Transcript The Late Cold War - Kelly Road Secondary School

Losing Vietnam in the Living Rooms of America
Warning: Graphic Images
THE LATE COLD WAR
The Mai Lai Massacre
 On March 16, 1968 the angry and frustrated men
of Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, Americal
Division entered the Vietnamese village of My
Lai. "This is what you've been waiting for -search and destroy -- and you've got it," said
their superior officers.
 A short time later the killing began. When news
of the atrocities surfaced, it sent shockwaves
through the U.S. political establishment, the
military's chain of command, and an already
divided American public.
 As many as 500 were killed, there were also
raping and beatings
 Massacre
As the "search and destroy" mission unfolded, it
soon degenerated into the massacre of over 300
apparently unarmed civilians including women,
children, and the elderly.
 Calley ordered his men to enter the village firing,
though there had been no report of opposing fire.
 According to eyewitness reports offered after the
event, several old men were bayoneted, praying
women and children were shot in the back of the
head, and at least one girl was raped and then killed.
 For his part, Calley was said to have rounded up a
group of the villagers, ordered them into a ditch, and
mowed them down in a fury of machine gun fire.
 Call for Investigation
Word of the atrocities did not reach the
American public until November 1969, when
journalist Seymour Hersh published a story
detailing his conversations with a Vietnam
veteran, Ron Ridenhour. Ridenhour learned of
the events at My Lai from members of Charlie
Company who had been there.
 Before speaking with Hersh, he had appealed to
Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon to
investigate the matter.
 The military investigation resulted in Calley's
being charged with murder in September 1969 -a full two months before the Hersh story hit the
streets.
 NOTE: Mai Lai Heroes
 Later of course the American public and the world
was to learn that just as the villains of Mai Lai were
American soldiers, so too the heroes of Mai Lai were
also American Soldiers.
 Hugh Thompson, Army helicopter pilot, with his
door-gunner Lawrence Colburn and crew chief Glenn
Andreotta came upon U.S. ground troops killing
Vietnamese civilians in and around the village of My
Lai.
 According to Chief My Lai prosecutor William
Eckhardt, “When Thompson realized what was
happening he put his helicopter down, put his guns
on Americans, and said he would shoot them if they
shot another Vietnamese.”.
 Both the American public and Vietnam veterans owe
a debt of gratitude to these heroes of Mai Lai.
 Sources:
 ^ a b "Murder in the name of war — My Lai".
BBC. July 20, 1998. ^ a b c d e f g Summary
report from the report of General Peers. ^ a b
Department of the Army. Report of the
Department of the Army Review of the
Preliminary Investigations into the My Lai
Incident (The Peers Report), Volumes I-III
(1970).
 Source: PBS
 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/tre
nches/my_lai.html
A. Background
 By 1970, events like this resulted in the anti-
war movement becomingvery strong
 April 30, 1970 Nixon addressed the nation,
announcing a further escalation in the
hostilities
 Intelligence showed large numbers of Viet Cong
basing themselves in Cambodia
 Nixon would begin a major bombing offensive to
target these groups, and supply routes into South
Vietnam
B. Four Dead in Ohio
 Angry students hurled rocks and flares at a
ROTC building, starting a fire
 The Governor of Ohio ordered 900 National
Guardsman to “restore order” on the campus.
 On May 2, students from Kent State University burned down
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the campus Army ROTC building (a dilapidated little building
scheduled to be torn down).
Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes immediately sent in the
National Guard and personally visited the campus the next day,
May 3, promising to use "every force possible" to restore order.
He condemned the Kent students as "the worst type of people
we harbor in America...worse than the Communists."
He added, "We're going to eradicate the
problem!" Approximately 800 Ohio Guardsmen were on the
campus and another 400 were nearby in the city.
On May 4, while classes were being held as usual, around 1,000
students joined protesters, some shouting and taunting the
Guardsmen but most just watching the excitement. At noon
the order was given to break up the demonstration.
The Guard fired teargas canisters and advanced on the
students. Below is the account of Alan Canfora, one of the
students who participated in the demonstration….

Immediately as our peaceful anti-war rally began, approximately 75 members of the Ohio
National Guard attacked.... As these guardsmen wearing helmets and gas masks marched
and fired tear gas [above], we ran away from the KSU Commons up over "Blanket Hill" and
down into the Prentice Hall dormitory's parking lot. The armed guardsmen followed us over
the hill and then settled on a practice football field for perhaps ten minutes. During this time, a
stand-off occurred as a few rocks were thrown back and forth by both students and
guardsmen. Because we stood hundreds of feet apart the rocks were ineffective and both sides
ceased that activity.
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As some of us walked closer to shout our anti-war and anti-National Guard anger, perhaps
250-feet away, about a dozen guardsmen kneeled and aimed toward us. I stood my ground
and shouted towards the armed troops who had their fingers on their rifle triggers. Since there
was no logical reason to aim or shoot, I assumed they would not fire and I was correct -- at
that moment. Soon, however, the troops regrouped and began to march away back up the hill.
We assumed they were marching in a retreat back over the hill to the KSU Commons.
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We were quite shocked when, at the hilltop, perhaps a dozen members of Troop G
simultaneously stopped, turned and aimed their rifles [below]. What followed was a 13 second
barrage of gunfire, mostly from M-1 rifles, into our crowd of unarmed students. Some other
guardsmen from Company A also fired non-lethal shots. A total of 67 bullets were fired by the
guardsmen from the hilltop. Most of the bullets were fired over 300 feet into the distant
Prentice Hall parking lot. Two of the students killed, Allison Krause and Jeff Miller, were
protesters. Two others, Sandy Scheuer and Bill Schroeder were bystanders. Jeff was killed 275
feet away from his killer. Allison was 350 feet away. Sandy and Bill were approximately 390
feet away. Nine others, including myself, were wounded. Dean Kahler remains in a
wheelchair after he was shot in the back.
 In reaction to the Kent State Massacre, approximately 4
million students on college campuses across the country
participated in strikes and demonstrations, causing over
900 campuses to close.
 Just five days after the shootings, 100,000 people
demonstrated in Washington against the war.
 Questions arose almost immediately about why shots
were fired and who was responsible. The President's
Commission on Campus Unrest directed the blame at
the students for provoking the tragedy.
 A special state grand jury exonerated the Guardsmen
and then indicted about two dozen students for the
disturbance preceding the shooting. (One of the
Governor's special prosecutors even told a reporter that
he felt the Guardsmen should have shot more students!)
 The Guardsmen successfully thwarted investigators by
removing their name tags and switching assigned weapons.
 They denied having been ordered to fire. (Two eyewitnesses,
both ex-Marines who had served in Vietnam, said they saw a
sergeant--later identified as Myron Pryor--give a signal to fire.)
 The Guardsmen claimed that their lives were endangered by
encroaching students, even though a Justice Department
investigation concluded that the students never came close
enough to pose even a remote threat.
 Pressured by the victims' families, the Justice Department
asked a federal grand jury to indict eight Guardsmen, but
(according to Nixon's chief domestic advisor John Ehrlichman)
the President personally ordered Attorney General John
Mitchell to block the prosecution at the request of Governor
Rhodes.
 Families of the victims spent the next several years trying to pin
the responsibility for the Kent State tragedy on Governor
Rhodes and the Ohio Guard.
 Criminal trials in both federal and state court were either
dismissed or ended in acquittals. (Civil lawsuits filed by
survivors and families of the four dead students were
eventually consolidated into one: Scheuer vs. Rhodes.)
 A civil trial for wrongful death and injury failed when the judge
excluded key evidence and the jury decided against awarding
damages to the parents; but the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals
in Cincinnati overturned the verdict because of jury tampering
and a second civil trial began in 1978.
 On January 4, 1979, an out of court settlement was
reached. The State of Ohio awarded the plaintiffs $675,000 in
damages along with a statement of "regret" (not an apology or
admission of wrongdoing).*
*Settlement of the award was as follows: Dean
Kahler $350,000; Joseph Lewis $42,500;
Thomas Grace $37,500; Donald MacKenzie
$27,000; John Cleary $22,500; Alan Canfora,
Douglas Wrentmore, Robert Stamps and
James Russell $15,000 each; families of the
four slain students also received $15,000
each; attorney fees and expenses were
$75,000.
 Allison Krause
350 feet away
shot through the arm
and chest
 Sandy Scheuer
400 feet away
shot through the
throat
 Bill Schroeder
400 feet away
shot in the back
 Jeff Miller
275 feet away
shot through the head
 Canadian writer-
philosopher,
Marshall McLuhan
comments: “The
war in Vietnam was
lost in the living
rooms of the nation.
John Filo's iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning
photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio, a fourteenyear-old runaway, kneeling over the dead
body of Jeffrey Miller after he was shot by the
National Guard.
 Source: David C. Hanson, Virginia Western
Community College
http://www.vw.cc.va.us/vwhansd/HIS122/Ken
tState.html
C. “Napalm Girl” - Phan Thị Kim
Phúc
8 June 1972: Kim Phúc, center left, running
down a road near Trang Bang after a VNAF
napalm attack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
Ev2dEqrN4i0
 Kim Phúc was a resident in the village of Trang Bang, South
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Vietnam. On June 8, 1972, South Vietnamese planes, in
coordination with the American military, dropped a napalm
bomb on Trang Bang, which was under attack from and
occupied by North Vietnamese forces.
She joined a group of civilians and South Vietnamese soldiers
fleeing from the Cao Dai Temple located in the village along the
road to safe South Vietnamese positions.
A South Vietnamese pilot mistook the group as a threat and
diverted to attack it. Along with other villagers two of Kim
Phúc's cousins were killed.
Associated Press photographer Nick Út earned a Pulitzer Prize
for the photograph. It was also the World Press Photo of the
year 1972. T
he image of her running naked amidst the chaotic background
became one of the most remembered images of the Vietnam
War. In an interview many years later, she remembers yelling
"it's hot, it's hot" in the picture.
 After taking the photograph, Út promptly
took Kim Phúc and the other children to a
hospital in Saigon where it was determined
that her burns were so severe that she would
not survive.
 However, after a 14 month hospital stay and
17 surgical procedures, she returned home.
 Kim Phuc later went to university in Cuba
 During an airplane refueling in Gander,
Newfoundland and Labrador, her and her
husband got off the plane and defected by
asking for political asylum in Canada.
 They now live in Ajax, Ontario and have two
children.
 In 1996, she again met the surgeons who
saved her life.
 In 1997 she became a Canadian citizen
 On November 10, 1997, Kim Phúc was named
a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador.