Tag Archive for: course-nocourse

The Vietnam War. I think of it as the war we didn’t need to get involved in. I think it and, most likely, a majority of America did too at the time. With wave after wave of troops were sent across the Pacific, many Americans were probably thinking, “Here we go again. We do not need this!” America was still recovering from the Cold War and, to keep alliances, President Eisenhower sent equipment and help over to South Vietnam in 1955, while the US was still fighting the Cold War, to fight their civil war. War on Vietnam was not even declared until 1961. Fighting in Vietnam lasted almost nineteen and a half years and more than 3 million people, including 58,000 Americans, were killed throughout the whole ideal.

Throughout the war, Americans tried hard to be patient with their government, truly believing that they knew what was right for the country and that they would be in Vietnam a couple years at the most. A couple of years slowly turned into a decade and, still, no resolve was made in Vietnam. Americans were losing their patience. With so many families members serving overseas, with even a few thousand were missing in action or prisoners of war, families were anxious to bring them all home. Without being able to do much, they wrote letter after letter to their congressmen, begging and pleading with them to vote to bring their troops home.

I read over sixty of those letters, almost all of them said the same thing: bring our troops home. Two of those letters stood out the most to me. The first was a letter from a man named Ed Gonzalez. His letter is short, sweet, and to the point. He even knows that it’s direct and states it in the “P.S.” section of the letter. He mentions that the US “can once again restore its respectability among the other nations.” I find that extremely interesting because he knew and understood that the war was pointless and it was damaging the US, both as a country and a leader to other countries.

The second letter wasn’t really a letter; it was a copy of a newspaper article written by a man named Nat Henderson. The article was an “obituary” for the U.S. Army. It talked about the large amount of soldiers dying in Vietnam, leading toward the “death” of the entire branch. It goes on to say that positive attributes of the country had died, including obedience, pride, honor, sacrifice, and patriotism and that negative attributes, such as anarchy, civil disobedience, shame, defeat, selfishness, and apathy, has taken the Army’s place.

What amazes me about both of these letters and all the other letters that I read, is that they all shared a common idea: bring the troops home; they genuinely care for the troops, see all they do for the country, and want them home safe and sound. I love that they cared enough to fight for them. Nowadays, I find that people aren’t as affected or caring, at least from my experience. Coming from a military family, it frustrated me when people would not care that we had millions of people fighting and even dying just so we could live in such a country where we were free to go to school, free to practice whatever religion we wanted, and even hold public office, no matter what gender, race, or religion we were. I can imagine that is how Americans back then felt too. They understood the sacrifices the military made for them and wanted to repay them by bringing them home after such a long time away from home.

Overall, I found myself relating to the Americans of the time quicker than I anticipated because of my personal experience with war and the military.

     The sixties era is either forgotten or under appreciated. The only prior knowledge I had learned about the sixties was in my AP US History class in high school. The truth is this was the era that was most revolutionary. The sixties era was a major push for greater movements. Feminism was on the raise and women were now not taking no for an answer. Vietnam was the first televised war and this type of media led to the antiwar. Afro-American’s experienced a revolutionary change within them trying to stand up for social justice. In the previous week I had read a various archives on the Vietnam War. I had read a letter that stuck out to me, this letter was written to Senator Biz Johnson from the Committee on Behalf of POW-MIA’s wives and families. This letter had asked senator Johnson to please find the father of a little boy (Todd) who was later marked as MIA.

Initially after reading the letter sent to Biz I was overwhelmed with emotions angry because this little boy and his mother did not know the whereabouts of their loved ones. I had found myself hopeful to see senator Biz find where Todd’s father. In the end I was left heartbroken for not just this family but for the many who do not know where their family members are. When first selecting this document the personal reasoning to selecting this one was to hopefully just discover where Todd’s fathers whereabouts are. The research I had conducted to help me gain a better understanding was not as surprising as I thought.

The Documentary The Sixties The Years That Shaped a Generation connected with the letter that had caught my interest. The connection I had made was pretty obvious was that family members, wives, children and even friends were not being informed on the status of their loved ones deployment. Many of those people often never knew at all what happened to them after the war until the octagon papers. Even when women pushed for a better type of clarity in regards to their loved one was never found out. Those who were fortunate enough to hear from their loved one were hearing of either the terrors of the battle field or how they feel much safer over seas then in the seas.

I have not a big change of opinion on what I had before written about when talking about the archives. At most I feel more sympathy towards the families who still do not know what happened to their loved ones in the war.

Upon viewing The Sixties a Year that Shaped a Generation I personally have more of an emotion and thought process towards the whole subject of the Vietnam War. I have always personally view history as just that, history. To say the least, I had always thought it was cool to just learn what had happen in the past to see just exactly what steps had to be taken to have actually led me to this point in time and that’s all it was to me nothing more and nothing less. I was never able to really connect with history, I wasn’t one of those people who had famous ancestors or whose family was a part of some big movement so to me there was no way to connect with history and in that being so I could never like History. The only way I was ever able to connect with history was when I formed some sort of connection or some type of bond with the events of the past, which if most people knew would see me as being weird having to imagine myself in the dust bowl to be intrigued by it.

Likewise, when I was being told for the first time I would be looking through old letters to the Congressmen Biz Johnson during the Vietnam era I was both excited and a bit hesitant because after all it was history and I was obviously a fan of history. To my greatest surprise I was actively engaged and intrigued by all the letters, postcards, and telegrams I managed to surface though. At the time when I was reading though the many articles of history I couldn’t help but to get a nostalgic feeling of almost as if I was there feeling all the emotions and tensions as these people right the letters for the first time. I always kind of understood just how bad the Vietnam War was and the era around it, how the U.S citizens did not approve of the war at all. After watching the documentary, however my outlook about the whole era has dramatically changed from being merely just a point in time where a war happened to a point in time where the U.S. was falling apart.

I was one of those people who was under the impression that the Red Scare, fight for Civil Rights, the Hippie movement, Environmental movement, Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and Vietnam War and just all those big traumatic events were equally spaced out from one another throughout history. However as the documentary pointed out to me I could not have been any more wrong, they all happened relatively in matters of seconds from each other. I fully and truly did not know just how bad America was and just how many different scandals and events were happening at that time. To me it was just so interesting how through a time where so much was going on at a given point in that same time so much getting done such as civil rights being achieved as well as a new found movement in which as never been anticipated the Environmental movement.

When I first went through all the letters in my given stack it struck me to see how even veterans and ex-veterans were against the war and I could only make assumptions on why they felt the way in which they did. Then again after watching the video seeing how veterans would just throw away the medals they received during the war and burn their uniforms it completely blew me back. The fact that they were so easily able to do that when they just risked their lives in my eyes are counterintuitive, but I could never even begin to feel the way that they did. Something that also took me for a trip was the fact that the President had lied about an attack on the U.S. just to send out troops to Vietnam when they did not need to be there is just insane to me.

Seeing that how almost all the efforts being put into a war in which we almost had no business being in was so baffling. I now perfectly understand why veterans were ashamed of this country and why they didn’t want to accept what they had received, because they felt it wasn’t right. I understand why they could not feel good about themselves because essentially they were committing atrocities. Now I am not saying that I agree with those statements because I cannot, I don’t know enough nor was I there through it all to feel what they had felt.

Through this whole experience although I cannot understand what the people of this era were feeling I do empathize with them. I cannot imagine just what half of them might be feeling the amount of hatred and pain they must be going through is beyond what I could comprehend. I am glad however that I was given this opportunity to experience this historic time of history in a matter which I might not have even been able to do before, and now I have a completely new outlook in this time in history as well as history itself.

    It’s always been made apparent to me in past history courses that there was massive unrest over American presence of American armed forces in Vietnam and Cambodia, but I always seem to forget the extent to which this unrest reached. The dedication of college students to not only attend, but plan and organize protests and demonstrations all over the country astounds me, largely because I have never experienced that in my life time, in spite of there being reason for there to be demonstrations. While there have been the “Occupy” movements and more recent demonstrations in places such as Ferguson, it makes me wonder why there were no massive movements for the war in Iraq. The reasoning behind this, as I was exposed to in a critical thinking class this semester, may be that this generation of Americans have become so used to sensationalism and violence in the media and on the news that we have become complacent to actual issues. It had, however, been unknown to me that the movements of young adults were not just occurring in the United States at the time- as pointed out in the documentary, college students of countries such as France and Italy were all fighting and speaking out against their governments. Their motivations were much the same as those held by the American public- peace and fairness.

The documents from the folder I was given were primarily arguing against the war, and I found most of them to driven out of anger and fear. The emotions were clear as day on the page, whether it be through swear words, messy handwriting, or aggressive language. The letter that I selected stood out to me because of its restraint. Considering that it was written by a married couple who were able to maintain a calm demeanor as they wrote, I can assume that this was likely an older couple, since the younger activists were all driven highly by emotions such as anger and resentment, as was made apparent in the documentary. It hadn’t occurred to me that the writers may be older until I had seen through online research, as well as the documentary, that America’s youth was running on pain and hostility. This couple instead expressed feelings of loss for their patriotism and belief in their country. Though they still refer to America as “great,” they sound defeated in that their respect for the United States has diminished.

    I understand that Congress was acting in part according to the desires of the American public, at the start of the war, to take action overseas. It is so easy to try to place the blame entirely on Congresses shortcomings; however, I feel that it would be narrow-minded to make such an accusation without thinking contextually. Prior to looking further into the national and international context of the sixties, I also would have placed blame entirely on the governments actions. What I have realized, though, is that the government was not just acting- it was reacting. They were trying, at least at first, to circumvent communism and to satisfy the fears of the American people. Though it is my personal belief that there came a point where the deaths and refusal to remove ourselves from the war would have to be considered the fault of the government, I don’t believe that they were acting entirely outside of their bounds as representatives of the general population of the United States.

    I would not say that m opinion has necessarily been changed, but I would say that it has expanded. In spite of having some knowledge on the military actions in Vietnam and Cambodia, it has been made apparent to me that this knowledge had actually been more limited than I would have expected. This small introduction into the process of research has been an experience unlike any that I have experienced before. Being able to interact directly with and physically hold pieces of history gives a new level of depth to my prior understanding of what happened during the sixties.