Diane Carlson Evans Narrator

Kim Heikkila Interviewer

April 3, 2001 Telephone Interview

KH: This is a telephone interview with Diane Evans scheduled for nine o’clock, Tuesday, April 3, 2001.

[Kim Heikkila dials Diane Evans’ telephone number] Veterans DE: Diane Evans.

KH: Hi, Diane. It’s Kim Heikkila.

DE: Hi, Kim. How are you? Vietnam Society KH: I’m good. How are you? Project

DE: Good. Can you hang on one minute?

KH: Sure. WomenHistory Historical [Pause]

DE: Okay, I’m all yours. Oral

KH: [Chuckles] All right. Before I start asking you anything, let me just make sure that it’s okay with you if I record our conversation.

DE: Sure.Minnesota’s Minnesota

KH: Okay. So China Beach. I think that this little bit on China Beach will be included in the [dissertation] chapter on the [Vietnam Women’s] Memorial. I was just doing some reading about China Beach and saw in a footnote—this was before I had watched any of the episodes—in one article that somebody said, “Oh, and by the way, China Beach eventually won the support of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Project after they called a meeting with Diane Evans and some of the other people of the project and worked on this episode . . .” blah, blah, blah. That was just a pearly little gem I found tucked away in the back of this article. Of course, now I have seen the episode. I’ve had the tapes through that particular episode where you all are interviewed and

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they’re mixing those clips with footage from the TV show. So I’m really curious as to how you got involved in China Beach.

DE: [Chuckles] Where was the footnote, Kim?

KH: Oh! What article? I believe it was either in an article by a woman name Sasha Torres or Amanda Howell. If you want the specifics, I can certainly find it for you. I don’t have it in front of me right at the moment. It was just an article on China Beach and I believe [unclear] melodrama.

DE: Okay. Well, just a couple things. This is really interesting, isn’t it? Last week, I had an email message from someone named Chris Mauer from the History Channel in New York City. Would I come to New York City on April 12th and be interviewed, because they’re doing a piece on China Beach?

KH: Really? Veterans

DE: Can you believe this?

KH: Geez! What timing!

DE: I know. Vietnam Society Project KH: That’s weird.

DE: I thought, you know, this interest in China Beach . . . I have emailed him or her—it was a Chris, so I don’t know—back. ThisWomen was a Historyweek ago Monday, a week ago yesterday. It was just such a short cryptic little, “Would you come to NewHistorical York and be interviewed? We’re doing this thing on China Beach.” So I emailed back and I said, “Tell me more about the program. Tell me more about you.” I would expect to have a little more information than just a little abrupt three sentences. Oral

KH: Sure.

DE: “We’ll pay your travel and lodging.” Then I just got another message back, kind of a repeat of the firstMinnesota’s message, without anyMinnesota more information. I don’t want to be in New York next week. It takes me three days, two days of travel, too much wear and tear, and they haven’t been very forthcoming with the piece.

KH: That’s weird.

DE: So I just emailed Chris this morning and declined and said I would not be coming to New York, that I would be happy to be a resource and if they want to contact me, I can give them names of other women who have given me permission to give their names out to the press to be interviewed if things like this come up. So I could refer him to some other women who might be

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willing to talk to her or him. But I haven’t heard back, so I don’t know if the whole idea has fallen apart or . . . I don’t know where it’s going, but I’ll keep you informed on that.

KH: Yes, yes, I’d be really interested to see what’s going on. That’s interesting that there’s some interest there in China Beach all of a sudden. I wonder what it is.

DE: Okay. How I got involved with China Beach . . . I can tell you exactly how it started. I even remember the day they called. It was a Friday morning. But I’ll back up before that. I did not know that there was a program on television called China Beach until my dad had watched an episode. He called me and he said, “Diane, have you been watching China Beach?” I said, “What’s that?” He said, “There’s this new program on television and it’s about nurses in Vietnam.” I said, “I’ve never heard of it.” Dad said, “Well, the nurse on China Beach looks just you.”

KH: [Laughter] Veterans DE: Then I found out later from my mother, my dad couldn’t even watch the program anymore. Mom said he could not watch it because he would just break down and cry. He’d cry the whole time, because was seeing me, he thought, in this program. [Chuckles] My Mom had told me the whole year I was in Vietnam, my dad was really depressed. I found out all that later. So did I have anything to do with China Beach? No. Did they pattern Dana Delany’s character [Lieutenant Colleen McMurphy] after me? I don’tVietnam think so. If they did,Society I certainly didn’t know about it. But there were so many similarities it was kind Projectof spooky. She had all these brothers; I had all these brothers. She was from the Midwest; I was from the Midwest. The age . . . there was just a lot of . . . but maybe it was just kind of the All American Girl kind of thing.

KH: Yes. WomenHistory Historical DE: A lot of people think of the nurses who went to Vietnam as kind of the All American Girls, whatever that means. Oral KH: Right.

DE: [Chuckles] I have a problem with that kind of thing anyway, because why can’t black girls or Hispanic girls or Jewish girls be All American Girls? Minnesota’sMinnesota KH: Oh, yes, there are definite connotations to that idea.

DE: So then my dad had told me about this, so I thought, when is it on? I’ll watch one. Kim, you don’t know this, but I never watch TV. I never watch TV; Mike and I didn’t own a TV for the first fifteen years of our marriage. Our children grew up without television. So I went over to a friend’s and decided to watch an episode of China Beach, and I was really troubled by it. It just so happened to be an episode where the white woman, I think played by Marg Helgenberger, was a prostitute or whatever. I just felt that the role of the Red Cross women was so demeaning. This episode was a lot about sex and an awful lot about drinking. I was just really disturbed by the

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whole thing in a different way than I’m disturbed about M*A*S*H*. I never could watch M*A*S*H* either, because M*A*S*H*, to me, so much of it was like Vietnam that it brought back memories that I just didn’t . . . It’s like, I’ve been there. I’ve seen the real thing. Why would I watch M*A*S*H*? Plus, it’s not funny. I couldn’t see the comedy in a lot of it. There was Hot Lips coming out of the tent zipping up her pants, you know, after the men had been in.

KH: Right.

DE: You know, the whole connotation that women who went into the war zone were just kind of there for the men . . . Although I’ve heard so many people talk positively about M*A*S*H*, so I’m open-minded that M*A*S*H* has done a good thing for this country, because if it wasn’t for M*A*S*H*, a lot of people wouldn’t know there had even been a war in Korea.

KH: Right.

DE: So if it made people aware that people were dying in Korea andVeterans that there was a war there and there were American troops there, well, then that can’t be all bad.

Anyway, I watched this China Beach episode, but that was closer to home because that was Vietnam. I was so disturbed by it. I could not even think of watching it again. I felt like they were exploiting our service on a lot of different fronts: the sex, the booze, the drama. This one episode I watched—I forget the plot—I thought, Vietnamwho wrote this? SomeSociety twenty-year-old who didn’t know what he or she was doing and had never beenProject to Vietnam? It was so soap opera-ish. But, you have to remember, I have a very discerning eye. For me, I’m sure I was thinking if they’re going to do something about our service in Vietnam, it should be a documentary. Do the real thing. Don’t make it up. WomenHistory KH: Right. Historical

DE: There’s already so much misinformation out there. Now, remember, I’m in the middle—I am, like, right smack in the middle Oral of the process of building a memorial to women in Vietnam. And my whole passion and my whole role right now in life is to tell the truth about women who served in Vietnam, finally to unearth the truth about the women and get the real stories out there so the public can know what women really did and that it not be based on myth and stereotype, which we’ve been living with for over one hundred years: the myths of women who go in the military andMinnesota’s the stereotypes ofMinnesota m ilitary women, and civilian women, too. So, you know, what’s driving me is to get the truth out there to the American public, that, first of all, women went to Vietnam. And what did they do in Vietnam and how did it affect them and what were their contributions to the troops in Vietnam and what were their contributions to America as a whole and why do we need to recognize and honor them? For their service. Now I’m seeing this television program that’s going to portray women to America as idiots. Especially, I thought, it was demeaning to the Red Cross women. There were the references, like the name “Cherry.”

KH: Oh, my gosh, yes!

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DE: And, like, they were some airhead bimbos. Red Cross women had to be college graduates to go to Vietnam. The Red Cross women had to have been out of college, so they were older. They weren’t eighteen, nineteen. They were older and they had college degrees and they went, like those who joined the Peace Corps, because they wanted to serve their country in some way, not maybe in the military. Their motives were one of service, public service, as so many young people from the 1960s. I was just so disturbed. So I quit watching it and just kind of forgot about it. [Chuckles]

But now I begin to hear about it from other women, and they’re calling me and saying, “What do you think about China Beach?” I said, “Well, I’m not happy.” They said they’re not either. They’re just really disturbed by it.

Then I got a call from Jamie, who is on my board, Evangeline Jameson. You might want to interview her. She served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. She’s an elderly person now. She’s in her seventies. She’s a single woman who gave her life to the military, served in three wars. She’s watching China Beach and she is absolutely appalled,Veterans so she wrote a letter to the producers and she wrote to Bill Broyles [, Jr., co-creator, co-writer and co-executive producer of China Beach]. And I hope she still has the letter, because maybe you could use it [unclear] it.

KH: Oh, yes.

DE: I hope she hasn’t thrown it away. She’s in thisVietnam mood now. She’s Society eighty and she wants to get rid of all the stuff in her office. I said, “Jamie, be careful Projectwhat you throw away. We need documentation.”

KH: Yes. WomenHistory DE: “Don’t throw away important papers.” I wouldHistorical love for her to find this letter for you, so you could quote verbatim. He wrote her a letter back—Bill Broyles. She appealed to his . . . You know, he’s a Vietnam veteran. Oral KH: Right, right.

DE: Bill Broyles is a Vietnam veteran. She appealed to his intelligence, because he is intelligent. You know, he was editor or publisher of newspapers or something. Didn’t he write for . . .? Minnesota’sMinnesota KH: He was editor of Texas Monthly and Newsweek.

DE: Newsweek. Yes! Newsweek.

KH: Yes, he was a big gun in there.

DE: He’s an intelligent man, and he’s a Vietnam veteran, and how dare he exploit what women did in Vietnam and how could he be part of this? Jamie and I had these conversations about this. She called me to say that she had written to him to tell him to take it off the air or do it right. She

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got a letter back from him saying that this was a 1960s story for a 1980s audience and the 1980s audience likes sex and violence. That was his response to Jamie.

KH: Oh.

DE: This is a 1960s story for a 1980s audience. So what does that tell you? He thinks the audience of the 1980s is so stupid that that’s all they want, too, but let’s rise above that and give the audience what we . . . Well, it’s Hollywood. It’s television. So, okay.

Then, I’m really hearing from the Red Cross women. They are just in despair over this. They just feel that, once again . . . The nurses are at least elevated a little bit, because Dana Delany is very likeable and very smart and quick.

KH: Yes.

DE: And she’s young, so she makes mistakes but she comes acrossVeterans as being very caring and compassionate and doing her best and all of that. Now, they’ve placed the Red Cross women beneath the nurses and that hurts.

Then, on a Friday morning one morning—I forget the year, but I could look it up—I got a call from this young woman, twenty-five. I asked her her age. I’m very bold. Vietnam Society KH: [Chuckles] Project

DE: She told me that they were going to do a piece on China Beach where they wanted to interview the real veterans and then use their stories on China Beach. I was, like, the eighty-ninth woman they had called. Of course,Women they’d Historygotten a lot of “no’s.” She went over the whole scenario with me and I said, “No.” She said, “Well,Historical why?” I said, “First of all, how old are you?” “She said, “I’m twenty-five.” I said, “Who’s writing the script for China Beach?” She said, “I am and some of us.” I said, “How old are all of you?” She said, “We’re all in our twenties.” I said, “Well, where do you get your stories?” Oral She said, “Well, we’re making them up.”

KH: Hmmm!

DE: I said, “It’s pretty obvious.” Then I let her know what I thought, just based on one program that I saw,Minnesota’s which maybe wasn’tMinnesota in all fairness to judge the whole thing by seeing one program. I explained to her what I felt by seeing one program and then the letters and phone calls that I had received from many, many, many women veterans who were very hurt and in dismay over the portrayal of their service. I said, “That’s what your program is doing. I don’t care to come in and have my service in Vietnam exploited by you.” When I explained to her the project that I was doing, which was to tell the truth about women who served in Vietnam and not to tarnish their service and to bring recognition to what they had done, I felt China Beach was a disservice to all women, not just to those of us who served in Vietnam. So we talked some more. She said something to me. She said, “Well, how can we tell the truth? How can we get the truth out there or a smidgeon of the truth? Remember, this is Hollywood; we do take liberties. How can we do

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that if we don’t talk to the real veterans and get the stories?” I said, “Why else are you doing this?” She said, “Well, you know, the ratings are going down.” I said, “Ah ha! So use us. Use us to improve your show and get the real stories. If I shared my story with you, how would it be used?” She said, “What we plan to do is actually show you, show the person talking so it’s coming from your own mouth. You’re sharing the story, and we are highlighting the real veteran on the program.” So I said, “You’re not taking liberties with my story? I’m actually sharing my story and that’s what the American people are going to hear and see?” She said, “Yes, but you will sign a release that anything that you say in the interview could be used down the road for a story.” I said, “The answer is ‘No,’ but let me think about this and I’ll call you on Monday.”

Over the weekend, I talked to my family. I called several members of the Board of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Project. I called Jamie. I wanted to know from board members how they felt about this because if I, as the chair and founder of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Project, went to California and appeared on China Beach, then it would appear that we’re supporting this program . . . Veterans KH: Right.

DE: . . . as a Project, because, after all, I’m the spokesperson for the Project. Yes, I’m a private citizen and I can vote and I can have my own opinions, but because of my visibility and association with the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Project, it would now appear that the Project is supporting China Beach or approving this program.Vietnam I was really concernedSociety about that. So I called all the women on the board who were veterans. I can’t rememberProject if I ca lled the entire board, but I polled the board to see if there was consensus, that they were comfortable with this. Every single one of them was, because they believed that we needed to do our part to help bring the truth to this program and they hoped that they would use the truth. WomenHistory KH: Okay. Historical

DE: It didn’t mean—and I never went on board as saying it—we support China Beach. That never happened. I showed my support, Oral I guess, of wanting to have more accurate stories to be portrayed on China Beach, but it wasn’t like we said, “Oh, the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Project endorses . . .” We never endorsed China Beach.

KH: Okay. Minnesota’sMinnesota DE: And I talked to my husband and the kids, and I told them how I felt about this, that I was struggling with this decision and what did they all think. Everybody I talked to—and I called my sister, who teaches school—they all said, “Think about M*A*S*H*. If it wasn’t for M*A*S*H* people wouldn’t know there were nurses in Korea.” People separate. A lot of people see these programs and they separate it out. But they also felt it was all we had. There was only one program out there and that was China Beach that was doing anything about highlighting women’s service in Vietnam.

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So I made my decision and called her on Monday and said I would come out there. I was interviewed by . . . Who was the other producer?

KH: John Sacrett Young.

DE: John Sacrett Young interviewed me for two hours, and I shared my story. Then I signed this release that anything that I said might appear as a story, and, of course, they would twist it and distort it—I was aware of all that—but my name would not be on the story. No one would know that it was my story.

When they aired the piece where the real veterans were showcased, I was with my family and some friends and we watched it together for the first time. I was really moved by that piece where they interspersed the actual veterans with footage that had been done in prior pieces. They took like a slide show, I guess. They took pieces from here and there and then fit it in with the story. I was quite taken by that program and thought they did a very good job with it. Of course, the response to that program, I was told by the people who called Veteransme later, was that the public loved it. So they wanted to do it again, and they were going to invite a new batch of women veterans out. They did. To my knowledge, it was done twice. Have you seen the sequel?

KH: No. No, I haven’t.

DE: There was a second piece that was done withVietnam real veterans. Society Project KH: Ah, okay.

DE: I thought both were well done. I liked that they invited journalists. They invited Red Cross and nurses so they got a cross sectionWomen of theHistory wome n who served rather than just nurses or just Red Cross. I thought the women veterans were wonderfulHistorical, the women who had actually served in Vietnam. They came across just so sincere and honest. Of course, then I found out later that what the public wanted was they didn’t want China Beach the way it was; they wanted the real veterans. That’s what the public wanted.Oral [Chuckles] With every program, they wanted to see the real thing, but of course China Beach couldn’t do that.

KH: Sure.

DE: Or wouldn’tMinnesota’s do it. The ratingsMinnesota did go up after that. Of course then, all of a sudden, it went off the air. That’s television.

KH: Yes.

DE: But I guess I receive my affirmation and my insight . . . I always learn the most from students and young people. That’s the one thing I love to do. As you know, that’s what takes up, still, a lot of my time is I go into colleges and universities and high schools and teach and talk to the kids. I remember I was in Wisconsin and I was speaking at the University of Wisconsin or wherever I was, and when it came time for questions, a male student stood up and said, “I really

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liked China Beach. If it wasn’t for China Beach, I wouldn’t know that you or that nurses had been in Vietnam or these women.” I said, “Oh, that’s wonderful. Let’s talk about this. I want to hear from you. Please, tell me what you think of China Beach.” And to a one, every single one that stood up said they liked the show. They loved it. They didn’t miss it. That’s how they were learning that women went to Vietnam. So then I asked them the question, “When you look at China Beach, do you think it’s all true?” They said, “No.” They knew it was Hollywood. They said they’d like to know what was true and what was just made up. They see through the Hollywood part. Not one told me that they disliked China Beach. Women, particularly, when they spoke up, their question to me was, “Was it really like that?” So then I explained to them that, for me, I could sort out the facts from the fiction, but my concern was that young people watching it don’t know fact from fiction because they weren’t there, but to just keep in mind that a lot of . . . the partying, yes, some of that went on. I said, “Everything that went on, I’m sure went on to some degree, but they seemed to capitalize on it a little too much.” What goes on back here at home is going to go on in a war zone.

KH: Sure. Veterans

DE: Young people fall in love. Young people have sex. Young people party. They drink. If that goes on here, of course it goes on in a war zone. But it seemed to me that it was a little too much. The white woman prostitute, you know, that part really . . . Why did they have to have that as part of the program? Vietnam Society KH: Yes. Project

DE: It was demeaning to the men, too, I thought.

KH: I don’t know if you ever readWomen Bill Broyles’History essay that is just so well known called “Why Men Love War”? Historical

DE: No, I haven’t. Oral KH: Oh! That might explain some of his take on China Beach. [Laughter] It was published, like, in 1984 in Esquire. It’s this much talked about essay about why men love war. He starts off talking a little bit about his experiences in Vietnam and how traumatic they were, but that, also, in some way, he really loved being there. So he kind of lays out this explanation for why he has this kind Minnesota’sof fond memory of beingMinnesota at war. Part of it is what you would expect. It’s a very intense experience. You have a real strong sense of camaraderie with the people you’re with, etcetera, etcetera. But then, he goes into these other explanations where he really says, “Well, men love war because it’s about sex and death. For men, war is the closest they can come to having power over life that women have when they give birth.” It’s this very kind of male erotica fantasy . . .

DE: That’s Bill Broyles.

KH: Yes, that’s Bill Broyles.

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DE: I’m on tape, so I can’t tell you [unclear].

KH: [Laughter] That’s where it comes out in those early episodes, at least, of China Beach . . .

DE: Fantasizing [unclear].

KH: Yes. Yes, it is. I have the scripts from not all the series but from a number of the episodes and I have the script from the pilot episode. He didn’t write it. John Sacrett Young wrote it. [Chuckles] But it wasn’t the dialogue that I thought was so interesting. It was the little kind of back-story descriptions of the characters that were so much about a male fantasy of what women were doing in a war zone. That actually got cleaned up a little bit by the time it got made into the show and broadcast. I mean, the broadcast was better than what was in the script. There’s this much-quoted line from one or both of them that says, “We’re thinking of China Beach as what would it be like to be in a women’s steam bath in the middle of a men’s locker room?” Well, that’s exactly what China Beach was. It’s about what men kind of peeping through the holes at their little fantasy women traipsing around in their male world. Veterans

DE: Yes.

KH: It’s very interesting to see these kind of background things.

DE: That’s what perpetuates the myth and the stereotypes,Vietnam that women Society who go off to war are there to please the men. They’re camp followers, the wholeProject thing. Wasn’t it you I talked with? Do you know where the name “hooker” comes from for prostitutes? Don’t you?

KH: I don’t know. WomenHistory DE: General Hooker. Historical

KH: No, I don’t think I’ve heard that. Oral DE: General Hooker in the Civil War and there is a statute of this man, of course, in Boston. When you go to Boston, in that wonderful square there, there’s a big horse and General Hooker is sitting on his horse, this big hero. General Hooker kept his men happy by having women follow his units around. Minnesota’sMinnesota KH: Oh.

DE: The guys called them “Hooker’s girls.”

KH: Oh, dear.

DE: That’s where the name hooker has come from. I just wrote a forward for a book. Let me see . . . I just sent it off to this woman who is writing a book on women veterans. I talked about even when we were in the service in the 1960s that why would a nice girl go into the Army? This

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whole kind of image that, well, nice girls wouldn’t be in the Army because then we’d be like a camp follower, you know. We’d be prostitutes or maybe we’re lesbians. [Laughter]

KH: Yes, yes.

DE: Being a lesbian, of course, back then was just . . . Thank God many people have become a lot more accepting and tolerant and open-minded and all of that.

Even when I came home from Vietnam—this is sidetracking just a little bit—I got my first job at North Memorial Hospital. It was brand new at the time. It was beautiful. It had carpeting on the floors. It was a beautiful new hospital, which was a huge mistake for me to go right from Pleiku, Vietnam, to a new hospital.

KH: Oh, man.

DE: I remember how awkward I felt with my peers. I guess I wasVeterans the strange one. They weren’t, but to me they were all strange. Of course, they thought I was pretty bizarre, I guess. I don’t know. I remember I didn’t want people to know that I’d just come from Vietnam, so I didn’t tell them. But of course on my application I had to write where I’d been to get the job recommendations and references. So I’d said, “Army Nurse Corps.” I didn’t put down Vietnam. Plus, I thought maybe they wouldn’t hire me if they thought I was a “crazy” Vietnam vet. So I just put down “Army Nurse Corps.” The head nurseVietnam was coming aroundSociety one day and she comes up to me and she says, “Well, I see you were in the ArmyProject Nurse Corps. Where were you?” I said, “Well, I was in a lot of places,” because I’d been at Fort Sam [Houston, Texas]. I’d been at Fort Lee [Virginia] and I’d been in Vietnam. So I said, “Well, I was at a lot of places.” She looked at me and she said—these are her exact words—“Well, you don’t look like you were in the Army.” WomenHistory KH: Uh! Oh. Historical

DE: It’s like, how am I supposed to look? Oral KH: Right.

DE: Am I supposed to be fat? Am I supposed to be ugly? Am I supposed to look like a man? Am I supposed to be mannish? What’s her image? This nurse was probably in her thirties. Minnesota’sMinnesota KH: Geez.

DE: What was her image of what an Army nurse should look like?

KH: That’s very telling.

DE: I never forgot that. First of all, it hurt, because here I’d just come from Vietnam and nobody had yet said, “Thank you,” for what I had done. Or acknowledged my service. Then, of course,

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the first thing they told me when I got to North Memorial was that I couldn’t start IV’s until I’d been supervised three times.

KH: Oh.

DE: And I had just started thousands of them. So my skills had not been acknowledged. There was just a lot of stuff. I only lasted three months at North Memorial. I quit and went back in the Army, and that’s another story.

I’m saying this, I guess, Kim, because I’m piecing together for you why then, later, it became this drive inside of me where I had this idea and I couldn’t give it up to tell the truth about, yes, what did women look like in Vietnam? That was part of why I was not going to let go of the vision that the Vietnam Women’s Memorial needed to be a statue and it needed to portray and look like women, because that’s what women looked like in Vietnam in wartime. First of all, the statue that we now have, the nurse tending to the wounded soldier, she’s beautiful, you know. People don’t look at her and say, “Oh, she’s a model and she’s gorgeous.”Veterans They look at her and see this compassionate woman who has not just beautiful features but is beautiful inside and the standing woman and the kneeling woman. This is what women looked like in Vietnam and this is what they did and how they, too, suffered. The kneeling woman portrays the futility and anguish of war. She’s sad. At that moment, maybe she’s not feeling strong. She’s feeling sad and the anguish of the war and whatever. Vietnam Society For me, China Beach, yes, it was some male fantasy abouProjectt what women would do in wartime, and that they’d have beautiful nurses surrounding them. They’d have these Red Cross, these doughnut dollies, pandering to their needs, and they’d have a white female prostitute pandering to their needs. It’s like, I just was, oh . . . So China Beach helped me, like this head nurse at North Memorial helped me . . . I Womendon’t knowHistory how to even put into words. It just made me feel all the more that it is about time this country recognizedHistorical who we really are and not some figment of people’s imagination. Also, I can’t even go see South Pacific anymore. Now, Glenn Close [unclear] plays Nellie Forbush. Go figure. She’s too old. Oral KH: [Laughter] Yes.

DE: The last time I saw that play, it’s, like, that’s it. I’m never going to this again. It just perpetuates the myth, you know? Minnesota’sMinnesota KH: Yes.

DE: These beautiful nurses are going to go off to war and make these men happy. The role of the media and the movies and plays of women in wartime has been romanticized. It’s been sanitized. It’s not been authentic, so where has the authenticity ever been with regard to what we’ve done in wartime? Did you see Platoon?

KH: Yes.

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DE: Well . . . [chuckles] The one quote, the one reference, to a military nurse in Vietnam was when a wounded soldier was dying on the battlefield and the medic said to him, “Just hang on. We’ll get you to the hospital and a nurse will give you a blow job.”

KH: Oh!

DE: Do you remember that?

KH: No, I don’t remember that particular line.

DE: It was the only line. I met Oliver Stone. He was at the Vietnam Veterans of America convention and they were giving him this big award for Platoon. He was sitting at a table of all men. I went up to him and, granted, I had something in mind, and I wanted to say it to him, and it had to do with that one reference. There’s wartime humor and things like that might have been said, but if it’s going to be the one and only reference in the film, why couldn’t it have said, “Hang on. We’ll get you into the hospital and you’ll see these beautifulVeterans nurses,” or something like that?

KH: Right, right.

DE: Or, “The nurses will be there for you,” rather than, “The nurse will give you a blow job.” Vietnam Society KH: That is awful! Project

DE: I went up to him. [Laughter] Kim, you won’t believe this. You will believe it. Of course, he didn’t know me from Adam until I said, “Mr. Stone, I’m Diane Evans with the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Project. We’reWomen the effortHistory that’s recognizing the women who served.” He dissed me. Historical

KH: Oh! Oral DE: He looked at me and he said, “Yes, I know what you have to say about what was said in the movie.” He turned his head away from me and started talking to the man next to him. It was a piece of work.

KH: DidMinnesota’s you see Born on theMinnesota Fourth of July?

DE: Yes, I did.

KH: What was your opinion of that? That really gets more into the post war, coming home, the VA [Veterans Administration] Hospitals and all that kind of stuff.

DE: I don’t remember a lot of it. I’d have to see it again to really . . . I really had a problem watching it because it just stirred up so much stuff.

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KH: Yes.

DE: I think as I was watching it, I was also blocking it out at the same time. I do that. I’m good at that. If I don’t want to be hurt by something or remember something, it’s like I’m there but I’m not there. I’d have to watch that again to give an honest critique of it.

KH: I think that’s a hard movie to watch anyway, and I don’t have any particular connection. It’s a hard one.

DE: I remember . . . Wasn’t it a lot of in the VA Hospital?

KH: Yes.

DE: What I thought was good that came out of it was not all VA Hospitals are horrible. Some are actually very good. We’re very lucky in Minneapolis to have a wonderful VA. Veterans KH: Yes.

DE: But it portrayed that particular VA, which was true, you know, in a very bad light.

KH: Yes. Vietnam Society DE: That was good, because let’s tell the truth. Let the AmericanProject public know that this is how our veterans were being cared for.

KH: I think that movies and TV shows and whatever that are graphic in that way can serve a purpose for people who haven’t experiencedWomenHistory it. I don’t think it’s all bad to kind of get a graphic Hollywood dose of what goes on in the world. Historical

DE: Right. Even still, to this day, people will comment to me about China Beach and how they wish it was still on television and Oral they wish there was something they could watch about what women did in Vietnam.

KH: Did you watch it after that vets episode? Did you follow it afterwards?

DE: Yes,Minnesota’s I did watch some afterMinnesota that. It was funny because a few of them that I did watch . . . Again, I didn’t have a TV, so I would go places. Or if I was out at the farm with my parents, then I would watch it with Mom and Dad, although Dad had a real hard time watching it. They did use, I know, one of my stories. I don’t know how many after that.

KH: Do you think that it improved as a whole after that?

DE: Yes, I did. I felt that there was more substance to the programs. I could almost pick out the ones that were real stories.

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KH: Hmmm. Hmmm. Interesting. Like I said, I have only had the tapes through the vets episode so I haven’t seen what’s come afterwards, but I have read articles about it where they say that, really, it gets much more complex and their characters are better developed as they go on. So I’m really curious to get the rest of the tapes and see what happens here.

What was interesting to me about that episode in particular—at the time I watched it, I even knew a little bit of the background of how it came together and why—is the way they put it together where there were clips of the people that they interviewed mixed with the clips from the show, from what had already occurred on the show. To me, it was very effective. But also, I thought, in some ways it worked to authenticate what they had already been doing.

DE: Yes, it exonerated them.

KH: Yes. In a way, I think it did. I think they, perhaps, had that in mind. I’m speaking purely off speculation here. The parallels were so amazingly close between what you said and what had happened on the show already, you know? Veterans

DE: Yes, I was struck by that.

KH: It was amazing!

DE: I was very struck by that. That’s where my senseVietnam of the show—I Society had only seen that one— was, well, there is some truth to this. When we go to see Projectmovies today, you go see . . . Hollywood really reflects a lot of what’s going on in our society. It takes years and years to do that. What was the first story that finally came out with Tom Hanks? Was it Philadelphia?

KH: Yes. WomenHistory Historical DE: It was about AIDS [Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome]. Then, after that now, we’ve got many movies with gay lovers and lesbian lovers. You know, you go to a movie now and it’s just part of movie going. Twenty Oral years ago, it wouldn’t even have been considered or thought of. As more and more secrets are exposed, there’s movies out there about incest. It takes years and years, I guess, for issues to come to light and they come to light through movies. I don’t know where I was going with that thought.

KH: [Chuckles]Minnesota’s It’s been veryMinnesota interesting. I just thought this China Beach connection kind of is an interesting way of putting into a bigger context what you and the project were doing at the same time, that all this stuff was coming out that was, as you’ve said, so badly misrepresenting what women were doing in Vietnam, that it gives all the more importance to what the Memorial Project was trying to do.

DE: Right. Like I told you, I had a very critical eye. So I’m not, in some ways, the best person to ask about this, because I was very critical. Here I was trying to get the truth out to the American public so that they could support a memorial which would honor these women.

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I guess what I would have wanted was a documentary to come out, a documentary every single week. [Chuckles] Somebody said, “Yes, nobody would watch it because it would be too much like watching the six o’clock news during the 1960s.” This was a very interesting comment. I’m glad I remembered to share this with you. Somebody had asked me what I felt about it. I said, “Well, I think it should be more truth and more realistic and more like a documentary.” This person said, “Yes, and no one would watch it,” because the American public in the 1980s was not ready to have another dose of Vietnam every week on their television. They were trying to forget Vietnam. President [Gerald] Ford said, “Let’s put this under the rug.” They were trying to put Vietnam out of their collective consciousness because it was painful. The reality of Vietnam was painful. He liked China Beach because it wasn’t exactly real, because he could laugh through part of it or could just let part of it go over his head. He said he wouldn’t have watched it if it was a documentary. He wouldn’t have wanted to watch the reality of it or feel like this was really true.

KH: That’s interesting. I suppose I can see that. The unfortunate thing is that that had to come at the expense of women in particular, that it was made palatable or Veteransmade kind of digestible to an audience that maybe wasn’t ready to deal with the reality of it by kind of taking excessive liberties with what women were doing over there.

DE: Did you ever see the—? No, I haven’t sent that to you. I could fax it to you. After the Memorial was dedicated, a woman, a professor, from the University of Colorado in Denver, I think…. Vietnam Society Project [Tape Interruption]

DE: It’s published by the Smithsonian Press. People submit articles to this book. This one happened to be on public art. So Womenshe wroteHistory about the Vietnam Women’s Memorial and it was just awful. It was just scathing. I wondered if the womanHistorical had even actually been to the Memorial. Certainly, she had never been there when veterans were there surrounding it and in tears connecting to the Memorial in such a beautiful way, in very touching healing ways. She said that the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Oral was nothing more than a bronze wet dream for the American G.I.

KH: Oh! Geez. Oh. [Sighs] Youch. I don’t see it. I don’t see that in the Memorial at all.

DE: No. Minnesota’sI showed this to my Minnesotahusband. I said, “Mike, read this.” The first thing Mike said was, “This is as degrading to the men as to the women.” It was just such a scathing thing. The Memorial isn’t that at all. That’s not what happens there when the men go there.

KH: No.

DE: It’s the opposite of that.

Are you going to send me a copy of your dissertation when it’s done?

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KH: Yes, I will, once it’s done! I’m newly committed or committed again to finishing by December.

DE: Well, great.

KH: I think I’m done with most of the research. I think I’m done traveling, at any rate, so I can just stay home for about nine months and write.

DE: My daughter is really looking forward to reading it. Carrie did her thesis when she was a history major at Colorado College in Colorado Springs on . . . She said, “Mom, I never thought I’d be writing about this. I was so sick of the project growing up.” [Laughter]

KH: I’ll bet.

DE: She said, “I never thought I’d write about this,” but she really wanted to explore where the opposition came from and why. Veterans

KH: Ah!

DE: What Carrie saw growing up in our house was the pain and anguish from all the opposition that was out there and the angry phone calls that I used to get and messages on the answering machine, people using the “f” word and the threatsVietnam on my life and theSociety police surveilling our house at night. Just so much anger and opposition comingProject from kind of low life, mean-spirited people, but then also from intelligent people, editorial pieces and opinion pieces written on the opinion page and then at hearings, the things that were said as to why this Memorial was not important and shouldn’t be put on the Mall. So Carrie wanted to explore where that came from and what was really going on in AmericaWomen atHistory the time that there was still this animosity towards women, especially animosity towards women in thHistoricale military, and how dare they think that they are as good as the men to have the honor of being on the Mall?

KH: Good grief. Oral

DE: Her paper was wonderful. Of course, she won the top award in the history department.

KH: Oh, great! Minnesota’sMinnesota DE: She got three top awards.

KH: That’s great.

DE: Her paper was just fascinating.

KH: Yes, I’ll bet.

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DE: She came out with things that . . . She was totally on her own for this. I didn’t do a thing except at the end, before she submitted it, she wanted me to read it for accuracy. I was very impressed. She talked about class issues, besides gender issues. There was a definite class issue. We were just nurses. We were just women. [Chuckles] Even in the art community, like in the Commission of Fine Arts, J, Carter Brown just didn’t understand that women should have the same kind of recognition and honor as the men. So there were all kinds of factors that she explored that were really fascinating.

So I told her about you and what you were doing and she said, “Mom, I want to read her paper.”

KH: [Laughter] We can swap when this is finally done.

When I was in D.C. in February . . . By the way, if I haven’t said this already, thank you again for getting me in touch with Duery Felton at the Park Service, because I went out and visited with him and looked at some of the stuff that has been left at the Memorial. And I went to the Commission of Fine Arts and looked at some of their stuff. The NationalVeterans Capital Planning Commission and the Memorial Commission have sent or are sending me their records on the Memorial. [Sighs] It’s been interesting to look at some of the stuff and kind of get a sense for what the arguments for and against the Memorial were at those levels, aside from what was happening in the press and the more accessible stuff. Yes, it’s been very interesting and it really, really speaks to the gender politics of war and of military service and how resistant so many people are to thinking about women in those terms.Vietnam Society Project DE: And it often came from other women.

KH: Yes! WomenHistory DE: Not one woman on the Commission of Fine ArtsHistorical supported it at that first hearing when we lost.

KH: Really? Oral

DE: Not one. The only man . . . It was a foregone conclusion. When we walked in, they had already made up their minds before we even spoke. It came out in the newspaper, in the Washington press, the morning before our hearing. It came out and it was like the words were already inMinnesota’s their mouths. WhatMinnesota was really interesting was there was one man at the hearing who, literally, admitted that he had changed his mind and he was going to vote to support the Vietnam Women’s Memorial. He was going to vote to support the site. He stood up and he was so moved. He said, “You know, I remember my father who was a Navy surgeon talking about the nurses in World War II. I think it is time we remember these women.” So he was clearly moved rather than being persuaded by some other whatever.

I forget if it was in the Memorial Commission or the Planning Commission hearing where a woman who was at the hearing was—you could tell by her body language and her tone of voice—not favorable. She was almost sarcastic—she was sarcastic. I thought, here we have a

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woman. Here we have an Afro-American woman . . . Now, we’re discussing the Glenna Goodacre sculpture. We’ve got the site. Legislation has been passed. We’ve got the site. This is going to happen. We’re going to be on the Mall, so that’s a done deal. Now, we have the design to approve, because the Commemorative Works Act says, “We have this process.” So we brought this new design by Glenna Goodacre. The sculpture is there. The bronze rendition is there. The drawings are there. Glenna Goodacre is there and I’m there, and we’re addressing the committee’s questions. So this Afro-American woman said to me, “Well, who is this soldier? Is that a man or a woman?” the wounded soldier. She said it so kind of caustically. I didn’t know where she was coming from with that question. Like, what difference did that make? I said, “I know that Glenna Goodacre can speak to this. She used a male for a model, but it doesn’t matter. Women in Vietnam were also wounded. This could be a woman soldier.” Well, she was kind of struck by that comment. I don’t know what she was looking for. Then her next question was, “Why doesn’t one of them have a gun?”

KH: Oh! Veterans DE: “Why isn’t there a weapon on this?” I was, like, where is she coming from?

KH: Oh, man!

DE: There were questions like this that just kind of . . . Where do these people . . .? Then I responded by saying, “You know, the women whoVietnam went to Vietnam, Societywe were not issued weapons. That was the way it was at the time.” Then I said,Project “We went into the combat zone and the only difference between women in the military today and women in the military prior to today is that women went into combat zones and could be shot at, and they were, but they could not shoot back. And today women go into a military zone and they can be shot at, but they can also shoot back. That’s the only difference.”WomenHistory So . . . Historical KH: An interesting way of thinking about it, and that’s true. It is true.

Well, let’s see . . . I think in telling Oral this whole China Beach story, you answered all the questions I was going to ask, actually.

DE: Dana Delany asked me when I was out there if there was anything she could do to help the project. So I said, “Yes,” of course. So she did come to two, I think, of the dances, the DMZ to Delta dancesMinnesota’s that were fundraisersMinnesota for the project.

KH: She did?

DE: Yes. She flew out. She was at the dance and she donated some of her clothing that she wore in China Beach, like her field jacket. They were auctioned off and it helped to raise funds. So Dana did, you know, do her part to help. She didn’t become a spokesperson or anything like that, and that was probably a good thing.

KH: Yes.

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DE: But she showed her support and came to help with some fundraising.

KH: How were the people that you met with from the show when you were meeting with them for the interview? Were they receptive, respectful?

DE: They were very respectful. They were very receptive. That night, they had a dinner for us, and we were there with the cast. That was really nice, because then we got to know the cast. We got to know Troy Evans. He is actually a real Vietnam vet. We got to know them over pizza or something. They were all very appreciative of the real veterans being there. Yes.

KH: Were you there just for a day or did it span . . .?

DE: Yes, just the day. We came in for the interview the day before we did the interview. Then had the dinner that night, and then the next day flew out. But there was a lot of camaraderie. The real veterans, we were able to tell the cast that . . . Not the writers of China Beach, but the cast members, I think what they gained from getting to know us and seeVeterans us was they realized the gravity of the situation, a pretty heavy word, but the seriousness of them toying with our lives and portraying our lives and what we had done there, that that was not a trivial thing. I wondered if maybe they didn’t feel a little more the seriousness of the matter, that this really wasn’t just Hollywood, but this was doing justice to people who went through a real hard time in a real tough situation and that was a real war and not some made up thing by Bill Broyles and their writers. So I think it was really good for the cast Vietnamto meet us. Society Project KH: Interesting. Well, hopefully, these tapes will come maybe by the end of this week or the next and I can see what the long-term effects on the show were. I’m very curious about it. I can see why people liked it. In fact, when I was at the library just the other day copying an article from the Rolling Stone MagazineWomen about ChinaHistory Beach , this kid who was making the copies for me, younger than me in his mid-twenties, said, “Oh,Historical I remember when China Beach was on. I really liked China Beach.” And then he said, “I really liked Dana Delany as well.” I remember when it was on but I never watched a single episode for whatever reason. I was watching something else or whatever. So it’sOral been interesting to come back to it.

DE: I was glad that they picked . . . I think Dana Delany did a pretty good job with the role as far as being the nurse. She was in charge, pretty caring and compassionate, and I think she did a good job. They could have portrayed her in a stereotype. When I went to Fort Lee, Virginia, my first assignment,Minnesota’s I was a brandMinnesota new nurse. I was right out of basic training and of course right out of nurse’s training. When I found out where I was going to be assigned at Fort Lee, this person told me, “Oh, no. You get the ward with the head nurse, who was a military nurse in World War II.” And they painted this picture of her that she was going to be like a drill sergeant.

KH: Oh! [Whispered]

DE: Well, she kind of was.

KH: Yes?

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[Laughter]

DE: Just this kind of tough cookie drill sergeant, but she did have a big heart of gold and was a good nurse. They could have done this China Beach thing and portrayed the military nurses as something really harsh and uncaring and mannish and like a drill sergeant. So it could have been whole other portrayal. I guess I never really thought too much about this, but I am now. When I think about Dana Delany portraying the nurse, I see an awful lot of the women nurses I worked with who were a lot like her.

KH: That’s interesting to hear. I know when I was watching the tapes, I was thinking, oh yes, that reminds me of what so and so said, just not even necessarily the over-all portrayal, but just bits and pieces. I’d think, oh yes, that seems like a familiar thing.

DE: You know, I’m thinking of images like her youthful look, because yes, we were young.

KH: Yes. Veterans

DE: We had that youthful, fresh kind of look. The older nurses who had been in the other wars, they were the chief nurses now, so they were not on the wards. They were back in the offices doing the paperwork. The nurses actually doing the day-to-day stuff were those of us who were primarily between twenty-one and twenty-five. Vietnam Society KH: Man, that’s young. That is young. Project

Okay. All right. I think I’ve got what I was thinking of.

DE: Okay. Good. WomenHistory Historical KH: Thank you very much.

DE: You’re welcome. Oral

Minnesota’sMinnesota

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