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Gulf of Tonkin
In August 1964, President Lyndon Johnson announced on national television that
American destroyers on patrol in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin were
attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. In response, the President authorized a
full-scale air attack on targets in North Vietnam.
In his televised speech, he asked Congress for wide-ranging military powers
which would allow him to protect American military forces and “prevent further
aggression” in Vietnam. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution with a 416-0
vote in the House of Representatives and an 88-2 vote in the Senate.
Years later, evidence came forward that proved the first attack on the Maddox
may have been provoked by the American ship illegally entering enemy territory.
Evidence also points towards the second “attack” having never even occurred at all.
Either way, the U.S. was at war, and by the end of 1964, President Johnson had sent
more than 23,000 troops to Vietnam.
President Johnson signs the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
and the Vietnam War begins.
Tet Offensive
On January 31, 1968, the first day of the Vietnamese New Year (Tet), communist
forces launched an enormous, concerted attack on American strongholds throughout
South Vietnam. A few cities, most notably Hue, fell to communist forces – who, during
their occupation of the city, rounded up large numbers of South Vietnamese supporters
and massacred them.
In the United States, Americans saw vivid reports on television of communist
forces in the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon, setting off bombs, attacking troops,
and taking over the American embassy. Such images shocked many Americans and
proved devastating to popular support for the war. The Tet offensive suggested to the
American public the brutality of the struggle in Vietnam.
Though American-led forces eventually defeated communist forces and pushed
them back out of Saigon, the effect of the offensive had been realized. Though the
communists had lost the tactical battle, by shocking the American forces in Vietnam and
the American people at home, they had won a decisive strategic victory.
American troops face the surprise attack by Communist forces during the Tet Offensive.
Helicopters in Vietnam
The Bell UH-1 helicopter, nicknamed the “Huey,” could fly at low altitudes and
speeds and land easily in small spaces. U.S. forces used the Huey to transport troops, supplies
and equipment, aid ground troops with additional firepower and evacuated killed or wounded
soldiers. This new weapon of war was important in helping American troops fight a war in a
land filled with jungle and swamps. The Huey often only had less than one minute to get down,
unload troops and supplies, and get back in the air before enemy weapons could take them out.
The Vietcong moved their troops and supplies through a complex tunnel system that
stretched hundreds of miles underground. This is very different from the way American troops
moved their troops and supplies and is another reason why the Vietnam War was unlike any
other the United States had fought before.
American soldiers exiting a “Huey” helicopter during the Vietnam War.
American helicopters fire their guns into approaching enemy positions.
Vietcong
The Vietcong, or VC, were communist guerrilla fighters who battled U.S. and
South Vietnamese forces during the Vietnam War. The Vietcong’s uniform consisted of:
a floppy jungle hat, rubber sandals, and a green shirt and pants with no military
markings. Often though, Vietcong would pose as farmers or peasants making it very
difficult for the American troops to identify and defeat.
Vietcong troops persuaded local villagers to hide supplies and weapons in their
village. This made it frustrating for American soldiers who did not know whether the
villagers were actual Vietcong or just innocent civilians. Women and children would
also take up fighting against the U.S. and South Vietnamese troops. The VC used
knowledge of their land to their advantage, creating complex tunnel systems to move
troops and supplies, while evading U.S. troops.
Vietcong often included women, making it difficult for U.S. soldiers to identify the enemy.
Vietcong soldiers, wearing the floppy, jungle hat, prepare for battle.
Television during the Vietnam War
The horrors of war entered the living rooms of Americans for the first
time during the Vietnam War. For almost a decade in between school,
work, and dinners, the American public could watch villages being
destroyed, helicopters being shot down, and American body bags being
sent home. Though initial coverage generally supported U.S involvement in
the war, television news dramatically changed its frame of the war after the
Tet Offensive. Images of the U.S led massacre at My Lai dominated the
evening news, and people started wondering if American soldiers were still
fighting a morally just war.
The anti-war movement at home gained increasing media attention
and coverage of the war and its resulting impact on public opinion has been
debated for decades by many people. What is known is that with
increasing television coverage of the war made readily available in
American homes, the amount of people supporting the war drastically
declined.
CBS reporter Walter Cronkite delivered nightly reports on the war in Vietnam.
Hawks vs. Doves
The Vietnam War split Americans apart like no war had before. Initially, public
support was high for the war, but as the war dragged on and the number of dead
soldiers continued to climb, support shifted against the war. During this time, a hawk
was a person who supported the war and believed the United States was doing the right
thing. A dove was a person against the war, who believed American soldiers had no
business fighting another country’s war.
General William Westmoreland, U.S. commander during the Vietnam War,
presents the viewpoint of a hawk:
“History may judge that American aid to South Vietnam constituted one of man’s more noble
crusades, one that had less to do with domino theory and a strategic interest for the United
States than with the simple equation of a strong nation helping an aspiring nation reach a point
where it had some reasonable chance to achieve and keep a degree of freedom and human
dignity.”
Donald Duncan, a sergeant in the Vietnam War, offers the dove position:
“The whole thing was a lie. We weren’t preserving freedom in South Vietnam. It is not
democracy we brought to Vietnam, it was anti-communism. This is the only choice the people
of the village have. This is why most of them have embraced the Vietcong. It’s the American,
anti-communist bombs that kill their children. When anti-communist napalm burns their
children, it matters little that anti-communist medics come to apply the bandages.”
A “dove” protests the Vietnam War by
placing a flower in the barrel of a soldier’s gun.
Pro-war “hawks” gather to
support President Johnson and
the Vietnam War.
Kent State Shootings
On Monday, May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard
opened fire on students protesting against American involvement in the
Vietnam War. The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13
seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom
suffered permanent paralysis. Some of the students who were shot had
been protesting against the Cambodian Campaign, which President
Richard Nixon announced during a television address on April 30. Other
students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest
from a distance.
There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds
of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United
States due to a student strike of four million students, and the event further
affected the public opinion – already at an all-time low – over the role of the
United States in the Vietnam War.
John Filo's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio,a 14-year-old runaway kneeling over
the body of Jeffrey Miller, minutes after he was shot by the Ohio National Guard.
My Lai Massacre
In 1969, as the Vietnam War lingered on, and public support for the war
continued to diminish, American citizens learned through the media of a terrible tragedy
that occurred the previous year in Vietnam. On March 16, 1968, frustrated with a war
that seemed to have no end in sight, and unable to identify the difference between
enemy and civilian, a platoon of U.S. Army soldiers committed the mass murder of
between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam. The victims included women,
men, children, and infants.
A U.S. helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson Jr., came onto the scene and
immediately sensed something was wrong. Thompson then flew over an irrigation ditch
filled with dozens of bodies. Shocked at the sight, he radioed his accompanying
gunships, knowing his transmission would be monitored:
"It looks to me like there's an awful lot of unnecessary killing going on down there. Something
ain't right about this. There's bodies everywhere. There's a ditch full of bodies that we saw.
There's something wrong here."
The incident prompted global outrage when it became public knowledge in
November 1969. The My Lai massacre increased to some extent American opposition
to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War when the scope of killing and an eventual
cover-up attempt was exposed.
This controversial, November 20, 1969 newspaper issue of the Cleveland Plain Dealer exposed many
Americans to the terrible tragedy that occurred at My Lai.
Pentagon Papers
The Pentagon Papers was the name given to a secret Department of
Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from
1945 to 1967, prepared at the request of Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara in 1967. As the Vietnam War dragged on and the U.S. military
presence in South Vietnam increased to more than 500,000 troops by
1968, the military analyst Daniel Ellsberg (who had worked on the study)
came to oppose the war, and decided that the information contained in the
Pentagon Papers should be more widely available to the American public.
He secretly photocopied the report and in March 1971 gave the copy to
The New York Times, which then published a series of articles based on
the report’s findings. Amid the national and international uproar that
followed, the federal government tried unsuccessfully to block publication of
the Pentagon Papers on grounds of national security.
The effect the Pentagon Papers had on the American public is it
continued to cast doubt about U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The report
basically said that the war could not be won, and this study showed that
American leaders knew this and intentionally mislead the public and
continued to wage war in Vietnam. President Richard Nixon attempted to
block its publication and cover up existence of the report. However, the
U.S. Supreme Court ruled the papers could be published because of the
First Amendment allowing free speech.
The June 1971 New York Times article revealing existence of the Pentagon Papers to the public.
Prisoners of War (POWs)
As with any war waged throughout history, certain soldiers would get
captured by the enemy and held as a prisoner of war (POW). During the
Vietnam War, a large number of the soldiers held as prisoners were
captured when the fighter jet they were piloted was shot down over enemy
territory. From the beginning, U.S. POWs endured miserable conditions,
including poor food and unsanitary conditions. Often, North Vietnamese
guards would utilize torture tactics to pry information or attempt to break the
will of U.S. soldiers.
The most infamous of the prisons during the war was nicknamed the
“Hanoi Hilton.” The Hanoi Hilton was used by the North Vietnamese Army
to house, torture and interrogate captured servicemen, mostly American
pilots shot down during bombing raids. One famous prisoner at the Hanoi
Hilton was current U.S. Senator John McCain. After his plane was shot
down over Hanoi (the North Vietnamese capital), McCain spent more than
5 years as a POW. When demanded by guards to provide the names of
other pilots in his military unit, McCain responded by naming all the
members of the Green Bay Packers offensive line.
One of the buildings of the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison, where U.S. soldiers were often
tortured and mistreated in order to gain important military information.
Women in the Vietnam War
Though relatively little official data exists about female Vietnam War veterans,
the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation estimates that approximately 11,000
military women were stationed in Vietnam during the conflict. Nearly all of them were
volunteers, and 90 percent served as military nurses, though women also worked as
physicians, air traffic controllers, intelligence officers, clerks and other positions in the
U.S. Women’s Army Corps, U.S. Navy, Air Force and Marines and the Army Medical
Specialist Corps. In addition to women in the armed forces, an unknown number of
civilian women served in Vietnam on behalf of the Red Cross, United Service
Organizations (USO), Catholic Relief Services and other humanitarian organizations, or
as foreign correspondents for various news organizations.
Women in Vietnam were tasked with training the South Vietnamese in nursing
skills. As the American military presence in South Vietnam increased beginning in the
early 1960s, so did that of the Army Nurse Corps. From March 1962 to March 1973,
when the last Army nurses left Vietnam, some 5,000 would serve in the conflict. Five
female Army nurses died over the course of the war, including First Lieutenant Sharon
Ann Lane, who died from shrapnel wounds suffered in an attack on the hospital where
she was working in June 1969. Lane was posthumously awarded the Vietnamese
Gallantry Cross with Palm and the Bronze Star for Heroism.
The Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington D.C. depicts two nurses helping an injured soldier.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial
First unveiled on November 13, 1982, the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial remains an unusual war monument. Its main feature, a V-shaped
wall inscribed with the names of over 58,000 U.S. soldiers killed during the
Vietnam War, lacks heroic or patriotic symbols, and its polished black
granite walls contrast with the white marble statues and structures
surrounding it on the National Mall. Nonetheless, it has become one of the
most popular tourist attractions in Washington, D.C., with over 5 million
estimated visitors every year.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. displays the names of more than 58,000 Americans
killed while serving in the Vietnam War.
Check out six facts about this iconic testament to sacrifice and loss
suffered during the Vietnam War:
1. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was built without government
funds.
Jan C. Scruggs, a wounded Vietnam War vet, studied what is now
called post-traumatic stress disorder upon his return to the United States.
Within a few years, he began calling for a memorial to help with the healing
process for the roughly 3 million Americans who served in the conflict.
After watching the movie “The Deer Hunter,” Scruggs apparently stepped
up his activism even further. Using $2,800 of his own money, he formed
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund in 1979. Many politicians expressed
their support, and the U.S. Congress passed legislation reserving three
acres in the northwest corner of the National Mall for a future monument.
All donations, however, came from the private sector. Bob Hope and other
celebrities lent a hand with fundraising, and by 1981 some 275,000
Americans, along with corporations, foundations, veterans groups, civic
organizations and labor unions, had given $8.4 million to the project.
2. A college student won the memorial’s design contest.
Having raised the necessary cash, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Fund next held a design contest. The guidelines stipulated that the
memorial should contain the names of every American who died in Vietnam
or remained missing in action, make no political statement about the war,
be in harmony with its surroundings and be contemplative in character.
Over 1,400 submissions came in, to be judged anonymously by a panel of
eight artists and designers. In the end, the panel passed over every
professional architect in favor of 21-year-old Yale University student Maya
Lin, who had created her design for a class. “From the very beginning I
often wondered, if it had not been an anonymous entry 1026 but rather an
entry by Maya Lin, would I have been selected?” she would later write.
3. The memorial was originally quite controversial.
Many people commended Lin’s winning design, with a former
ambassador to South Vietnam calling it a “distinguished and fitting mark of
respect” and the New York Times saying it conveyed “the only point about
the war on which people may agree: that those who died should be
remembered.” But others criticized it as an insult saying it was too plain.
Vietnam veteran Jim Webb, a future U.S. Senator, referred to it as “a
nihilistic slab of stone,” and political commentator Pat Buchanan accused
one of the design judges of being a communist. Some critics even resorted
to racially insulting Lin, the daughter of Chinese immigrants. Eventually, a
compromise was reached—against Lin’s wishes—under which a U.S. flag
and a statue of three servicemen were dedicated near the wall in 1984.
Nine years later, yet another sculpture was added of three women caring
for an injured soldier. Not only did the controversy quickly quiet down, but
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has since become both widely praised and
wildly popular. “It is still far and away the greatest memorial of modern
times—the most beautiful, the most heart-wrenching, the most subtle, and
the most powerful,” a Vanity Fair commentator wrote earlier this year.
4. Names are still being added to the memorial.
When the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was first dedicated three
decades ago, Lin’s wall contained the names of 57,939 American
servicemen believed to have lost their lives in the Vietnam War. But since
then, that number has jumped to 58,282. In fact, 10 new names were
engraved this year, including that of a marine corporal whose 2006 death
from a stroke was determined to be the result of wounds received in action
in 1967. Meanwhile, a few survivors have had their names erroneously
chiseled into the wall. In order to be added, a deceased soldier must meet
specific U.S. Department of Defense criteria, and those postwar casualties
not eligible for inscription on the wall are honored instead with an onsite
plaque.
5. Offerings are left at the memorial nearly every day.
Tens of thousands of so-called artifacts have been intentionally left at
the memorial since its opening, including letters, POW/MIA commemorative
bracelets, military medals, dog tags, religious items and photographs. One
person even left behind a motorcycle. Rangers from the National Park
Service collect these items every day and, with the exception of unaltered
U.S. flags and perishables, send them to a storage facility in Maryland.
Though that facility is not open to the public, certain memorial artifacts are
put on view as part of traveling exhibits.
6. All of the names were read out loud in 2014 for the fifth time.
As part of the wall’s 30th anniversary celebration, all 58,282 names
were read out loud just prior to Veterans Day. Volunteers, Vietnam vets,
family members of the deceased and employees of the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial Fund read the names starting on a Wednesday and did not finish
until Saturday evening.