Advance Work with PBS Stations re Vietnam Series

               PBS stations across the entire country are already planning engagement with their communities.  This could include interviews filmed beforehand and broadcast to complement showings, as well as public on or off air panels, web based conversations and community forums.  While we have not seen the series, we know it does include opponents of the war.  Accordingly stations will be interested in providing a local dimension to the anti-war movement and will welcome your assistance. 

              It is essential to contact them as soon as possible.  Call the station and ask for both the community outreach and  communications staff person.  Ask for a meeting for yourself and others to discuss their plans for the series.  If you did not live in this location during the war, or were not active in the anti-war movement there, try to identify before the meeting local people who were as civilians or veterans, either to bring with you or to cite as resources.  As a current resident in the station’s viewing area, your experiences elsewhere in opposing the war should also be relevant.   

              Try to identify people who were against the war while in the military, received bad discharges, went to prison for draft resistance or left the country and received amnesty.  Find out who organized local protests or participation in national demonstrations.  Religious institutions may have hosted draft counseling or conducted weekly vigils.  Colleges and universities might have been the sites of teach-ins, peaceful or militant demonstrations, student strikes, or the expulsion or destruction of ROTC programs and buildings.   Researching newspaper archives, including "underground" papers, and conversations with retired professors, ministers and journalists could be productive in unearthing a rich local history that deserves permanent recognition.

              If the station is not responsive, let us know and we will share that with the producers of the series at Florentine Films and WETA, the lead station for PBS.

              The most intense coverage will be in the lead up to and during the initial two weeks of daily broadcasts.  We’re hopeful that the conversation will continue through the fall with the weekly segment rebroadcasts and beyond, including at participating libraries--and that people who were active in the anti-war movement in many different ways have a chance to participate.

              Your own independent programs can also be set in motion now for the period of screenings that offer personal experiences of veterans, anti-war activists and Indochinese-Americans, inviting the public and local media.  They can take place at religious institutions, campuses, civic centers or veterans halls.  Ideally they will be cosponsored by local peace, veterans and immigrant groups, including Vietnam Veterans of America*, Vets for Peace** and Vietnam Veterans Against the War as well as the PBS station.  Many Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion chapters are now led by the Vietnam generation and may also be interested. 

              One approach is to plan public meetings on Friday or Saturday evenings (September 22/23, September 29/30) to review and reflect on the five segments shown the preceding Sunday to Thursday, not least about the consequences for veterans and the people of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

        And please let Terry Provance <terryprovance@gmail.com> and John McAuliff  <jmcauliff@ffrd.org> know what you are doing and quickly if there are any problems.


*  Vietnam Veterans of America chapter locator
scroll down to "Locate a VVA chapter"  https://vva.org/what-we-do/our-members/

** Vets for Peace chapter contacts  https://www.veteransforpeace.org/files/2014/9452/1743/17.05.11.ChapterContacts.pdf


Experience of VPCC Committee member Steve Ladd in San Francisco

The community engagement person I spoke with at KQED overall was quite receptive. She did note that most stations are not large enough to fund such a position. The work around Vietnam series events may be done by marketing or communications staff. She recommended it's best to call and just ask to speak with the people who are organizing events around the series. And if the person who answers isn't sure, ask to speak with the marketing or communications staff.

KQED is planning several smaller events before the broadcast and one larger town hall afterwards. Other stations may also be doing something similar. The pre-events are: Vietnamese community discussion in San Jose (a closed session first to discuss sensitive issues internally, with a public session to follow); a homeless vets outreach event working with vets organizations; and an event at the station with antiwar movement folks telling their stories (75 seats). She scheduled the call with me as a potential lead partner for that event. So, I'll be pulling together and proposing to her a range of people locally.  None of these events will be filmed, but there may be audio recordings.

The townhall event after the broadcast, likely in early October, will feature a variety of people from different experiences and perspectives, culled in part from the earlier events, to reflect on the series. It will be held on the USS Hornet, now a museum in Alameda CA. It may be broadcast, but she wasn't sure yet.

It seemed that my contact at the station was quite happy that I had earlier email contact since she was looking for someone who could help her bring in people representing the peace movement. So, in calls to stations, I would encourage people not only to ask what the station has planned and how they can participate, but also that they could be a useful partner to suggest people who could be presenters or lead participants in events (as well as helping encourage people to attend planned events).

She also promised to send me a link to an hour long version of the film they will show at public events prior to discussion. 

Massacres Beyond My Lai

Was My Lai just one of many massacres in Vietnam War?

·        28 August 2013

arIn 1968 US soldiers murdered several hundred Vietnamese civilians in the single most infamous incident of the Vietnam War. The My Lai massacre is often held to have been an aberration but investigative journalist Nick Turse has uncovered evidence that war crimes were committed by the US military on a far bigger scale.

In a war in which lip service was often paid to winning "hearts and minds", the US military had an almost singular focus on one defining measure of success in Vietnam: the body count - the number of enemy killed in action.

Vietnamese forces, outgunned by their adversaries, relied heavily on mines and other booby traps as well as sniper fire and ambushes. Their methods were to strike and immediately withdraw.

Unable to deal with an enemy that dictated the time and place of combat, US forces took to destroying whatever they could manage. If the Americans could kill more enemies - known as Viet Cong or VC - than the Vietnamese could replace, the thinking went, they would naturally give up the fight.

To motivate troops to aim for a high body count, competitions were held between units to see who could kill the most. Rewards for the highest tally, displayed on "kill boards" included days off or an extra case of beer. Their commanders meanwhile stood to win rapid promotion.

Very quickly the phrase - "If it's dead and Vietnamese, it's VC" - became a defining dictum of the war and civilian corpses were regularly tallied as slain enemies or Viet Cong.

Civilians, including women and children, were killed for running from soldiers or helicopter gunships that had fired warning shots, or being in a village suspected of sheltering Viet Cong.

At the time, much of this activity went unreported - but not unnoticed.

Researching post-traumatic stress disorder among Vietnam veterans, in 2001 I stumbled across a collection of war crimes investigations carried out by the military at the US National Archives.

Box after box of criminal investigation reports and day-to-day paperwork had been long buried away and almost totally forgotten. Some detailed the most nightmarish descriptions. Others hinted at terrible events that had not been followed up.

At that time the US military had at its disposal more killing power, destructive force, and advanced technology than any military in the history of the world.

The amount of ammunition fired per soldier was 26 times greater in Vietnam than during World War II. By the end of the conflict, America had unleashed the equivalent of 640 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs on Vietnam.

Vast areas dotted with villages were blasted with artillery, bombed from the air and strafed by helicopter gunships before ground troops went in on search-and-destroy missions.

The phrase "kill anything that moves" became an order on the lips of some American commanders whose troops carried out massacres across their area of operations.

While the US suffered more than 58,000 dead in the war, an estimated two million Vietnamese civilians were killed, another 5.3 million injured and about 11 million, by US government figures, became refugees in their own country.

Today, if people remember anything about American atrocities in Vietnam, they recall the March 1968 My Lai massacre in which more than 500 civilians were killed over the course of four hours, during which US troops even took time out to eat lunch.

Far bloodier operations, like one codenamed Speedy Express, should be remembered as well, but thanks to cover-ups at the highest levels of the US military, few are.

Industrial-scale slaughter

In late 1968, the 9th Infantry Division, under the command of Gen Julian Ewell, kicked off a large-scale operation in the Mekong Delta, the densely populated deep south of Vietnam.

In an already body count-obsessed environment, Ewell, who became known as the Butcher of the Delta, was especially notorious. He sacked subordinates who killed insufficient numbers and unleashed heavy firepower on a countryside packed with civilians.

A whistle-blower in the division wrote to the US Army Chief of Staff William Westmoreland, pleading for an investigation. Artillery called in on villages, he reported, had killed women and children. Helicopter gunships had frightened farmers into running and then cut them down. Troops on the ground had done the same thing.

The result was industrial-scale slaughter, the equivalent, he said, to a "My Lai each month".

Just look at the ratio of Viet Cong reportedly killed to weapons captured, he told Westmoreland.

Indeed, by the end of the operation Ewell's division claimed an enemy body count of close to 11,000, but turned in fewer than 750 captured weapons.

Westmoreland ignored the whistle-blower, scuttled a nascent inquiry, and buried the files, but not before an internal Pentagon report endorsed some of the whistle-blower's most damning allegations.

The secret investigation into Speedy Express remained classified for decades before I found it in buried in the National Archives.

The military estimated that as many as 7,000 civilians were killed during the operation. More damning still, the analysis admitted that the "US command, in its extensive experience with large-scale combat operations in South East Asia, appreciated the inevitability of significant civilian casualties in the conduct of large operations in densely populated areas such as the Delta."

Indeed, what the military admitted in this long secret report confirmed exactly what I also discovered in hundreds of talks and formal interviews with American veterans, in tens of thousands of pages of formerly classified military documents, and, most of all, in the heavily populated areas of Vietnam where Americans expended massive firepower.

Survivors of a massacre by US Marines in Quang Tri Province told me what it was like to huddle together in an underground bomb shelter as shots rang out and grenades exploded above.

Fearing that one of those grenades would soon roll into their bunker, a mother grabbed her young children, took a chance and bolted.

"Racing from our bunker, we saw the shelter opposite ours being shot up," Nguyen Van Phuoc, one of those youngsters, told me. One of the Americans then wheeled around and fired at his mother, killing her.

Many more were killed on that October day in 1967. Two of the soldiers involved were later court martialled but cleared of murder.

Commemoration

Last year, the Pentagon kicked off a 13-year programme to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the war. An entry on the official Vietnam War Commemoration website for My Lai describes it as an "incident" and the number killed is listed as "200" not 500.

Speedy Express is referred to as "an operation that would eventually yield an enemy body count of 11,000".

There is almost no mention of Vietnamese civilians.

In a presidential proclamation on the website, Barack Obama distils the conflict down to troops slogging "through jungles and rice paddies… fighting heroically to protect the ideals we hold dear as Americans… through more than a decade of combat".

Despite what the president might believe, combat was just a fraction of that war.

The real war in Vietnam was typified by millions of men, women, and children driven into slums and refugee camps; by homes, hamlets, and whole villages burnt to the ground; by millions killed or wounded when war showed up on their doorstep.

President Obama called the Vietnam War "a chapter in our nation's history that must never be forgotten". But thanks to cover-ups like that of Speedy Express, few know the truth to begin with.

About the author: Nick Turse has been researching US military atrocities in the Vietnam War for more than a decade and has detailed his findings in a book Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.

A Pentagon spokesman, when asked for a statement about the evidence presented, said he doubted that more than 50 years after the US went to war in Vietnam, it would be possible for the military to provide an official statement in "a timely manner."

Vietnam war

§  US, South Vietnam failed to stop communist-led unification

§  In 1970 US used 128,400 tonnes of munitions each month

§  Quang Tri province was saturated with 3,000 bombs per square km

§  58,000 Americans died

§  3.8 million Vietnamese died including 2m civilians between 1955-1975

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-23427726

Episodes of PBS Vietnam Series

Episode One – “Déjà Vu” (1858-1961)

After a long and brutal war, Vietnamese revolutionaries led by Ho Chi Minh end nearly a century of French colonial occupation. With the Cold War intensifying, Vietnam is divided in two at Geneva. Communists in the north aim to reunify the country, while America supports Ngo Dinh Diem’s untested regime in the south.

Episode Two – “Riding the Tiger” (1961-1963)

President Kennedy inspires idealistic young Americans to serve their country and wrestles with how deeply to get involved in South Vietnam. As the increasingly autocratic Diem regime faces a growing communist insurgency and widespread Buddhist protests, a grave political crisis unfolds.

Episode Three – “The River Styx” (January 1964-December 1965)

With South Vietnam in chaos, hardliners in Hanoi seize the initiative and send combat troops to the south, accelerating the insurgency. Fearing Saigon’s collapse, President Johnson escalates America’s military commitment, authorizing sustained bombing of the north and deploying ground troops in the south.

Episode Four – “Resolve” (January 1966-June 1967)

Defying American airpower, North Vietnamese troops and materiel stream down the Ho Chi Minh Trail into the south, while Saigon struggles to “pacify the countryside.” As an antiwar movement builds back home, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and Marines discover that the war they are being asked to fight in Vietnam is nothing like their fathers’ war.

Episode Five – “This Is What We Do” (July 1967-December 1967)

American casualties and enemy body counts mount as Marines face deadly North Vietnamese ambushes and artillery south of the DMZ and Army units chase an elusive enemy in the central highlands. Hanoi lays plans for a massive surprise offensive, and the Johnson Administration reassures the American public that victory is in sight.

Episode Six – “Things Fall Apart” (January 1968-July 1968)

On the eve of the Tet holiday, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launch surprise attacks on cities and military bases throughout the south, suffering devastating losses but casting grave doubt on Johnson’s promise that there is “light at the end of the tunnel.” The president decides not to run again and the country is staggered by assassinations and unrest.

Episode Seven – “The Veneer of Civilization” (June 1968-May 1969)

Public support for the war declines, and American men of draft age face difficult decisions and wrenching moral choices. After police battle with demonstrators in the streets of Chicago, Richard Nixon wins the presidency, promising law and order at home and peace overseas. In Vietnam, the war goes on and soldiers on all sides witness terrible savagery and unflinching courage.

Episode Eight – “The History of the World” (April 1969-May 1970)

With morale plummeting in Vietnam, President Nixon begins withdrawing American troops. As news breaks of an unthinkable massacre committed by American soldiers, the public debates the rectitude of the war, while an incursion into Cambodia reignites antiwar protests with tragic consequences.

Episode Nine – “A Disrespectful Loyalty” (May 1970-March 1973)

South Vietnamese forces fighting on their own in Laos suffer a terrible defeat. Massive U.S. airpower makes the difference in halting an unprecedented North Vietnamese offensive. After being re-elected in a landslide, Nixon announces Hanoi has agreed to a peace deal. American prisoners of war will finally come home – to a bitterly divided country.

Episode Ten – “The Weight of Memory” (March 1973-Onward)

While the Watergate scandal rivets Americans’ attention and forces President Nixon to resign, the Vietnamese continue to savage one another in a brutal civil war. When hundreds of thousands of North Vietnamese troops pour into the south, Saigon descends rapidly into chaos and collapses. For the next 40 years, Americans and Vietnamese from all sides search for healing and reconciliation.