OralHistory

//Oral History Project Topic: The Vietnam War Interview Subject: My mom//

France ruled Vietnam as part of its colony of French Indochina from the late 1800s until World War II. The colony of French Indochina also included Laos and Cambodia, which neighbored Vietnam. During this colonial period, France gained wealth by exporting rice and rubber from Vietnam. But while France gained power, Vietnamese peasants lost their land and became poor. The Vietnamese never really accepted French rule; several groups of nationalists revolted against the French, hoping that their actions would help Vietnam become an independent nation. In 1930, revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh united three Communist groups, forming the Indochinese Communist Party, or the ICP. This party called for an independent Vietnam controlled by peasants and other workers. The ICP organized protests of peasants against the French government. In response, the French arrested suspected Communists and executed several leaders. Ho Chi Minh, who was living in China at the time, was sentenced to death. In 1940, when World War II was going on, Japan gained control of Indochina. A year later, Ho Chi Minh returned in secret to Vietnam; he hid in a jungle camp. He directed the ICP to join other nationalists, forming an organization called the Viet Minh. The Viet Minh trained soldiers to make Vietnam independent of all foreign rulers. Because Japan was America’s enemy in World War II, the US government helped Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh fight the Japanese. Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese independence in 1945, after the Japanese surrendered to the Allies. But France soon tried to regain control of Vietnam. Although Ho Chi Minh wanted to find a peaceful solution to this conflict, war broke out between France and the Viet Minh in 1946. France bombed Haiphong; the Viet Minh attacked Hanoi. Meanwhile, the United States was competing against the Soviet Union in the Cold War. President Truman was trying to prevent the spread of communism in West Europe. Then, in 1949, Communists took over China. American leaders began to worry about the spread of Communism in Asia, and when France asked the US to help them fight the Viet Minh, the US agreed. Besides the fact that they didn’t want Vietnam to become Communist, the US needed French support in opposing the Soviets in Europe. So in 1950, President Truman offered the French $10 million in aid and the United States entered the Vietnam conflict. After Dwight Eisenhower was sworn in as president in 1953, he continued to aid the French in Vietnam. Truman and Eisenhower explained the importance of supporting anti-Communism in Vietnam with the domino theory. According to this theory, if one country became fell to communism, nearby countries would also fall. US leaders worried that is communism spread to Vietnam, the rest of Southeast Asia would become Communist as well. But even with the US’s support, France could not defeat the Viet Minh. In May of 1954, France and the Viet Minh met in Geneva, Switzerland for peace talks. Here they reached an agreement called the Geneva Accords. This agreement divided Vietnam along the 17th parallel. A demilitarized zone surrounded this line. The split was meant to be temporary; the two sides agreed that they would reunite the country by having elections for a single government in 1956. Until then, the North and South would have separate governments. Ho Chi Minh and the Communists controlled the North; anti-Communist Ngo Dinh Diem became the prime minister and later the president of South Vietnam. Thousands of anti-Communists who had been living in the north fled to the south; the US provided ships for their transportation. While Ho Chi Minh was greatly popular in North Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem had little support in South Vietnam. Because of this, Diem refused to hold the elections that had been planned in 1956. If the elections had been held, there is little doubt that Minh would have won by a huge margin. So Eisenhower continued sending aid and advisors to South Vietnam to help the Diem government. But despite the aid he was getting from the US, Diem did not establish a democratic government in South Vietnam. His government was corrupt; in the country, he allowed landlords to take back land that had been given to peasants. Diem tortured, imprisoned, and even killed his adversaries. Among Diem’s opponents were South Vietnamese Communists. In 1960, they joined other dissatisfied South Vietnamese and formed the National Liberation Front. Diem ridiculed the group, calling them the Viet Cong, for Vietnamese Communists. The goal of the Viet Cong was to overthrow the Diem government and reunite the country under Communist rule. North Vietnam supported the Viet Cong and sent them soldiers and supplies. By 1963, when John F. Kennedy was president, victory for the Viet Cong was near. President Kennedy continued to support the fight against communism in Vietnam. He sent military advisers and equipment to South Vietnam; by late 1963, the US had over 16,000 military personnel there. But as aid from the US increased, so did opposition to Diem in South Vietnam. American officials told Diem that he needed to make political, economic and military reforms; he refused. The Kennedy Administration lost their faith in Diem. On November 1, 1963, with the support of the US, a military revolution overthrew Diem. Against Kennedy’s wishes, the group’s leaders had Diem killed. Three weeks later, there was a tragedy unrelated to Diem’s demise; President Kennedy was assassinated. Vice-President Lyndon Johnson became president. South Vietnam was thrown into a state of turmoil after Diem’s assassination as ineffective leaders headed the government one after another. All the while, North Vietnam was sending aid to the Viet Cong; by late 1964, most of the Southern Vietnamese countryside was under the control of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. Although the ARVN outnumbered the Viet Cong by more than 10 to one, they could not contain much less defeat these guerrilla warriors. Like Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy, President Johnson did not was Vietnam to fall to communism. Because of this, he increased the US’s efforts there. In the summer of 1964, Johnson’s military advisers made plans to bomb North Vietnam; they hoped t pressure Ho Chi Minh to stop supporting the Viet Cong. But before the bombing could start, the plan had to be approved by Congress. Several incidents of the coast of North Vietnam triggered Congress to give the plan its approval. The US destroyer // Maddox // had been on patrol in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin when it was fired on by to North Vietnamese torpedo boats. On August 4th, just two days after the first incident, // Maddox // and another destroyer reported a second attack. No one could confirm either of the attacks, and US jet pilots who had been flying overhead during the second alleged attack said they had not seen any North Vietnamese boats. Nonetheless, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving the president the power to use military force in Vietnam. President Johnson began bombing North Vietnam in March of 1965; he sent the first combat troops to Vietnam at about the same time. The first troops he sent to Vietnam were the Marines. The number of troops in Vietnam quickly grew from 75,000 at the beginning of the year to 184,000 at the end of the year. With their better-quality, more advanced weapons, it seemed like the US forces would quickly defeat the primitive Viet Cong; Americans would soon realize that this was not the case. Vietnam was not at all like World War II. There was no front line; the elusive Viet Cong were everywhere. They often blended in with the general population, attacking American soldiers in cities or in the countryside when they were least expecting it. The style of fighting in Vietnam was different as well. Although the Viet Cong lacked the advanced weaponry and firepower the US had, they had their own way of fighting. They used guerrilla warfare, taking American soldiers by surprise by attacking them in small groups. The Viet Cong also used underground tunnels and booby traps such as hidden grenades and hidden pits filled with sharpened bamboo sticks. Many soldiers obtained ghastly injuries from these booby traps. Even Vietnam’s land and climate was an obstacle. The oppressive heat, thick jungles, and unceasing rainfall made life miserable for soldiers. Finally, the Viet Cong were a different kind of enemy than the US had fought before. Although they lost many fighters, the Viet Cong were extremely dedicated fighting year after year. Their dedication came from their belief in what they were fighting for. The American forces sometimes used harsh, destructive methods to find Viet Cong. These tactics lost the support of Vietnamese villagers for the United States and were not always effective. Several forms of chemicals warfare were used in Vietnam. To reveal the enemy and destroy their ability to hide in the jungles, planes sprayed a chemical called Agent Orange over large areas, killing plant life. Planes also dropped bombs of a jellied gasoline called napalm. These bombs burned violently, wiping out enemy bases and villages as well. While chemicals helped American forces destroy the Viet Cong’s hideouts and supplies, they also harmed many innocent Vietnamese villagers. Some protesters opposed the use of chemicals in the war because of the widespread destruction and suffering they caused. Chemicals hurt American soldiers as well; it was later discovered that exposure to Agent Orange could result in skin diseases and cancers. Search-and-destroy missions were yet another tactic used by the US forces. US soldiers burned or bombed villages thought to be hiding Viet Cong soldiers. Villagers were treated very harshly. On January 30 and 31, 1968, the Viet Cong launched a surprise offensive that changed the course of the Vietnam War. It occurred during Tet, the Vietnamese celebration of the lunar new year. US military bases and over 100 South Vietnamese cities were attacked the Viet Cong. The enemy killed not only US soldiers but government officials, schoolteachers, doctors, and priests as well. Although this attack was unsuccessful, with the Viet Cong losing 45,000 soldiers compared to combined American and South Vietnamese losses of 3,400 soldiers, it caused Americans to worry that a US victory might come at a higher cost than they had bargained for. Some people began to fear that victory was not as close as they had thought. For others, the Tet offensive raised doubts that the US’s mission in Vietnam was prudent; to many, the war was beginning to seem senseless. These doubts triggered President Johnson to change his policies. He turned down a request for more troops. In March of 1968, he announced that he planned to stop bombing most of North Vietnam and instead begin bargaining for peace. But US morale continued to sink. Many soldiers had stopped believing that the US could win the war. The South Vietnamese government lacked the support of the people and the South Vietnamese often avoided fighting. American soldiers wondered why //they// had to fight a war that the Vietnamese refused to fight. The event that best demonstrated the collapse of the US forces was the My Lai Massacre. On March 16, 1968, a US platoon rounded up and shot between 175 and 500 unarmed civilians, mainly women, children, and elderly men. When the news of the massacre reached Americans in 1969, Americans were horrified. To them, My Lai represented an appalling deterioration of discipline in the US military. While the war had been escalating, opposition among Americans had been growing as well. People protested the war for many different reasons. Some believed that the US should not have gotten involved in another country’s war; others felt that the US’s methods of fighting were immoral. There were countless additional reasons to oppose the war. College students made up a large portion of the protesters. In some demonstrations, young men burned their draft cards to symbolize their opposition to the draft. The antiwar movement became connected to the civil rights movement, especially after Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke out against the war in Vietnam. Richard Nixon was elected in 1968. In his campaign, he had promised to end the Vietnam War. He introduced his plan, called //Vietnamization,// in July 1969. Nixon’s Vietnamization strategy called for the gradual withdrawal of American troops. Ground fighting was to be turned over to the South Vietnamese. Nixon promised to withdraw 25,000 US ground troops by the end of the year. Little did the American public know that Nixon had already begun secret bombing raids of Cambodia to stop North Vietnamese troops and supplies from being transported along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. When the public found out about these bombings, people were very upset that the government had expanded the war and tried to keep it a secret. Then, on June 13, 1971, the New York Times began publishing a series of top-secret papers from the Department of Defense. Known as The Pentagon Papers, these publications proved that the four previous administrations had not been honest about Vietnam either. It was discovered that the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations had authorized a massive military buildup in Vietnam even while they were promising the public that they were planning a gradual removal of troops. The fact that the federal government had deceived the public on such an important issue caused distrust of the government among the people. Despite all of this, Nixon won a landslide victory in 1972 because of his promise that he would bring the war to an end. The United States signed a peace agreement with North Vietnam and the Viet Cong on January 27, 1973. The US agreed to withdraw all of its troops; North Vietnam agreed not to invade South Vietnam. The last US troops left Vietnam on March 29. But even though the war was over for the US, North Vietnam launched one final invasion of South Vietnam, capturing Saigon on April 30 and renaming it Ho Chi Minh City. It was only then that the war truly ended. The Vietnam War caused terrible destruction and suffering. Over 1.2 million Vietnamese died; American bombing and chemical spraying damaged forests and farmland. The war left Vietnam’s economy in ruins, putting many people in poverty. When the country was reunited under North-Vietnamese Communist rule, many people fled the country; nearly 173,000 Vietnamese had come to the United States by 1980. About 58,000 American soldiers were killed, and over 300,000 were injured. Upon their return home, they were treated coldly by the public. Another legacy of the Vietnam War was the passing of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. This amendment to the Constitution lowered the legal voting age from 21 to 18. People believed that if you were old enough to be drafted, you were old enough to vote. Since Vietnam, Americans have been less willing to become involved in overseas wars. The War Powers Act was passed to limit the president’s “war-making” powers. Finally, Vietnam made many people distrustful of government leaders because of lies and false information that had mislead the public.
 * Topic Summary**

 -WORKS CITED-

"Agent Orange." __American History__. 2009. ABC-CLIO. 30 May 2009 . Garcia, Jesus, Donna Ogle, C. Risinger, Joyce Stevos, and Winthrop Jordan. __Creating America A History of the United States__. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.


===="Vietnam War." __American History__. 2009. ABC-CLIO. 26 May 2009 . ==== ===="napalm." __American History__. 2009. ABC-CLIO. 30 May 2009 . ====

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