Role in Antiwar Movement of Humanitarian Aid Workers in South Vietnam

Humanitarian Volunteers Contribution to Ending the Vietnam War

Monday June 24, 7 -  8:30 p.m. ET  

Watch the webinar video on youtube by clicking here   https://youtu.be/Dmqm4DmEIGo

Moderator:  Doug Hostetter  Mennonite Central Committee (MCC)

Panelists:

• Ann Wright-Parsons  International Voluntary Services (IVS)
• Earl Martin  Mennonite Central Committee (MCC)
• Bill Herod  Church World Service / Viet Nam Christian Service (CWS/VNCS)
• John Balaban   International Voluntary Services (IVS), Committee of Responsibility (COR)
• Claudia Krich    American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) 

• Special guest: Dick Berliner. With IVS (eighteen months); COR (six months); Vietnam Education Project in Washington D.C (six months); back to Viet Nam with COR (six months); Dispatch News Service in Saigon (eight months); back to DC to run Dispatch (two years).

A contradictory aspect of the US war in Indochina was that while the US government was responsible for widescale death and destruction, American non-governmental organizations, both religious and secular, undertook humanitarian programs to assist affected populations.

Staff and volunteers through engagement with civilian victims encountered a grass roots reality of the war which they shared with sponsoring organizations, journalists and peace activists.

Upon returning to the US, many became active opponents of the war, using their personal experiences to give interviews, write articles and undertake speaking tours.

This webinar will recall and honor the antiwar movement contribution of activists from the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers), Church World Service / Vietnam Christian Service, Committee of Concern, International Voluntary Service, and the Mennonite Central Committee.

Tax deductible contributions to support this program can be made here https://tinyurl.com/donateFRD

Speakers

John Balaban  as a Concientious Objector was a volunteer teacher at Can Tho University with International Voluntary Services, 1967-1968, and served as field representative  with the Committee of Responsibility, 1968-1970, evacuating and returning war-injured children to and from the U.S.

He is the author of thirteen books of poetry and prose, including four volumes which together have won The Academy of American Poets' Lamont prize, a National Poetry Series Selection, and two nominations for the National Book Award.  His Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems won the 1998 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.  In 2003, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.  In 2005, he was a judge for the National Book Awards. His latest book of poetry is Empires (Copper Canyon Press, 2019).  His collected poems, essays, and translations, Passing Through a Gate, is due out from Copper Canyon in May of 2024.

In addition to writing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, he is a translator of Vietnamese poetry, and a past president of the American Literary Translators Association. In 1999, with two Vietnamese friends, he founded the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation  (http://nomfoundation.org). In 2008, he was awarded a medal from the Ministry of Culture of Vietnam for his translations of poetry and his leadership in the restoration of the ancient text collection at the National Library. 

Balaban is Professor Emeritus of English at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

contact: tbalaban@earthlink.net  or johnbalaban5@gmail.com

see also : www.johnbalaban.com for fuller biographical materials and bibliography. 

 https://www.nationalbook.org/people/john-balaban/#fullBio    and https://www.johnbalaban.com/ and

https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-         magazines/balaban-john-b-1943

Bill Herod worked in relief and development projects in Viet Nam with Church World Service /Viet Nam Christian Service from 1966 to 1968 and from 1969 to 1971 in Pleiku, Tam Ky & Saigon.   

After the war, Herod worked in education and reconciliation projects contributing to reconciliation between the US and Viet-Nam. He travelled widely in the US speaking with church, campus, and civic groups about US policy in Viet-Nam during and after the war. He edited The Indochina Digest, a weekly newsletter about the region directed at policymakers, journalists, researchers, human right groups and others.

In 1977, Herod was among the first Americans to visit post-war Viet-Nam and subsequently facilitated a number of visits by members of the US Congress, congressional aides, human rights activists, journalists, representatives of American church groups and other influential opinion makers.

In Washington, DC, Herod assisted aid groups in securing the licenses then necessary to send humanitarian supplies to post-war Viet-Nam. He maintained regular contact with concerned congressional offices and the State Department and testified before congressional committees on post-war US policy.  

Doug Hostetter was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War and chose to do his alternative service working for Mennonite Central Committee in Tam Ky, Quang Nam, from 1966 - 1969.  Doug returned to Vietnam in November and December 1970 with the US National Student Association delegation that negotiated the People’s Peace Treaty (PPT).   The People’s Peace Treaty was signed in Saigon by representatives of the Saigon Student Union and brought to Hanoi where representatives of the South Vietnam Liberation Student Union, the Vietnam National Student Union and the US National Student Association signed it.  Upon return to the US, Doug joined the staff of the People’s Peace Treaty national office in New York City, which, in cooperation with the US National Student Association, introduced the PPT to students in colleges and universities across the United States. In the spring of 1971, the PPT was ratified by almost 200 US colleges and universities -- hundreds of thousands of US students declaring their peace with student in Vietnam.   Doug was active broadly in the US anti-Vietnam War movement.  He was the Treasurer for Medical Aid for Indochina which after 1972 became the Bach Mai Hospital Fund and after 1975 became Friendshipment.  Doug is the NGO Representative for Pax Christi International at the United Nations in New York.  Earlier in his career Doug was as the Director of the Mennonite Central Committee United Nations Office, the Director of the New England Office of the American Friends Service Committee; the Director of the US Fellowship of Reconciliation; and the Resource Specialist for Peace for the United Methodist Office for the United Nations.  Doug has published widely on the issues of war, peace and nonviolence, and is a contributing author to The People Make the Peace:  Lessons from the Vietnam Antiwar movement.

From March 1973 to July 1975 Claudia Krich and her husband Keith Brinton were co-directors of the American Friends Service Committee humanitarian program in Viet Nam. Keith had also been part of the program there from 1966 to 1970. Their work included running a large civilian physical rehabilitation center in Quang Ngai in central Viet Nam, researching and reporting on the war and wartime culture in Viet Nam, and hosting visiting dignitaries and journalists. The program also maintained an office in Saigon, with two representatives there.

Claudia and the team left Quang Ngai in March 1975, and were witnesses to the change of government in Saigon at the end of April. After returning from Viet Nam on July 4, 1975, Claudia and Keith went on a national speaking tour for AFSC. She later worked for some months at the AFSC main office in Philadelphia. She has returned to Viet Nam three times.

Her book, Those Who Stayed: A Việt Nam Diary, will be released by University of Virginia Press in March 2025, to coincide closely with the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war. It is based on the months before and after April 30, 1975, and is drawn from journals she kept at the time and other first hand sources. There are also annotations by Gareth Porter plus first hand vignettes by people relevant to the book, including Pete McCloskey, Don Luce, Craig MacNamara, Phương-Hằng Phan, Nguỹen Thị Mai, and others.

Claudia spoke in the VPCC webinar about the end of the war in Saigon and Hanoi that can be seen by clicking here.

Earl Martin worked with the Mennonite Central Committee in Quang Ngai 1966-69 and again 1973-75.  He and his wife Pat sought to aid displaced farmers in camps and later responded to the problem of unexploded ordnance in the fields.  He worked with Indochina Resource Center in Washington in 1973 after doing Asian Studies at Stanford.  Staying in Quang Ngai after the change of government in 1975, he authored Reaching the Other Side, (Crown 1978), an account of liberation at the grass roots. 

Ann Wright-Parsons joined International Voluntary Services in the summer of 1962 after graduating from Grinnell College, Iowa.  "A colleague in 1962-64 and I were teachers in the two main public schools in Hue - me Dong Khanh Girls School and Jay at Quoc Hoc where many graduates later became political leaders such as Ngo Dinh Giap.   We both became active in anti Diem activities as the demonstrations grew in Hue and friends who were teachers or students were thrown in prison. Many of our friends who were Buddhist were involved with demonstrations as well."

 

After her two years of service she joined the staff of the IVS office in Washington, D.C. from 1964 - 1967.  She married fellow volunteer, John (Jay) Parsons and followed him in his career in South and Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh) for 22 years. While in Asia Ann worked in museums in Jakarta and Bangkok. Then in 1993 Ann moved to New York City where she worked in the Anthropology Department of the American Museum of Natural History. In 2001 she became the director of the Anthropology Museum, Northern Illinois University retiring in 2010.

******************

A personal preflection by the moderator :

When America went to war with Vietnam most Americans had no knowledge of even where Vietnam was, much less, its history, people, cuizine, art and literature.  Many of the male humanitarian volunteers were doing alternative to military service.  

Speaking personally, I knew that it was morally wrong to kill another human being, but I, by and large, accepted the US government's understanding that the US Military was there to protect the Vietnamese people from Chinese and Russian Communism.  It did not take long, living in a small village in Central Vietnam, to realize that, not only is it wrong to kill other people, but the US was actually supporting the wrong side!

We discovered that on the village level, it was the National Liberation Front that was made up of local boys raised in good families who were protecting the honest local leaders and businessmen, while the US was supporting an army and corrupt officials trained during the French colonization of Vietnam.  We also realized that to end support for the war, we must help Americans understand who the people were that our armed forces were being sent to kill and destroy.

Most volunteers brought back a deep understanding of how unjust this war was against a people who simply wanted their independence and freedom, but we also brought an intimate knowledge and love of Vietnamese people, their culture and their language.  The former volunteers brought Vietnamese culture to the Peace Movement, and introduced Americans to Vietnamese food, art, songs, poetry, literature, culture and language.  We knew that if Americans knew the Vietnamese that way that we had gotten to know them, Americans would never support that war.

I should also note the contribution that the Peace Movement made to the returned volunteers.  Many GIs fell apart upon returning to the US due to moral guilt, survivor's guilt, PTSD and the realization that they were hated by most of the Vietnamese, on both sides of the conflict. Most humanitarian volunteers did relief, agricultural, medical or education work which was much appreciated by the Vietnamese, which protected us from the moral guilt felt by many soldiers. 

But we were not protected from survivor's guilt.  Humanitarian volunteers were also killed in the war, and surviving volunteers often witnessed the death of Vietnamese friends.  Many returned volunteers felt severe survivor's guilt at being able to leave Vietnam after 3 years, while their Vietnamese friends did not have that option.  It was the US Peace Movement that saved the sanity for many returned volunteers. I had tremendous guilt remembering the many Vietnamese and American friends still in danger in Vietnam, but I realized that activism in the antiwar movement had the power to shorten that War in Vietnam and save the lives of my friends who were still there.   Activism in the antiwar movement has been my therapy.

Doug Hostetter

6/1/2024

Resources

International Voluntary Services in Vietnam: War and the Birth of Activism, 1958–1967                  by Paul Rodell, 2002, https://www.academia.edu/113032653/International_Voluntary_Services_in_Vietnam_War_and_the_Birth_of_Activism_1958_1967

Passing Through a Gate a collection of poems, translations, and essays by John Balaban.  The translations are mostly from Vietnamese--one, the poetry of the remarkable 18th century woman, Hồ Xuân Hương, and, secondly, Ca Dao Việtnam, the folk poetry that he collected on tape during the war. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/passing-through-a-gate-john-balaban/1143935307

Remembering Heaven's Face, an autobiography largely about Vietnam by John Balaban.  The book has been in print for decades and still is published by the University of Georgia Press. https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Heavens-Face-Wartime-Vietnam/dp/0820324159

Reaching the Other Side: the Journal of an American who stayed to witness Vietnam's postwar transition   by Earl Martin, Crown, 1978

A Vietnam Presence: Mennonites in Vietnam during the American War  by  Luke Martin,  Masthof Press, 2016.  Includes copies of Mennnonite correspondence with American officials throughout the war