs mostly in Asia.

Robert Chenoweth was born in Portland, Oregon and grew up both in Eugene and Portland.  He enlisted in the Army in June 1966 and was trained as a UH-1 helicopter crew chief.  He was sent to VN in January 1967 flying combat and combat support missions for the rest of the year.  His unit was based at Tan Son Nhut Army Heliport adjacent to the sprawling Air Force base.  He extended his tour for six months and after  leave came back to Viet Nam on January 22, 1968.  He was based at Qui Nhon and involved in fighting around the airfield and in the air.

Bob was shot down and captured February 8, 1968 during the Tet offensive.   He was released March 15, 1973 as part of the Paris Agreement on returning POWs and political prisoners. On return to the US, he and other POWs were charged with aiding the enemy because of statements they had made as prisoners.   Bob writes, "We raised our voices with the millions of Americans who were also protesting the war.  We just learned what was going on based on our military experiences and what we learned in captivity."

After release from the Army in July, 1973 he was contacted by the Indochina Peace Campaign and traveled with Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, Jean Pierre Debris, Holly Near and Jeff Langley.  He also traveled for a couple weeks with Jacqui Chagnon and Roger Rumpf of the IMEP around the border area with Oregon and California.  About a year later Dave Davis asked Bob to travel with IMEP.  He was a film maker ("Year of the Tiger") who had been to Vietnam in 1973.  He did not have much experience with Vietnamese cooking, etc.  So I went with him in Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and Ohio.  I ended up meeting my wife in Cleveland.

Bob moved to Cleveland and continued with college that he had started in Berkeley.  He moved to Washington DC in 1975, worked at the Institute for Policy Studies and finished a degree in Anthropology.  He went to work at the National Air and Space Museum after school.  He'd worked part time at Natural History and developed an interest in museum work.  He went to work for the Naval History Center but was denied a clearance so worked as a civil engineering draftsman for several companies in the Northern Virginia, DC, Maryland area before moving to Hawaii in 1983.  He worked alot with the American Friends Servic Committee in Manoa, having gotten to know everyone when he came on an AFSC speaking tour  organized by Ian Lind.

Bob worked from 1984 to 1990 as museum technician at the US Army Museum of Hawaii then went to work as Curator of the USS Arizona Memorial with the National Park Service.  In 1992 he moved to Deer Lodge Montana to be curator of Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historical Park.  In 1995 he moved down the road to Nez Perce National Historical Park, near Lewiston, Idaho, on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation.  He stayed in that position until he retired in 2017.  

Bob lives in Moscow, Idaho, has two adult sons, both married, and mostly play music, build models, read and mess with gardening.

He has been back to Viet Nam several times since 2013.  He donated all of his POW clothing and items to the Hoa Loa museum and attended events marking the end of the war as well as the American Dien Bien Phu.  He has spent wonderful time with Lady  Borton and Chi Mai whoworked with Jane Barton, at. al. in Quang Ngai. 

Judy Danielson  was a physical therapist with Vietnam Christian Service from 1968 to 1970, teaching and working in the Saigon Rehabilitation Center for injured civilians, largely amputees and children with polio. She was on Denver staff of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) from 1973-1980 organizing against the war and co-led a campaign to close the local nuclear weapons plant with Pam Solo, which led to the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign.  Judy worked with AFSC's rehabitation project in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 1985-86,  and continued as a physical therapist in Denver until retirement in 2016.  She is currently with a campaign for a non-profit universal health insurance plan for Colorado and with the Colorado Advocacy Team of the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), lobbying against war funding.  She and her spouse Eric Wright, who worked in Quang Ngai with AFSC 1967-70, have 2 daughters and 3 grandsons nearby.

William H. (Willi) Meyers  Mennonite Concientious Objecter and agriculture volunteer with International Voluntary Services in Vietnam 1963 - 65 and in IVS Washington 1965-66 as Recruitment Officer. He resigned in protest of US Vietnam policy in September 1967 and worked with Don Luce and Gene Stoltzfus to establish the Vietnam Education Project with the United Methodist Church and the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

Professor Emeritus of Agricultural and Applied Economics at University of Missouri and formerly Co-Director of FAPRI and Director of CAFNR International Programs. Areas of teaching and research have been trade, agricultural and rural policy, food security, transition economics, and EU policies and institutions. He is also Professor Emeritus of Economics at Iowa State University and Adjunct Professor at School of Economics, Management and Statistics, University of Bologna. Other professional positions have been at USDA, World Bank, FAO, Christian Albrechts University-Kiel, and Open University of Catalonia. He earned a BA in Mathematics at Goshen College, MS in Agricultural Economics at University of the Philippines Los Banos and PhD in Agricultural Economics at University of Minnesota. He authored numerous publications on trade, agricultural and rural policy, commodity market analysis, food security and transition economics, including agricultural and rural policy studies on Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary and Ukraine after they regained independence. He is co-editor of the “Transition to Agricultural Market Economies: The Future of Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine” by CAB International (2015) and “Handbook on International Food and Agricultural Policies”, World Scientific Press (2017) which includes a Vietnam chapter, “Agricultural and Rural Policies in Vietnam” by Pham Van Hung and Pham Bao Duong, colleagues from Viet Nam. 

Brewster Rhoads, a native of Philadelphia, PA, was active in the anti-war movement as a student at Williams College and as an organizer for the Coalition to Stop Funding the War in Washington, DC.  He hosted the Indochina Mobile Education Project for a week at Williams College in 1974.

Brewster was a VISTA volunteer in Western Massachusetts, Director of the Washington-based Coalition for a New Foreign Policy, Director of the Green Umbrella environmental sustainability alliance in Cincinnati and the SW Ohio Regional Director for Ohio Governors Dick Celeste and Ted Strickland.  He managed over 150 issue and candidate campaigns in SW Ohio.

Brewster is currently the Chair of the Board of the Ohio River Way, Inc., a nonprofit working to promote outdoor recreation opportunities on and along the Ohio River from Portsmouth, OH to Louisville, KY.

He also serves on the boards of Adventure Crew, the Mill Creek Alliance, the Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund and Innovation Ohio.

An avid kayaker and cyclist, he is the founder and chair of the Ohio River Paddlefest, now the largest paddling event in the U.S.

Brewster lives in the Mt. Washington neighborhood of Cincinnati with his wife Ann Lugbill, a whistleblower attorney. His daughters Elizabeth and Caroline live and teach in Lund, Sweden and Berlin, Germany respectively.

brewohio@gmail.com

Resources

2011 Yen Hoang Vu, “An Evaluation of Technical Efficiency of Small Farm Households in Chuong My District, Ha Tay Province, Vietnam” M.S. Thesis, University of Missouri.

2014 Hoa Hoang, “Three Essays on Rice Markets and Policies in Southeast Asia with a focus on Rice Consumption Patterns in Vietnam”,  Ph.D. dissertation, University of Missouri

2015 Hoang, H. K. and Meyers. W.H.  Price Stabilization and impacts of trade liberalization in the Southeast Asian rice market. Food Policy 57:26-39.