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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.