Vietnam veteran's history project
One of the students in my class, Keenan, took the short clips of all the interviews and created a DVD to show at exhibition.
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This is the interview my group, Ben Clark, Ian Duthie,and myself, did with our Veteran, Joe Perino.
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Project Overview/Reflection
The Vietnam Veteran’s History Project had two parts. In groups of three we interviewed a Vietnam Veteran about his experiences during the war and the long term effects it had. My guy was Joe Perino, a disabled veteran. The interviews had to be at least 30 minutes and are sent to the Library of Congress where they’ll be displayed on their website. The other part was a written essay about the Gulf of Tonkin. We sorted through biased documents to try and pick out the true events that took place in the Gulf of Tonkin. Using historical thinking skills we took a stand on what we believed really happened. For the exhibition we had 2-5 minute clips from our interviews playing on a DVD while we were all upstairs with excerpts from our papers. To lead up to this project we took a field trip to the Southern Ute Museum in Ignacio. There we met with Rod Grove, a Southern Ute Veteran who served in Vietnam. He talked about his experiences and the effects of PSTD and Agent Orange. In a park near the Museum the Southern Utes have made a memorial to acknowledge all their Veterans. They have different ones for the different wars and Rod showed us where his name was on the Vietnam list.
The roles in our group were divided into Communicator, Logistics, and Tech. I was the communicator so my role was to contact our Veteran and make plans for where and when to do the interview. The logistics person was in charge of paperwork and the tech person made sure we had a camera that worked and burned the interview onto DVD’s to send to the Library of Congress and the Veteran. I succeeded in my role for one thing because I’m good at talking to adults I don’t know. I also succeeded because I’m finally capable of stepping back and not dominating in a group setting, and I let what happened happen instead of fighting it. I could have been better at reminding our Veteran when things were so we didn’t have scheduling conflicts. I could have trusted my group members even more than I did because they’re great and were responsible. If I got to choose my role again I would stay with communicator because I enjoyed that job. All the groups wrote their own questions to ask in the interview. We came prepared with 52 questions, which was a lot more than a lot of the other groups, but we didn’t use a single one. Joe started talking and he talked the whole interview for 40 minutes, we just had to listen. I’ll never forget the way Joe kind of came alive and was in a different place when he talked about his team and buddies he had during the war. He came to life talking about them and telling stories. He brought photo albums with him and it amazed me he remembered who everyone was and what had been happening at the time of each picture. He had a lot of really interesting points and stories about things you don’t hear in normal war stories. Those little details that really made the world he talked about come to life. For example he talked about the clouds of mosquitos you’d see lifting off the rice patty fields and how the only way to keep from being eaten alive was to wear strait deet in your helmet. Something I really liked was that he kept bringing it back to the TV in people’s homes. Those people could just turn it off if the war program got to be too much, but these Veterans didn’t have that remote. Once it was on it was on forever. There is no end to the war these men are fighting. As soon as the combat and fighting is over, they have new battles of PTSD and Agent Orange. The biggest battle is fought at home in the heart. War is now so much more than that to me. It’s personal. It’s real. War used to be this horrible intangible thing I’d never met before. But after this project that changed. Now I understand it and I’ve seen what it can do. My Veteran is such a nice sweet man who was devoured by war. It’s harder to ignore it knowing that men like him are out there everyday dying for our country and we don’t even know their name, or the sacrifice they’re making.
To write our Gulf of Tonkin papers, we spent a while reading a packet of different documents about the event. The historical thinking skill that was hardest for me was sourcing. This was the hardest because I wasn’t very good at figuring where the document came from or any of that stuff. I got help from peers and Stephen to work through this problem but I definitely could improve. I was best at either close reading or reading the silences. Close reading was where you figured out things based on the tone of the document and the language used while reading the silences was just identifying what was missing in each document. I think these skills were easier for me because I naturally read into the language used and the way things are phrased. By the end of the document packet I was able to pick up on close reading things quicker.
Writing these papers was a long process of critiquing and revising. One major change I was able to make was cutting my evidence quotes in half. I had giant chunks of quoted material when all I really needed was a sentence or two. It made it a lot smoother to read and less boring. Another thing I changed was a change between my final draft and exhibition excerpt. In the paragraph I chose to use for exhibition I had a metaphor relating U.S. actions in Vietnam to a ‘childish blame game.’ I chose my paragraph because of the metaphor. For my exhibition excerpt I changed it and edited out some of the words used, to make it less harsh in case Veterans read it. This was really hard for me because often when I write something I become attached to it and deleting it or changing it is hard for me to do. I’m glad I did this, even though I never had a Veteran read my paper. While it made my argument less powerful, it probably did make it easier for people to take.
Gulf of Tonkin Paper
Despite the United States accusations against the people of Vietnam dictating an attack on their naval ship the U. S. S. Maddox, the U. S. used lies and deceit to provoke Vietnam into a war that was unnecessary.
Due to the biased sources from both sides, the true version of truth is hard to pluck out of the fluff surrounding the historic conflict. The U. S. claims to have been attacked for no reason, while the Vietnamese avidly insist they were only defending themselves. This quote was very much in support of whatever measures the U. S. wished to take: “Whereas naval units on the Communist regime in Vietnam, in violation of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations and of international law, have deliberately and repeatedly attacked United States naval vessels lawfully present in international waters, and have thereby created a serious threat to international peace” (Document 1). In defense of the accusations against them, Vietnam justified their actions in this statement: “In the afternoon of August 2, it encountered our patrol boats between Hon Me and Lach Truong in our territorial waters. In face of the provocations by the sea rovers, our patrol ships took action to defend our territorial waters and fishermen and chased the enemy ship out of our territorial waters. Afterwards, our patrol ships returned to their bases” (Document 9). Even though the class read several documents, none of them were an outsider’s perspective which says that the sources are biased. There’s lots of documents that agree with the U. S. and lots that also agree with the Vietnamese, making it difficult to determine the truth. However we have evidence the U. S. lied about many things regarding this conflict while we have no evidence suggesting the Vietnamese were lying. Based on the ratio it seems likely the U. S. had other purposes in mind.
The United States government used their iron-fist grasp on the media to play out a childish blame game on a global scale. Through the selective release of information, they maintained the facade that North Vietnam was to blame. This cable was received from the Maddox on August 4, 1964: “All subsequent Maddox torpedo reports are doubtful in that it is suspected that sonarman was hearing ships own propeller beat” (Document 7). The silences in this document are deafening. Reports from the Maddox weren’t even positive of attacks, but the U. S. insisted that the Maddox had been attacked, twisting the truth and pulling the strings of their puppet reporters. The government controlled the info released to the public, as evident in this conversation between President Johnson and Robert Anderson, that was kept secret: “There have been some covert operations in that area that we have been carrying on - blowing up some bridges and things of that kind, roads and so forth. So they ... fired and we respond immediately with five-inch [artillery shells] from the destroyer and with planes overhead.” The President admitted to provoking the Vietnamese by blowing up their bridges and roads to anger them. Throughout the rest of the conversation it’s phrased airily, as if this game is nothing more than that, instead of a conversation with the weight of thousands of real people’s lives as the price to play. These are adults in powerful positions, the time for childish games has long passed.
With the government telling lies to the people this way and that, it’s hard to find reason to trust them when they say we’re going to war to help defend the world against the rising demand in Communism. In an attempt to raise moral support and rally young men to serve, President Johnson gave a speech including this excerpt: “Most of the non-Communist nations of Asia cannot, by themselves and alone, resist the growing might and the grasping ambition of Asian communism. Our power, therefore, is a very vital shield. If we are driven from the field in Viet-Nam, then no nation can ever again have the same confidence in American promise, or in American protection.” (Document 5). The underlying truth evident in the excerpt, was that more than anything else, this war was about American pride, and asserting ourselves as the dominant protectors of the world. As a President inspiring civilians, this is not a message that should be sent. Arrogance will not help win a war, and the President is encouraging arrogance by saying that the U. S. is a dominant protector of the world. President Johnson doesn’t give enough credit to the Asian nations when he says they can’t manage on their own. The government lied about the true events at the Gulf of Tonkin, so maybe the whole rallying speech was a lie to. For a nation’s civilians to trust the government, the government first needs to trust its civilians.