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.
No comments:
Post a Comment