AID SECRETARY IN SAIGON AND IVS TEACHER IN HUE

VIETNAM

1961 - 1967

Marybeth Clark 36812B Control Code 36812B

AID SECRETARY IN SAIGON AND IVS TEACHER IN HUE

VIETNAM

1961 - 1967

Cont ent Surn..rnary

Prefa c e o i

Map o o . iii

Recruitment and Preparat i on for Assignment 1

The i nterviewee had for a long time been interested i n Asia a n d t o ok t he oppo rtunity of going there as a secretary wi t h AID o Per haps bec ause o f her inter­ ests and background o f asso ciations with people who wer e highl y mot ivated in the s tudy of languages and

cu l t ures 0 she fou nd the AID orientation program dis­ appointing o Thou gh she felt the FSI lectures were

wor t hwhile 0 t here was lit tle response to them on the

part o f t he AID per sonnel 0 or awareness of the im­ plications o " I didn ' t feel that there was mu ch real

awareness on the part of anybody 0 either the orienters

o r t he orient ees 0 about the problems of appreciating the att itudes and the felt needs of the people where we wer e going o" There was very little encouragement t o s tudy t he language o She also was critical of the b u reau cracy a nd exc essive paperworko

She feels t he cultural sho ck for Americans is slight bec a u se i t is cu shioned by insulation. In

her own case 0 what was crucial and affected her whole experience o f living i n Viet nam was that she didn't have any spec ific expectations• about things, "this lef t t h e d oo r open f o r a l l experiences t o be learning s itua t i onso" AID and the Educati o n Di•ision ••• 4

.A t the time she went to Vietnam 0 almost a ll AID per~ s onnel were stationed in Saig o n & with the advent of

Rura l Affairs 0 AID moved more into the provinces . Her j ob was in the Educa t i on Division a s a s ecretary to two p rojects and in charge o f t he typing poo l . There were about 12 Vietnamese personnel ar:d t en Ameri­ can echnicians o n the two pro jects. The tu!'.'n over in American personnel was h igh. Mo st of the Vietnamese

working f or AID were Northerners 0 probably because o f their i mmi9ra t i on to t he Soath a t the time the U. S . built u p its aid p rogram in South Vietnam a nd because o f he in-group feeling amo ng northerners. There is kick- back a nd pay-off amo ng Vietnamese.

Observa ·ions o n Vie namese Culture 5

Many lietnamese h ad t heir educa t i on inte rrupted by the war with the French, s ome of these are trying now t o finish their educa t i on becau se education is very importa nt in Vietnamese s ociet y. Not all AID scho lar­ ship students up on t heir retu rn to Vietnam d o t he job for which they were trained i n the Uo S o This isn't s urprising in v iew o f the Vietnamese s ocial value t hat any person is obl iged to t ake any opportunity t o add t o t he f amily income. "A Vietnamese's first l oyalty is to his f amily."

Mos t Vi etnamese people l i ve in extremely crowded and small living p l a ces . Even a ministry o fficial she visited lived in a crowded area in a passageway behind store fronts. An AID employee she visited lived in a much worse situation by a c a nal . There the sanitary conditio n a re deplorable . There is much sickness in Vietnamese people.

Vietnamese s ociety places a very strong v alue on per~ s onal relationships . Every effo rt is made to maintain a relatio nship: e'1en the l a nguage reaffirms rel ation­

ships o A fundamen al d ifference in Ameri c an a nd Viet­ namese a t t itudes is t he v alu e placed on abstract prin- ciples v ersus p ersonal relationships. Vietnamese are p~agmatic a nd sentiment al and Americans are romantic and unsentimenta l.

In spite of o ur blundering domination of their country, many Vietnamese seem to genuinely like Ame.ricanso though they resent being 11 bough t 11 and surely have frequent cause to laugh at the Americans .

Vietnamese and America n Interpersonal Relationships • . 11

Few 0£ tbe American secretaries spent soc ial time with Vietnamese people and were often cond escending in t heir a ttitu des. In American offices 0 Hbecause of the high turnover o f American personnel a nd the constancy of the Vietnamese personnel 0 the Vietnamese often know much more of what is going on but the America n s are in the position o f running the show." Howeveru a close look shows the American to be top d og net by

virtue of position but by virtue of being American 0 with 11 the insinuation that the Vietnamese were not as

well educated 0 not as capable, and p robably not as intelligent,," and by putting the Vietnamese in the p o sition o f being yes-men and having to c ooperate with the Americans. "I t hink a great deal of American frustration is becau se of lack o f Vi etnamese initia­ tive ar..d action on America n. ideas and programs." Ameri­ cans rarely l e arn the l a nguage of the country they go to.

An incident occurred in the Education o ffice i n which aspersions were cast on the honesty a nd integrity of the Vietnamese personnel. The Vietnamese responded

with a letter expressing their feelings 0 but the let­ ter was treated in a very o ffhand manner by the Ameri­ cans0 showing little concern for the attitudes of the

Vietna.mese employees o Even a t ATC there seems to be little interest in the attitudes of the Vietnamese s taff"

Personal Ad justment. to Job o 18

Language • • • 14 Her motivation to s tudy Vie tnamese was very high and she was able to take Vietnamese language

classes offered by the American Embassy o Hm·Jever 0 she learned most of her Vietnamese by practicing in the market, with her friends 0 and especially with her cyclo driver who drilled her from a Summer Instit ute of Linguistics phrase b o oko It is easy for Americ ans not to study another language and they t e nd to rationalize this by saying Vietnamese is not a u seful language and is too diffic ult to learno But a little effort goes a long way and is very rewardin·=r in terms of personal relationships.

Relations with Vietnamese Personnel . 18

She spent most of her free time with Vietnamese friends, many of whom were fellow AID workers. Her friends liked to t each her abcut Vietnam.

Relations with American Personnel 19

She got along well with most of the Americans in the office, but c o nflicts relating to her friend­ ship with the Vietnamese aro se between her a ~d her immediate supervis or and he arranged her transfer to another office. To do this 0 he obtained the 10 cooperat ion of a whole element of bureaucracy o

On the basis o f a personal grudge 0 he got their cooperation in carrying out a procedure that was of no benefit to the agency and was detrimental to many personal and working relationshipso The real­ ization that this can and does happen far too often 11 in AID missions filled me with disgust 0 Also the administrators weren't "open:0 with her .

The Pu blic Safety Divisi on was a very different environment from the Educa tion Di.vision and the discrepancy between the American personnel and the Vietnamese personnel was greater with the Vietnamese being more intellectu al than the police advisors 0 and ccthere was h a rdly any pretense in Public Safety of friendly relations between the Americans and the Vietnamese o ii She proceeded 0 h owever o in making friends with the Vietnamese in PSD o The Americans were distrustful of the Vietnamese and suspicious

o f her friendship r finally 0 h er supervisor forbade h er to speak Vietnamese in the office o The atmos­ pher e in t hat office was gloomy a nd oppressive" and finally three o f t he Vietnamese translators resigned from USAID o

She resigned from AID in 1964 to work for Inter­ nat ional Voluntary Serviceso

AID - An Evalu ation o 24

Comparing AID with IVS 0 IVS puts more ~ emphasis o n the

positive experiences of its volunteers 0 thus helping them to be more happy and effective workers than AID people o

Our purposes f o r being in Vietnam somehow don't come off o The weakest aspect of AID is its recruiting policies o AID needs to be more concerned with ap­ plicants ' a ttitudes and to put more emphasis on wha t i t expe c t s o f its people o AID should cut down on its 01 goodies '1 0 they attract the wro ng kind of people .

Language t raining i s important for anyone going to

Vietnam0 even secretaries 0 who can have better workir..g r elatio nships with their Vietnamese co·­ workers as well as get along better in a foreign country o

aa There should be closer communication between Wash­ ington and t he various posts as to the specific needs of the post and o f the c ountry of the pesto" Person­ nel officers overseas should be trained in personnel worko '0 o o o people should be hired for specific jobs ... There ' s t oo mu ch in the government of fitting bodies into openingso " This causes a lot of frustration. The Ugly Americ an is s u perficial in its appraisal. IN IVS I N HUE

IVS o 30

Internati onal Volunta ry Servi ces is much like

Peace Corp s 0 but it i s a s mall p riva te orga niza­ tion0 in Vietna m under contra ct to AID. Th e in­ terviewee b e g a n to meet IVSers wh ile s h e wa s still

in AID 0 and she became interested .in working in IVS as an English teacher . Thi s idea appealed to her bec ause she wanted to work more closely with

Jietnamese peo ple 0 wanted to teach instead of being a secretary. and wanted to be associated wi th a n organization like IVS .

A Viet n amese High School 31

Her job was · eaching English in Dong Kha nh girls'

high schoo l in Hue 0 a f a mous high school in Viet­ nam. The school administration was very helpful

to her and open to IVS langu age tea ching idea s 0 and the teachers of the school were friendly. Sh e also enjoyed her stude nts a nd, the l a st year t a u ght two classes for all their hours of English thereby getting to know her students well. She also had an English class for teachers. During a period o f

evacuation to Saigon 0 she taught at the University Law Schoo l o Altogether, she taught for IVS three years.

Vietnamese Education 34

Th e Vietnamese education sys tem is h igh ly central­ ized in all its as_pects. Public high schoo l s a r e not coeducational though e lementary schools a re. Th e re are a lot of priva t e high schools a nd s ome 11 semi-p-..1blic" schools partially supported by the governmen • Becau se of the war, teachers a re a t a premium. There is resista nce to cha nge on the

part o f t.he 019er educato.rs 0 but there a.re young c oncerned educators who recognize the need for change. Some American ideas about education a re

applicable ~o Vie tnam 0 but "there's always this problem of our imposing our ideas o" At the

Faculty of Pedagogy in Hue 0 the resistance to change became a political thing a nd strongly anti­ Americano

Vietnamese people feel tha t the higher the level

of school 0 the · more important it is to have qu al­

ified t eachers 0 tha t elementa ry school i s not so important and doesn't require as much t eacher trai ning"

The People of Hue o 37

North central Vietnam tends to be more conserva~ tive and strong in its regionalismo The Hu e peo ­ ple seem to be more n a tionalistic than the people in the south and r eacted more strongly to the Frencho The s trongest nationalists--under the French a nd now--seem to come from the north cen­ tral ar ea o Hu e was the imperial c apital of Viet~

nam 0 and Hue people are very prou d of their h 'story and cultural importanceo

There seem to be physiological a s well as ethnic dif.­ ferences between the peoples o f the different regions o The Vietnamese have been pushing s outh for hundreds

of years a nd there is p robably mixture with Chams 0

mountain groups 0 and especially with Cambodians in the southo

Hue p eople may be more sympathetic with the Communists 0 b ut this is probably an element of their nationalism

and a resentment towa rd an inadequate government 0 and a sense of indignity toward a military government o The social hierarchy of Vietnam has scholars o n the

top 0 then farmers 0 tradesmen 0 and t he military on the bottomo Their natio nalism makes them beco me more and more anti ~Ame rican a s the Americans become more and more d orninatingo

Youth and Students 0 40

Two youth organizations in Vietnam are engaged in the kind of cons tructive a ctivities t~h e ir c ountry n eeds ~ t hey a re the I nte rna t i ona l Boy Scout s and t he Volunt a r y Youth Ass cia iono I n Hue t he Boy

Scouts a re particularly viable 0 or we re until t he Tet o ffensiveu The IJYA h a s a rcwonderful f eeling of t o getherness which i s very much n e eded i.n Viet­ nam0 11 a nd has workcamp p rojects to help t heir coun­ trymen o

In trying to u::1ders 0 3.nd the motiva t i o n of the

stu dents · with resp ect to t h e p o lit i c a l struggles 0 91 she ;:i. sks 0 °W"na t is the fu .ure for these young people i n a turb ulen· and wa r-torn coun t ry? Where c a n ~ hey cha nnel their frt~str a tion s ? What can they do t o help themselves a nd the i r c ountry?" Not only do the Vie t nanese peop l e feel frus t rat ed

and helpless 0 b ut .hey hav e am.biv a lent f eelin gs

- -pride in their history and culture 0 infe riority in the f a c e of Western t e ch nol o gyo

Politics and the Struggle Fo rce . 43

"Into this a tmosphere o f u ncerta inty. amb iva l ence, and futili t y comes a group who will channe l t he frustration s and desi re s~ - - ·he Struggle Force .

She believes tha 0 although mo s t of t h e s tudent s were not Communists and did n 9 t belie l e t hemsel ves

to be helping · he Commun .i.sts 0 t h e Struggle Fo rce was mani p ula ted by Communist s o It wa s an ext remely well- or gan i z e d g-roup,, wh i ch was abl e to r ouse and

sway p ub l ic feeling 0 even t h ough they we ren "t able to achiev e a m3rtyr. The a t mo sphere was v e ry tense, and the s t u dents we re orga nized to d efend the town against t h e gove rnment troops o

The ,Ame .:r; i c a n s do:-~t ur:de rstand the difficu l t y o f the situat i on f o r the citizens an d the r easons f o r un­ willingn ess to commit themsel v es to one side or the other ; t he Americans don"t unde r s t and t he h igh stakes --the i nt e r d epeEdency of Vietname se f amilie s and the uncertainty and da. ger in whi ch they live o This lack of unders tan ding c au s e d a t lea st one Vietnamese woman trouble at the very time she needed help. (A case in Quang Tri further illustrates American lack of understanding of Vietnamese cultural values.)

Typical of protest groups, feeling in Hue is often more anti-everything than it is pro-anything. One 11 mank" was obviously a protest type.

Attitudes since the Tet Offensive, 1968 48

Following the Tet offensive, the Hue people ap­ parently hated both the VC and the Americans. Later, they tended to put more blame on the Americans for taking revenge on Hue people. The Vietnamese Communists--the Northern army and the members of the Southern Liberation Front--seem to work closely together.

Tet 1968 • • • • 0 Q 0 0 • • • • • • 0 0 Q • ~ • • • • 49

The IVS girl staying in Hue and a Quaker friend were captured by the VC after hiding in the house fo+ a few days. The VC treated the girls with respect when they went into the house and treated their prisoners, after capture, as well as possible in the rugged mountain situation.

The behavior of the American Marines in Hue at the time of the Tet offensive was needlessly destructive and insulting. Further, they and the South Viet­ namese government troops stole and looted. The VC did not indulge in this wanton destruction and steal­ ing. Discipline and morale seemed to be relatively good. American lack of ideology, of respect fcir the Vietnamese . people, and of understanding of the sit­ uation in Vietnam "only served to worsen the Ameri­ can image and posit ion. "

Youth Programs 52

The ipterviewee read "Debrief of a Youth Advisor, Vietnam, ~ · which optimistically discusses youth, programs prior to 1966 and remarks on anti-Ameri­ ~an feeling among youth. She. is impressed with the extent of American domination of these pro­ grams and feels that, to be basic and effective, these programs must be Vietnamese-initiated and organized. The American government should play as small a role as possible. These youth move­ ment$ are crucial, but unless our government tho­ roughly understands Vietnamese values and the complexities of the situation, we might as well throw in the sponge. PREFACE

The materi al contained in this debrief represents the personal observations, experienc e s, attitlde s and opinions of t h e per­ son i n t erv iewed . The Asia Training Center (ATC ), the Univer­ sity o f Hawaii, the Age ncy for International Development (AID) and the Un i ted States government in no way approve or dis ­ approve o f the actions r e ported or opinions expressed; no r are the f a cts or s ituations reported verified.

The purpose of debri e fing personnel returning from Asian assignment at t he Hawaii ATC is to:

lo Provide AID with management insights suggesting alterati ons in current policies and practices and to identify patterns, trends and problems which, when analyzed, will provide guidance f o r future assistance plans and programs .

2. Accumulate new or updated information for an in­ stitutional me mory, for fundamental research and for applicati on to future deve lopment assistance programs.

3. Provide materia l for understanding the cultural framework o f a country, and the dynamics of its mode of soci a l change . And, as a c o rrelate, to discover customs, mores, taboos and other rele­ vant factors which affect i nterpersonal relation­ ships between Americans and members of a host community.

4. Provide material suitable for instructional purposes.

5. Obtain i nformation which will be of value-­ generally and specif ically--to Ame rican overseas personnel i n the ir future assignments .

In order to obtai n frank a nd open discussion, interviewees are promised t hat every e ffort will be made to prevent disclosure of their i dentity . F or that reason, debrief reports are i den­ tified by a code numbe r, unless explicit permission is granted to r e v eal identity .

In the e vent, for some legitimate reason, r esponsible persons desire addi tional i n formation regarding material presented in this d ebri ef, the ATC in Hawaii will attempt to contact t he person i nv olved to obtain the required information or establi sh

i direct contact. Requests for additional information, or di­ rect contact, ~houl,d outline the reasons for the request and should indicate what use will be made of the information if obtained,.

Material contained in this report may not be quoted in publi~ cations or cite9 as a source of information or authority without written pel;'Inission from the Agency for International Development and the University of Hawaii.

ii \ Tl. · 1 - Quang Tri 23 - · Binh Duong -;.. J_ 2 - Thua Thi en 24 - Bien Hoa r>,,,,,,. I ' 3 Quang Nam . 25 Gia Dinh ~ ' 4 - Quang Tin 26 - Long An ~ l-I 5 Quang Ngai 27 Hau Nghia I 6 - Kontum 28 - Tay Ninh I 7 - Binh Dinh 29 - Go Cong ! ~ 8 - Pleiku 30 - Kien Hoa __ l 9 - Phu Bon 31 - Dinh Tuong 10 Phu Yen 32 Kien Tuong ' 11 ·- Dar lac 33 - Ki·en Phong 12 - Khanh Hoa 34 - Sa Dec 13 - Ninh Thuan 35 - Vinh Long 14 - Tuyen Due 36 - Vinh Binh 15 - Quang Due 37 - Chau Doc 16 - Lam Dong 38 - An Giang 17 - Binh Thuan 39 - Phong Dinh 18 Binh Tuy 40 Ba Xuyen F=f 19 Phuoc Tuy 41 Kien Giang ~ 0 20 - Long Khanh 42 - Chuong Thien . ~ 21 - Phouc Long 43 - Bae Lieu Ul -- - 22 - Binh Long 44 - An Xuyen c(

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SAIGON

REGIONS AND PROVINCES OF iii SOUTH VIETNAM Control Code 36812B

AID SECRETARY AND I VS TEACHER

VIETNAM

1961-1967

AID - SAIGON

Recruitment and Preparation for Assignment

At t h e time I was recruited for AID, I was working as the secretary o f the Department of Near Eastern Studi es at the University of Michigan. It was my fourth year there in that capa cityo Actually, I would say t h a t my primary motivation in going to Asia was to learn about things and about people--how they t h ink and how they live. I had for a long time been interested in much of Asia and had done a lot of reading about Tibet and at that time I · was taking a course in Chinese language. The n I took a couple of courses in Chinese history and social studies, bu t I don ' t remember much · of ' it because I didn 't do very much of the r e ading since I was only visiting the course and was also working.

My contact with AID (at that time, it was ICA ) happened i n rather a f unny way. Since our depart ment was an area studies department 0 we a lwa ys got notices of overseas-type jobs . One came through about AID n eeding secretaries and s t e nographers in Asian countries o My first thought was , "None of our graduate students are stenographers; I won ' t e v en bother the chairman with this o" And the other secretary said, "We l l o Marybeth, you want to go to Asia ; why don 't you go?" So I went and interviewed for the job a nd in time I was processed. It took . a little while because I had to pass.a civil service typing and shorthand test; I wasn't quite up to t he speed required so I had to do more studyingo I took an inservice shorthand course during the spring of

1961 and passed my test in lat ~ . spring 0

They had a sked me where I wanted to go and I said Nepal, but they said tha t was a very small post and that probably openings wouldn't be as a v ailable as in Korea or Vietnam. Not knowing much about either c o untry--only knowing that Korea was cold, I chose Vietnam. Before I left Ann Arbor, I talked with a number of friends there; one had b een born i n Vietnam, t h e s on of mi ssionaries there. He told m~ some­ t hing about Vietnam and the political s i tuation . And I met a couple of Vietnamese people; but my background was very slim--I didn ' t do much of any reading on Vietn a m before I went there.

The initial interview was in January oi February of 1961 0 but be­ c a use of the delay on the shorthand test, I didn ' t go to Washington f o r orientation until Augusto The three-weeks orientation i n Wash­ ington involved a lot of paperwork a nd was mostly a waste of time.

1 Howeve r 0 I enjoyed particularly a couple of l e ctures we had at FSI wh ich I thought we r e v ery goodo One was on langu a g·e and the o ther was on social values and attitudes and how these values c ome into conflict. or rather , h ow people ' s relationships are dist urbed by the difference in social values of their different cultures o He discussed a meeting between Indians and Americans in Indi a and the various things that happe ned because of the lack of understanding·--the Americans d i d not understand the Indian attitudes and the Indians didn ' t understand t h e American at.titudes ~ certain behavi or that was natural to one group caused ill fee lings and frustration in the other group. Tha t was a vefY good lectureo But the thing was I didn ' t f eel there was any re­ spon..se to these lectures within our ori entati on group and I f elt that in their own sessions AID d i dn ' t elab_orate on or str ess these i deas .

We had lec tures on many other things--on AID purposes and on h ealth and s a nitation and what precaut ions we should take o Tha t wa s a very good and useful lecture on health. I remember that we had a problem t o work on which concer ned increasing rice production in India o We d ivided up in groups to work on that o One discussion 0 which I remem­ ber because a disagreement arose among the o rientees and between a minority of the orientees and the speaker 8 was about what was the best thing to do in a particular situation involving project i mp lementation. When the minority became v ocal, the discussion was sort of turned off and a decision was given us o I felt it represented some sort of rigid­ ity0 that this was the way we were supposed to think.

Another thing that was extremely fru strating was the bureaucracy and all the paper worko A few other things disturbed me about the orien­ tation0 but I didn 't have a ny background in overseas l iving or in for­ eign aid work so I couldn '-t be too critical, though I had many of the same f eelings toward the orientation after I had been overseas qui te some time o The wh ole atmosphere of the orientation seemed to be one of 0 well 0 we have a job to do 0 it ' s a big job 6 it ' s an important job, we ' v e got to get at it 0 a nd this is the way we should do it. I d i dn ' t feel that there was much real awareness on t h e part of anybody, eit her the orienters or the orientees, about the problems of appreciating the attitudes and the felt needs of the people where we were going. I felt as though the Ame ricans were going to decide wh at the people needed, and t ry and get their cooperation to giv e it to them 6 r a ther than mak­ ing .it a learning s ituation and finding out what was really happening in tho se places o

In our o rientation gToup there were techni c ians of all k i nds o There were s i x to eight secretaries going to diff erent places . There were four of us going to Vietnam--one Communicat ions Media advisor and his ..." wife and t h e ir children--! include her in the four , a malaria special­ ist who was single , and myself as a secretaryo Other people were g o ing e v erywhere all ove r the worl d--South America, other Asian coun­ tries 0 and all kinds of jobs within AI D. So the orientation was quite general o Other than the encouragement of the FSI speaker on language

2 to s tudy the language of where we were going 0 v e ry little was s aid about t hat . e xcept the usu al pat phrases that make everybody feel that the .prop.er things have been said. There was no pressure at all; whe ther or not .a person studies a language would depend on t h e person's own mot.ivac.ion .and the situation and attitudes of the .AI D post where the ind iv idual goes o Ther e were no trai ning programs as we have here a t ATC . Some special cases were given langua ge training at FSI.

In all fairness . I s hould s ay that what I say now about the orienta­ tion i s of course colored by the attitudes t h at I 've had since , so I can ' t b e too cle ar about what I felt at the time except t hat I f elt fru strated in these d ire ctions o Also I reali ze that I went into AI D wit.h preju dices alreadya which probably slanted much of my observations. Many of my associa tions at the university were with scho lars who had done a lot o f ove r seas work. many of them were language specialists , and those who weren ' t at l e ast were fluent in several languages or what­ e·rnr l angu a ges were necessary for the areas in which they were working. There was a t ypical unive rsity or intellectual snobbish attitude to­ ward government workers overseas; and many of them had h ad contacts with the s o rt of general p i cture t hat the American government employee oversea s presents and had v ery little u se for the type of thing repre­ sent e d o One is the tendency to live in an Ameri can community, t o r ecrea te a s much as possible an American environment, and associate primarily w.i.th e ach o t h er--the lack of learning the language, the lack of becoming a part o f the commu nity--the c ountry in which they live o

This rubbed off on me . especi ally since I already had pretty strong ideas about learning about people you ' re going to live with. And I

had r e a d The Ugly America.n 0 which I deci ded afte r living in Vietnam for awhile was very superfic ial, but I guess they accomplished what

they s et out to do 0 which was. make an issue . Whether it changed any­ t h i ng or notu I'd be v e ry skeptical .

... As far a s the orientation i s concerned, I don ' t think it l essened cultural shocko I felt that I learned something out of the two FSI lectures , especially t h e one on social values, but I feel my appreci­ ation o f these lectures was tied i n with the attitudes I already h ad, and I th.ink it was t h ese a ttitudes that reduced any cultural shock I might have hado One thing that seems to me t o be r ather crucial as far as I was c oncerned personally and that affected all my experi ences a nd the whole general experi e nce of living in Vietnam, was that, when I went I didn ' t rea lly have any specific expectations about things o I JUst wanted to see and to learn and to find out, so I d i dn ' t have alre a dy in my mind s ome expectation about what people were like or what my life would be like or what my job would be like . Thi s left -che door o pen for all experie nces to be learning situat.ions o Since I was .interested in l e arning lots of things , I could get out of any situation what I want ed; no matte r h ow nega tive a situation might

turn out t o b e 8 t h e re was always some way in which I benefited from

3 it and learned that. it was positive in s ome r e spects o This h e lped a loto It made eve rything lots o f fun b e cause e verything was a d iscovery.

As f or cultural shock, I s oon d iscove r ed after I got to Vietnam that there we.~e other Americans who 0 though the y d i dn't have a s stro n g a tendency a s I had to l e arn the l anguage a nd g e t close to the people o f e lt that. t.!1e ir gre atest cultural shock c ame from other Ame ricans a nd from h e Ameri c an structure --the American bureaucracy-·-rathe r than f rom Vietnam itself o Bu.t 0 of course, any shock is rather cushioned for an employee who is going to Vie tnam=~ ! donat k now about othe r c oun­ tries-~but Vietnam is such a b ig po s t and the r e are so many facili t ies

~-PX 0 American movies 0 hous ing wa s good 0 we we re even provid e d trans­ portation to and from worko So we we re insulated from any s udden t hingo The s hock might come if you r e ally start working close ly with people" Of course 0 a lot o f a dv.is ors and t e chnicians wo rk with Vie t­ namese officials and Vietnamese counte rparts 0 but e v en there I think the Americ a ns are a little bit protected by the s e curity of being a part of the agency and .identif y i ng themselve s with the Ame rican com­ mun ity a

AID and t h e Edu c ation Divis ion

My experience with AI D was in Sai g ono At that time AID d i dn't have offices out in the p r ovinceso Some a dvisors 0 particularl y nursing advisorso would g o out and trave l 0 b ut the y we re usual ly bas e d in

Saigon ., I h e ard of 0 I think 0 a malaria work.er who live d in Hue during that time 0 a.nd I think that a f ew othe r ind i v iduals were scattere d throughout the coun try o But i t wasn't until 1.96 2 0 I think 0 when the Rural Affairs program had a big impet us a nd got unde.rwa yo t h a t AID really began to mo ve out in province are a s 0 and the n they had Rural Affairs wo rkers and people living out in the pro vinceso Theno e ven later than that 0 they began to establis h big off ice s which have be­ c ome more and more bureaucratic and top h e avy o Nowo out in the re­ gions especially a nd sometimes in the provinc es 0 they g e t a little if not completely office~oriented; the regional h e a dquarte r so p articul.ar ­ ly0 are a reflection of Saigo n bure aucracy.

I was assig·ned as the second secretary in the Education Division. •rhere was one Ame rican secretary who wa s s e cre tary to the Chie f of the

Division and secre tary to the Division a s a whole 0 and I was secretary to two maj or proj e c ts in the D ivision ~ Th e Highe r Educa tion and Teacher Train "ng Project and the Vocational Education Projecto Also I wa s in charge of the pool o f Vietname se t ypis ts. we had four men whc were typists for t he Di v is:iono Mo st of the ir wo rk was o n these two projects 0 but they were also sort of a general typing pool. In t h e o ff ice where I wo rked 0 all together there were about a dozen Vi et­ namese personnelo Besi des the four typists 0 the re were t r ans lators6 interpre ters 0 and assistants working with the Ame rican technicianso Mo s .. o f the time there were a bout ten Ame ricanso Two of them were superv isors of the two proj e cts 0 and the re were sev e n or e ight

4 technicians who were advisors in elementary education, higher education, vocational training, business education, home _economics , and English t e achingo The elementary education advisor was involved in teacher training and gave many workships with Vietnamese teachers . She tra­ velled out t o the provinces much more than the other advisors and worked with Vietnamese officials in the provinces . In the Education Division there are more women than most other divisions except Public H.ea.Ltho Some of these a dvisors stay in Vietnam for a long tinE and others on- ly a s h ore time·--not more than two y~ars , then they are gone and some­ one else comes ino There is a high turnover in American personnel in fore i gn a i d; consequently, there is not -much continuity in p rograms .

There are a grea t number of northern Vietnamese working for AID o I think the re are two reasons for this. One is that 0 in 1955 0 soon after the partition of Vietnaiw into north and south, the UoS. built up i ts e conomic aid program in South Vietnam. Of cour se this required all kinds of Vietnamese help in interpreting and trans lating, and sec­ r et.ar£al and clerical help. At the same time there wer e all these refugees from the Northo Some of the refugees would be like whol e villages if they were Catholic communitiea0 but the urban people from Hanoi. and Hai Phong tended more to be middle-class Buddhists or Bud­ dhist intelle ctuals . All these people came down who had s ome degree of education, no means of income, and they were all looking for white­ collar jobs, and here wa s this . need for people with edu cation o I think t his was the major factor o

Anothe r thing was that the Vietnamese man in the personnel office of the emba ssy was a northerner, and northerners tend to hire northerners-, southerne rs tend to hire sout herners o People said t hat if you weren at a northerner or if you d i dn at know him you had to slip s ome thing under the table for him to get you a job in AID. To what ext ent this is true

I don ' t know0 but this is a customary practice in offices of t his sort with someone wh o has some pull, some connection. Later , when I was in

Hue 0 I h eard that to get a job in AID in Hue, it cost your first month's salary. I don ' t know how true these things are, but I take them to be pretty true because this is · pretty general. Well, during the Diem re­ gime I h e a rd that there was buying of promotions in the army, and there were also a lot of people who became nominal Catholics to get promotions . I suppose that helped, and perhaps a little purchasing too o

Observations on Vietnamese Culture

The education level of the Vi etnamese working for AI D was variedo I would guess that the age then of the majority was probably the late twe ntie s and early thi rties a especially late twenties. I think a ny American who has never been in an Asian country is amazed at t h e young ag·es of the people working in such· jobs--until. one becomes accustomed to the fact that As ian people look younger to us o They look mu ch younger--perhaps ten years younger-- than they really are . So the peo-

5 ple working in the office seem like quite young· people e but actually 9 this wasn et s oo One who seemed, when I first knew him, to be close to twenty was much older and had a wife and children.

At any rat_, eo when t h e northerners came down from the North, which was about half a dozen or so years before I knew them, they were probably

ju.st in the.Lr late teens and early twenties 0 which means that they we r e probably being _educated in hig·h school, perhaps just finishing. perhaps b eginn. .i.ng unive.rsity 0 and then their education was interrupted and they could no long.er continue but had to work. So they .d.Ldn n t have enoug'l1 education to g·et the type of jobs that they should have qual:ifi.e.d for in t h e Vietnamese government or school system. But they had s ome education a nd the intellectual wh erewithal to be useful to the American agencies. I knew several wh o were working for AID and at t he same t.llne taking courses at the University to finish up a degree. On e g .i..rl I knew got h er degree in law. Another employee was studying for h.is examinatio ns. If they pass these examinations . they can often get a high er paying· job (strange as it may seem to many Americans ) in

t.t.e Vietnamese s chool system or in business or in g·overnment 0 and also a job of much more prestige within the Vietnamese comm.unity. It is very good if they can move into that rath er than being dependent on t h e America n presenc e t h ere o

On the other hand 0 there are other scholarship students who AID sent to the Un ited States .and who came back and who would hav e, say. a bachelor~ s deg-re e or perhaps even a ma ster as deg·ree from an American colleg · e~-wel.1 edli. cated people --but for 'political or personal reasons the relev«ant. ministry somehow just didn ct have positions for t h ese

__peo.p.:Le 0 or positions that these people would accept. even though they are supposed t o sig·n an .a greement that they will work for the govern­ ment of Vietnam for ten years in order to make this training in the United States v alua ble to Vietnam. I knew one student who had a de­ g-ree in eco nomics here·- -very intelligent fellow-~who went back and, at the time. my understanding was that the Ministry of Economics just

d i dn ° t hav·e any place for him0 and he was left out in the cold. So he go t a job with Caltex, which is an American industrial firm . I knew of another girl who had studied here in one field and -when s h e went back she discovered that she could make more money teaching English in a private high school than in the ministry position for which she was tr.ainedo That cost her a tidy sum, of course, to buy off the c ontract. Apparently she made enough in the private teaching . • I u sed to have very strong feelings about this o I thought the V iet~ namese shoul d be more dedicat ed to the welfare of the total country, b ut t his i s the system--the way it works o A Vie.t_r§mese ' s first loyalty i~ to his familyo If he is in a fortunate position where he can bring in some add.i.tional money to add to the family coffers, he is almost morally bound to do so o The Vietnamese family is usually a n ext ended group; a member of the family with an income often pro vides, at least to scrne degree ~ f o r member s beyond his immediate family o All Viet-

6 namese would understand and expect a certain amount of taking on the 11 si.de 0 and few would be critical. I say. · a certain amount;"--someone has made the observation that there is a distinction between graft 0 which is within the bounds of the values of the society in which it is practiced .o and corruption, which is beyond thoae bounds 0

Well 0 as I indicated before, Vietnamese people are very highly oriented toward education. Education is very important, and prestige followso You have prestige i£ you have money, but it is nothing like the pres­ tige that you have with a lot of education or if you come from an old, high family o This .i.s particularly true in Hue but general throughout the countryo An e.ducation and an old family are more important than almost anything else. Of course there isn·' t as much of the concern with family in the south, but education is important, and a person is respected or not respected very often according to the level of educa­ tion he has, regardless of what use he might make of ito

Most of the areas in Saigon in which Americans lived and moved about were spacious and well kept. The street I lived on was swept twice a day by a city civil servant 0 but there were other streets in Saigon that were never swepto I lived in the area that the French had built up and where they had created beautiful wide tree-lined boulevards o Many of the wealthy influential Vietnamese live in this area. The homes are large and have yards or gardens around them. But this fash­ ionable facade, which accounts for a very small minority of the popu­ lation of Saigon 0 hides--if one stays in t h e fashionable area--a shock­ ing contrast : The extremely crowded and small living places of the vast majority of the population.

I went to visit a friend who was a government official in one of the ministries . His street address was oh a main thoroughfare lined with store fronts. The stores in a commercial area are one right up against the other and the homes of the store owners are in the back rooms of the stores , sometimes also in the f~ont. The rooms in these city houses are one behind the other. so that the width of the s tore front is one room. Finding an address in Saigon i~n't very difficult-­ usuallyo The numbers are. consecutive, the even on one side and the uneven on the other, but the corresponding numbers aren 't across the street from each other necessarily. The houses are numbered one after the other regardless of widtho Many homes have addresses such as 91/225. That means that 91 is probably a lane or alleyway and 225 is one of the h undreds of houses down the alleyway which may exten d in and around for a quarter of a mile o Sometimes there'll be three numbers for lanes branching off lanes--that's when it gets a little compli­ c a ted hunting for a house o

My friend's house was such a number . To find it I went between two of those s'tore fronts through a passageway that a person could wheel a motor scooter through but that ' s about all. I went back between the high walls of the buildings and when I got back to the e n d of the

7 passageway (which would be the depth of a house) 0 the passageway jogged and opened up a lit tle more so that there was a roadway almost wide e noug'l?. for a car. Here it was no longer paved or t h e pavement was brok- - enf a.nd there was a vista of tiny houses also one right n ext t o the other and c a.ch with a little front a.re a that would be the width of the whole l:c·., se (which i s the width of one r oom) fenced in with a little tree or scmet.hing--it would b e a v ery definite little f ront are a that 0 belonged to that house o I m not v ery good at meas urement 0 but those h01. ses were probably not as wide as the front of one of those s tores o

This wider passageway went back for a long ways and then there was an

area where the road was worse 0 the houses were smaller and falling a.part a nd had fewer facilities in the wa.y o f wire fences .in the front are ao then u~. e passageway j ogged a g aino This was all within what would be a city block with stores and homes on the outside of ito Th ere a re just. h u.:nd r eds of f amilies liv ing in a place like thato We lL the way j c g·ged a.gain a n d I came out into an i mproved area, a little wider and ~he houses looked better than any I had seen inside the passagewayo But. still they were sma.1 1 and crowded toge thero Than I came to my friend 0 s home o This trip was v ery reve aling to me=-this was rather early in my st.ayo .My friend was a very well educated man o I don°t

know how high a job he had in his ministry 0 but h e had a relatively good po si.tiono He had a v e ry l arge fami ly-~they all lived in that hous e o I think there were about eleven child ren; one s on was married 0 --he was a doctor. That s the way Vietnamese peo ple live 0 and that family wa s what I would call upper middl e classo

Another friend whose home I v isited several times had b een wit h AID quite a while . In spite of this and the f act that his wife also worked 0 'he lived in v ery poor cir c umstances . Perhaps he was h e lping to provide f or other relatives--that ' s so common in Vietnamo They lived down on the street that ran along beside the large canal that came off the Saigon Riv er. It was typic al of many crowdedo poor I ietna..mese residential areas~ The houses right n ext. to e ach othe ro

sometimes little fences between the ir front yards 0 such as they wereo A £ront yard might be a matter of a couple of f eet between the ir door and ·~e street~= u sual ly a cl ean~swep t har d~packed e arth are ao never

any grasso Of course 0 their windows don't closeo Th e weather doesn' t

demand windows that close 0 and so there are only iron bars on the win­ dows " So all the dust and dirt from the s treet comes in.

Let me tell you about this streeto I t is quite narrow~ and e v ery kin d of v ehicle goes along the re: Buses , loaded to the gills; auto­ rno .o i es; pony carts ; ox carts 0 y,ihich are v ery slow moving; bicycles; and we have in Vietnam what we call cycloso There are the pedal kind ·-~what yo-J. mig'ht call pedicabs" They are sort of like a bicycle" al­ though in place of the front wheel is a passenger seat between two wheels 0 and the dri,ier pedals behind . Then the motor cyclos--the front seat is wider and it is a rnoi:or affairo They use mixed gas and oil so there is a very noxious kind of exhaus1L There are many of

8 theseo particularly around in this area because a lot of marketing goes ono The exhaust and the dust were terrific o The road was only paved in the middle and I am sure it was broken upo It was so narrow

that .if a bus came along and a car came along at the same time 0 they had to slow _down .and squeeze by each other. There were hundreds of pedestrians of all kinds ~- some carrying things on baskets from shoulder

poles 0 others going in both direct.ions on both sides of the road, and

childreno children everywhere" Immediately across the street 0 at a stone 0 s throwo there was some construction project going ono Ther e were a couple of sand piles and two or three women were engaged in carrying sand in small baskets from one pile and putting it in another pileo All this was going on, and there was a tremendous cornmotiono

Probably most of the homes don°t have sanitary facilities in this area, and the children are pretty free anyway about going to the toilet on the edge of the road and running around barefoot o So many children have skin diseases or ring worm on their legs especiallyo The sanitary situation in places like this is just really bado Little babies pick up t hings with their hands and test them in their mouths . It 0 s ·a miracle that they survive, it seems to me.

This man had two or three children. It seemed to me that he was often s ick himself. I presume that a lot of this was genuineo but then of

course there was the other aspect 0 too: The work wasn°t all that in­ teresting to him. and I think he took time off and called it being sick. But it wouldn°t surprise me that he would be quite s icko Viet­ namese talk a lot about "getting sick from the wind." I was amazed when I heard this from a nurse when she had some intestinal difficulties . .. Of course most Americans realize that these intestinal difficulties which happen a lot in Asia are often from parasites in food or wat ero

But she spoke of "catching the wind 0 " that she got sick ·:from the wind .

To myself0 I thought, "Well. that's a pretty uneducated s ort of at­ 1 titude 0 ' and in respect to some illnesses it probably is . Bu t when I thought back to the situation in which this man lives and in which many other Vietnamese live-~just think, in the air and in the atmos-' phere there must be so many germs--I decided there may be something to "catching the windo"

Most Vietname·se who ·live in larger houses live with more than just the

i mmediate family in one house o Invariably 0 there are parents o in~laws, or other relatives" This saves housing and it's cheaper, but it means.

of course 0 living· in very crowded situations usuallyo There is a lot of personal and intimate contact among Vietnameseo Th.is may account,

to some extent 0 for the strong value placed 0 in Vietnamese society. on personal relationshipso After coming back I have realized this more

.than all the time I was th.ere0 how important these things are to the Vietnamese people o If two Americans should get into an argument over

some kind of abstract principle 0 they will argue it out, each one trying to prove himself right; and the most important thing is some­ how the truth of some abstract principle--settling it, or proving

9 somethingo But I t.:hink 0 generally speaking 0 to Vietnamese 9 though they b e come very c oncerned with ide as of this sort, itns not necessary

for one to be right and one to be wrong 6 and they would never break or d amage a personal relationship for the s ake of an abstract principle . One j ust doesnnt do that. The underlying value in a rel ationsh ip is to keep the rapport--to maintain the relationship. The Vietnamese l a n g·uage is v ery revealing of this value. Exc ept in clo se v ery fam­

.i.liar situations like between schoolchums 0 t h ere is no second-person pronounv and ·t r.:.-2 first-person pronoun is used cnly in formal relation­ ships" People a ddress one another and refer to themselves always in terms of the relationship between speaker and listenero For example, fri ends of the same a.ge call each other "older sister" and "older bro ther'', showing .familiar respe ct, and refer to themsel•1es as 1'younger 0 s.1.ster/brother 0 ° A young s tudent" speaking to his t e acher 0 refers to h ims e.Lf as young brother and addresses his teacher as teacher/ mast:er~-nev e r tl::e use of "I" or "you". Strange as i ·- may seem to

Americans " this sets up warm friendly relationships 0 andu in any con­ versationu the nature of a particular relat ionship is constantly re­ affirmed ,,

Nowo oi.' cou.rse 0 there are time s ·when relationships break dCJ'WB 6 a s in

any human relat.ions 0 but people strive against t his. The business o f being poi:i.te and not disagreeing is not a means of being dishonest or obsequious or inscrutable; it 1 s a business of having consid eration for the other personns i deas and feelings o One wo uldn't come out di­ rectly and contradict another person. In some ways t his is very good; we too 0 have i:he belief that each person has a right to his own ideas, but i n our conversational behavior we ofte n don 't b e have that wayo We don °t want the o ther person to have ideas that differ from ourso

The Vietna mese way i s sort o f sayinge "WellN y ese you may be right 8 " no matter how wrong one thinks the other person iso I think this .is a v ery fundamental aspect of the differences in attitudesu and these differences affecting· relationships o I th.ink I myself made many f~ux .Qas because I was insisting on the rightn ess of this or the rightness of that. A number of Vietna:r:1ese who I got to know quite well said to me that the .Americans a.re -Frie n dly but they don't -make real frie n d ships; they come and the y're friend ly and then they go away and they f orget 0

Th e ir .=riendsLips are not deep 0 they don't have as deep feelinge I've heard this expr essed , any times and somehow I begin t o wonder if -r.r.ere i.sn' -i: a good dea l of truth in it o The Vietnamese are v ery senti­ 0 rr ..;: m·::aL I think we re not v ery sentimental 0 but we nre v ery romantic-­ the g r8at American drear.1. and all thato It seems to me Vi etnamese are p.rag;matic a.nd sentimental and we" re romantic and unsentimental-~if thaL makes sense.

Wh at surprises me as I look b a c k over my experiences in vietnam0 es­ pecially the, last couple y e a rs is tha t so many Vietnamese like the Arnericar~s so mu.ch I began ' .o wonder what there was about the Americans; how did t.l:e Viet.namese know t h a t we weren't the French all over again?

10 How can they know from the blundering way we do thing s that we really don 1 t want to take over their country. e ven though many of them feel that in essence we can if not a ctually do run the South Vietnamese gover11raent o Now I think that, in spite of all ou r mi stakes and our 11 sort of l~ ttl e boy belief that 0 Well 6 if I give this person e nough 0 candy {cement, bulgur wheat 0 .oo ) then he'll love me and then we 11 all be friends togeth er forever,"--I think they can tell that gen­ erally speaking the Americans have good intentions and have good will n o matter what mistakes we make 0 and I think this is impor"!:ant to themo I 'm guessing at all this, of course .

In a way" I think the thing the Vietnamese fee l is the greatest i ndig­ nity is that the American i s always trying to buy them--as though we were going to win loyalty by giving material goods . Of course they want the material goods because they need them0 but what s eems im­ portant to them is a person's sincere interest in Vietnam o r in them as individuals. This is the thing that is most often sai d o r i mplied when they mention Americans . and they ' ll say, "That person likes Viet­ namese people" or "That person has a warm heart."

Another American returni ng from Vietnam thinks the Vietnamese are to~ally f labbergas ted by the Americans and have "ro understanding what­ soever of what t he c r azy Americans are doing. 11 If they don't feel this way 0 I don°t know why they don "t. I m~s t c onfess in rea d ing through some of the debriefs and t he attitudes toward the Vietnamese and the society as a whole and its needs. it just occurred to me ~ I wonder that we haven 't wiped out all the Vietnamese just by giving them cause to laugh themselves to death. Sometimes our appraisals just seem so far outo Bute then. I make mysel f a big authority on Vietnam and Vietnamese attitudes and 8 of course 0 I 'm not;--these are j u st my own prejudices and my own experiences .

Vietnamese and American Interpersonal Re l ationsh.lj;is

There we re a few of the American secretaries who were v ery friendly and sociable with Vietnamese people and spent l e isure t i me with them. but it was a very small minorityo Most of the girls " only contact oatside the office wa s when a Vietnamese girl would go with them to help buy s omething becau se they didn 't want to pay as much money as an American pays. Most of the girls were involved in the social life of ~he Ame rican community-~the endless cocktail parties e o r parties with the American militaryo At this time there were not l arge num­ be:.:·s of American military; there were MAAG advisors--Militar y Assist..:.. ance Advisory Group--and these wer e career military men 0 most of whom were stationed in Saigon and held office-type j obs 0 I presumeo

A lot of the girls went out with these merio Of course 0 as the mili­ tary complement incre ased tremendously 0 the parti es d id too.

I n my office. the other secretary was friendly with the Vietnamese in the sense that s he would ta:Lk. and laugh with themo But she was

11 not socially frie n d. y witn them and r ather ~ ooked on them as cute lit­ t le children" Th e Viet na mese man who worked most clo sely with her~ who was sort of in charg·e of the s e c retar ial/clerical work .in the Di­

visio:c a':1d .in that office 0 was a raarried man with children and an i n ­ 0 tel l ige~~ µerson 0 bu t I m sure s h e looked on him as you might look on 0 a hJ.rJh ac; .:.;l s t":.rd e n t ~ "He s a good kid 0 but he ma kes mistakes and h e has a lot t:.o ::.ear no" I 0 m s ure that he had been through c ountless num­

bers of l\IT.er:i.ca:t1 secretaries 0 all of whom were d ifferent and a l l o f whom ~:<:o would ~::'.>.i.v e to go along with i n their way 0 d .ing the same things h.:?? ~as always done b u t a djusting e v ery y e ar or two to a n ew "boss 11 who d ::Ldn °-::. k1:ow the ropes but thought she knew how things should be run .

Thi« i B a corrunon fJ.i.tuation i n Ame rican offices in Vietnam and p robably

elsewherF.:; o Be cause o f the h igh turnover o f Ame rica.n personnel and

the cons-::ancy o f '.~e Vi etnamese personnel 0 the Vietnamese o ften know rnuch mere of what is g oing on but the Americans are in the position of runnint; the s!!ow.

On the whcl.e 0 relations betwee n the Vietnamese and Americans in the Educa.tion Division were fairly goo d ~ at least they seemed so on the surface" At Christmastime the American per sonne l gave a Christmas 1 par;::y for the Vie tnanese personnel 0 and at 'J et 0 the Vietnamese New

-Y e ar 0 - !le ""\l ietnamese perso nnel treated the Ameri c an personnel to a

New Year's d inner; and , otherw.ise 0 relations i n the office were at

least qu.ite cordial 0 However, though the P...merica n s were v e ry friendly and t a lkati ve with e ach other they frowned on b e ing talkative with the Vi etnanese a s interferring- with the worko There was always the pres ~­ sur e of a lot o f work n eeding desperately t o b e done in a short time o

Ame ricans are panic-button happy o Furthermore 8 a close , cool look

showed the Ame ricans to be top do9 6 not by v irtue o f positiona b ut b y virtue of being· Americana There was always the insinuation that the

l i etnarr,ese were not as well educated 0 not as c apable 0 and probably not as inLelligent.

This was a v ery subt le sort o f thing, coming to the s urface only oc­

cas.ionaily and in Little wayso For exarnpl e 0 Vi etnamese personnel in an Ame rican off.ice are always yes=meno Th e American is always right. Vietnamese assistants are seldom consulted on the best way in a g iven situation to approach Vietnamese ministry off icials or on other as­ pects of project worko There are ~ WO aspe cts to this business about

t:ne Amer:~_can always b eing r i ght. One 0 I t hink 0 i s that Americans are

very direct and outspoken and a Vi etnamese person 0 because of h is cul­ t:..:.,.re:o will not directly contr:a d ict somebo dy 0 particularly if he is ·work.i.ng for therno Th e other thing i s a general atmosph ere of Ameri­ Cf:!.ll3'""~·even though we' re foreigners in the ir country~ -h aving the an­ swers er V·l!Jrk:ing on th.e a n swers and the Vietnamese people s hould go along and cooperate. I found t his attitude to be pretty general

t.hro-u.ghm.:t the American AID eff rt 0 e ven t o s o me extent in I VS--that the i::ask of the Americans was to get the Vietname se to cooperate with

:..he Arnericans 0 rather than the Americans think ing in terms of cooper­ at.ing with the VieT:.namese o I think a g reat deal of America n frustra­ tion is because o.f lack cf Vi etnamese ini tiative and action on Ameri­ ~ ideas and programs o

12 Anot her criticism is a criticism of almost all American offices o v er~ s eas ~ The prevalence of the attitude, "This is an American office and English is the language spoken here." I can ' t imagine a foreign office h ere in the United States, especially one hiring Americans, i n which they don °t use English 0 the language of this country. Why can ' t we l e arn to communicate in the language of the country we go to work and live in?

I wan t to t e ll about an interesting incident which happened in the

Educati on office 0 probably around late 1962 . There were a coupl e of problen s that came up. My memory is quite foggy on the details 0 but

I think 0 for a very short period of time, there was some obligatory checking a s the Vietnamese personnel left the office at noon and at the e nd of the day--checking to make sure that they were not carryi ng office supplies with them. I don't want to be too defini te about this because my memory i s very vague, but I do recall that there was some matter o f questioning the integrity and honesty of the Vietnamese per­ sonnel in the office , and at a different level than which the Americans were b eing questioned. There was a definite distinction between the Ame ricans and the Vietnamese--the Vietnamese were open t o more sus­ piciond a spersions were cast upon the honesty and integrity of the V ie tn~~ese personnel . This was naturally something of an indignity.

We ll. I was good friends with one of the assistants . One day h e brought me a l ett er and asked me to go over it to make necessary cor­ rections i n the English and to see if it expressed in English the feel­ ings that they wanted to express. This letter was composed with the cooperation and the soliciting of the feelings of the other Vietnamese pers onnel in the office. There was a sizeable group which definitely wanted to submit this letter to the chief of the division. It was quite a long l e tter, trying to give, as I recall, some background to some of their feelings and their feelings about the i mmediate problem. I wish I could r emember more . My feeling was that it was a very we ll­ expressed letter and it was quite justified under the cir cumst ances , and I was very happy to help them by correcting the English. I was a little surprised- - and now as I look back on it with further e xperience in Vietnam, even a little more surprised--that the Vietnamese employ­ ees decided to stand up and present their feelings to the Ameri cans 0 instead of j u st taking it and going along in the sort of yes-man sit­ uation that I have referred to.

According to my advice and his own feelings too, the assistant 0 rather than sending t he letter directly to the chief of the division 0 sent it through the supervisor of his project . For quite some while he did not h e a r anything at all--no reaction--about the letter 0 which seemed a little odd . But later we l earned that the supervisor 0 being extreme­ ly busy and apparently not reading the letter carefully enough to realize--or perhaps just was not aware--how important this might be , gave the letter t o one of his t echnicians to take care of. Again here my memory i s hazy. I am not clear whether or not this letter e ver r eached the d ivision chief 0 but I think perhaps it did at a l a ter date--

13 r e ally ra~ther late 0 considering the nature of the letter.

This is the t h i ng that I want to emphasize par icularly ~ the attitude that t 1:.ese Americans in responsible positions took toward this very legitimatP expression on the part of t h e Vietnamese. Even if t h e Americari ':' f elt that they were not expressing a lack of trust in the

Vietnamese 0 e v e n i f the Americans fel t that the Vietnamese feeling was no~ j· st:.ifie:d.0 nonetheless, the Vietnamese felt this way, and it is ~ nly proper in any kind of situation anywhere in the world to take thi s into account 0 particularly in a situation in which we are foreign­ ers wo r king in a co untry and purportin9 to be helping a people: that we c o uld not put more attention to paying respect to t heir attitudes and0 if not seeking out their attitudes 0 at least listening to them when t h ey are brought to our attention. I think this letter was treat­ ed in a very offhand manner 0 as though these people were just being a little upst arty and speaking out o f turn-~that was the impression I got.

La t ero when nothing happened or nothing was said0 then I did e ncourage the Vietnamese p:=ople t o bring it up again--at least for this person to cal i t directly to the attention of the chief to make sure that he knew about it and for the Vietnamese person to express his concern that h e had h e ar d nothing. But. now at this late date I canat quite remember wheth er he actually did talk to the chief or not 0 but I do remember thato after second thoughts 0 the Vietnamese were rather reluctant to be v ery aggressive on this point. Here again was the business that it 1 s almos t bet ter sometimes to suffer indignities than to make an abrasive quality in a relationship. particularly relationships that have to con­ tinue on" What I don't r emember0 and probably what is rather important, i s whether there was any apology eve+ mad,13 to the Vietnamese. I rather suspect not 0 beca.use I think the attitude was more that the complaint was rather petty"

There seems to b e some of the " superior American" here at the Asia Training Center" Even though a gr~qt deal of money and effort is spent bringing compete nt Vietnamese '-teach ers here from Vietnam, they are made t o feel that they are nothing more than °resource personnel" ~~handy to have around for specific needs but actually just second­ cl.ass citizens in the ATC community, their needs and attitudes taken into little account. I think we Americans. being direct and idea­ o riented0 often forg-et that. t he Vie tnamese aren°t Americans and 6 b eing r elationsh:p-oriented0 find it difficult to speak up for them­ selves in such a competitiv e atmosphere .

Personal Adjustment to Job

Language

I didn °t,have language stu dy before I went to Vietnamu but when I went: there I was s ort o f determined to learn Vietnamese . I had had sucb positive experien ces durin9 my two days in Japan with a few

14 Japanese words and in Hong Kong with a little Chinese o At any rate, on t he plane going over I met a Vietnamese s tudent retu rning home 0 and within t he first week I was there he came to call and bro ught his sis­ t er a They taught me a few words of Vietnamese and they were obviously very i nterested in my learning more o So I realize.d. that if you once ge t your l i ttle toe in the door you can swing the d oor wide open and it's .greaL My motivation was increased a thousand-fold just by these little c onver sations I had with people . My fac ility with Chinese was pretty lame but it starte.d a kind of relationship with t he Chinese people I met and they would teach me moreo It was the same with Viet­ nameseo People are usually so anxious to teach you their language it' s marvelous o

The Ame rica n Embassy in Vietnam provided Language training four hours a week duri ng office hours for any American government employees who wished to take it and who had the approval of their supervisors o I was very f ortu nate--I got the approval of my supervisor 0 though he told me I wouldn °t l earn enough to use and it wouldn't be any use anyway 0 b ut h e signed the sheet so I could then study in those classes, which was good for a beginning. However, it wasn 1 t e xpert language teaching by any meanso and if I had done all my language l e arning in class I wouldn't be able to speak much at all. (Although my language teacher was a very fine person and became a good frien<1 his interests were not in language teaching and he had not been exposed to modern language teaching methods o)

But very soon after I got there I struck u p an acquaintance with a cyclo driver (cyclos are the pedicabs that they have in Vietnam) who worked the commissaryo On my first trip to t h e commissary I came out and what looked to be a young boy pulled up and I climbed ino I had been taught by my friends to say my address . so I told him my address in Vi etnamese o (It was only several mont hs later that I learned that people often don't use addresses except officially and for mail o They don't usually say they live at such and such a number. they say they live at such and such a place ; sometimes it is a street but more of­ ten some known place or a market to identify an area o) He grinned 1 and took off 0 but of course I d i dn t pronounce it correctly and he had to ask me the street againo When we got t o the street 0 he asked which way to turn o I refused to tell him which way to turn but in­ sisted on saying my number in Vietnamese over and over. Finally he got down and peer ed in at me , and when he understood. he made me re­ pe a t it after him until I sai d it correctlyo This was the beginning o f a friendship and a lot of language learningo

The next time I went to the commissary, he tried to talk to me in a little pidgin English and asked if he could work for me-- taking me places I wanted to go o I thought o wellu why not? And that was really one of the best things I ever dido Eventually u I quit using the USAID t ransportation to work and rode with him every dayo This cost me a little moriey 0 but it was such a very small -amount compared to what I wa s getting out of it and what it was doing for himo Whe n my language

15 classes r an out bec ause I was the o n ly o ne left and the embassy could no t. a f f ord to teach l ang u age .to one person0 he became my pri nciple teacher" . I had picked up a ph r a se boo k put o ut by the Summer Inst itute of Lin9uistics f o r their people to learn Vietnamese and found t h e phrases and conversations in there much better and mo re relevant than

the one s in the J ones & Thong book put out by Yale University 0 the book we had been u sing in our classes. The phrases i n the Yal e book were not particularly appl icable t o a speaker o f Vietnamese in Saig on. I felt they migh have been mo re u sef u l in New Hav en if the peo ple o f New Ha ven spoke Vietnamese . My teacher didn nt use the useful little pattern e x ercise s between the conversations .

When I would ride in the cycle I 0 d t ake this phra se book along. My

friend0 the eye lo dr i v er 0 had had enoug·h education so that he c ou l d :re ad and h e wo uld r ead a ph rase to me for me t o t ry and understand

and to repe:at a.fter him. I t aught him t o drill me 0 so he would re­ peat it until I said i t well enouqh to sat isfy h im. I did a l o t o f my learning this way" Also , I went o ften to the cent ral ma rket 0 which :fascinated meo I practiced in the market wit h people who couldn Dt

speak m;.;i.ch Englis h 0 ·,.,1hich is the best way to pra ctice a language .

And then 0 also 0 the Vietnamese people wh o worked in t h e AID Educat ion

office we re a wonderful bunch of people 0 and I became v ery good friends with seve ral of them. Th ey were very kind and pat ient with me and would h elp me practice 0 and I would stumble along o

Language learning is both fun and frustrati n g . At one po int early in my stay the re 0 when I f e lt d i s c ourag·ea and felt a s though I h adn 't made any progress f o r week s 0 another American who was study ing Viet­

namese said to me 0 "Well 0 I think t h ere are sort of p l a t eau s . You charge ahea d for awhile and j ust seem t o be l earning like ma d o and the n you just go along at a l e v el p a ce a nd i t seems as though y ou are

nm: moving· an:ywhere 0 but I think you are abso rbing things o And t h is

gives you some background and all o f a s u.dden 0 wham0 you go ahead a gaino" And thi s seems to b e true .

So o ften in othe r countrie s Ame ricans go to 0 people l earn t o speak English~~they acc om.111od ate themselves t o us--so that t here isn't quite the nee d for s peaking the lan9uage there t hat would r equ ire a foreign person to spea k Englis h h e r e o So people t e n d t o become v ery lax about

s tudying the language of the country; t h ere isn't t h e press ure 0 a nd if 0 they are not highly motivated it s e a s i er not to study 0 and this i s a ,,­

v ery natural thi ng 0 o f course .

~.,o.llowing naturally on the tails of this i s rationalizat i on f or no t

st:;.dying o The first an d ve ry valid r ation alizat ion is that 0 where

can you use Vietnamese exc e pt in Vietnam0 and if you' re go ing t o be there ::or t::Wo y e a r s you learn a little bit and then y o u g o s omewh ere else and what use i s it? But I t hink t hat i n t wo yea rs~-even in two months~-you can learn even a t 'ny bit that o pen s the door to l earning more and a lso to e stablis hin g a happy relationship with Vietnamese pe ople . If you a.re willing to make a l itt l e e f fort and are inter-

16 ested. Vietnamese people will go more than half way to help you com­ municate . It enriches the whole two years; it makes it 'l!l:Orth it just for that, even if you 0 re not going to become attached for a longer period of time as I dido

The other rationalization, which is threatened by a person like myself learning any amount in a short length of time and then learning a large amount in a long length of time 6 is always that, "Well, Viet­ namese is too difficult to learrL It's a very difficult language to learn. You can°t learn enough in two years to do any good. You might as well learn French; itGs easier and you can use it somewhere else." Wella any foreign language is difficult to learn, and any language learning takes some effort. But it's not all that difficult. And after studying Vietnamese and after teaching English as a foreign lan­ guage, I fee l I would a thousand times rather study Vietnamese than try and learn English as a foreign language.

English has so much inflection--so many different forms. And our writ­ ting system is so out of date. Pronunciation is s o d ifferent from spel­ ling. One thing abcu t Vietnamese which helps is that they have a roman­ ized writing system which is still pretty phonetic; that isa it re~ fleets pretty accurately the sound of the spoken language, so that once you have learned how to pronounce the spelling system, you can recognize words in writing· and also produ.ce them" And another thing is that Vietnamese do esn°t have inflected verbs. Of course there are other things that are difficult: As I mentioned before, there is no such thing as a second-person pronoun, and you have t o learn what to call everybody--Mr. or Miss or Big Brother or Big Sister, and this is very, very complex and gets into the cultural aspects 0 which is very interesting; but it is very difficult for a foreigner to learn just what to use when. But there are certain polite forms that can be used generally and that are almost never wrong 0 so, if you learn those, like Mr oo Miss, or Mrs . 0 then you can carry on a conversation.

Learning to converse makes such a difference 0 if only' in making an image of an American in a foreign country--a person who has come rather presumptuously to help them and to show them the way-~an image of a person who is a h elper and a teacher and advisor but who is also a learner with respect for other people. This creates an entirely dif­ ferent image of the American than is usually had. Some people are particularly concerned about our image. For those who are more con~ cerned with the personal aspect, the rewards are proportionate to the amount of interest and effort invested and are worth any amount.

Sometimes it's an uphill bat t le, particularly in the early stages, to get Vietnamese people to help practice speaking Vietnamese, because many Vietnamese are very highly motivated to learn English and want and need to practice because conversation is very difficult. (Much language instruction is by Vietnamese teachers so that they don °t hear American pronunciation.) Naturally 0 they want to take advan~

17 ta.ge of the opportunity of practicing with a native speaker of Eng­ lisho And 0 then 0 the Arrer.ican speaking Vietnamese less well than the Vietnamese person speaking English is at a . disad•J.antage just from the stand point of comnmni cation; both partie s will more quickly mov e to English fer communicationo

Howevero I consistently found at all levels o f English ability 0 a de­ l:i.ght in talking to me in Vietnamese and being anxious to help me-~ also enj oyme nt in laughing with me at my bad American accenL This included people whose English was much better than my Vietnamese and n on=Engl.ish=speaking people in the market who needed to l e arn at least a little market English to sell their goo ds to the increasing number of Ame rica.ns o Natu.rally 0 when we would g et into discussions 0 we would talk in the language most common to us botho

Relations with Vietnamese Personnel

The Vietnamese perso nnel .in the office--and in the r est of AID--were generall y v ery approachable and I got a long quite well with themo In addition to h elping practice speaking Vietnamese 0 they wou l d do many things to help me learn about Vietnamo They would take me to the re­ formed opera and help me understando One girl took me to the market several times j u st because she had to go shopping for fruit for her family 0 a nd s h e would take me alongo She had a large family to care f o r as well as wo rking full time so she was a very busy person 0 but s he was the sweetest 0 most g enerous person I have e v er knowno And s he would do these things--take me down to the market with hero show me how t o buy this or that 0 what fruits are g o od and when to buy them and about prices and so on. She was j u st lovelyo

Many of the Vietnamese who worked in the office would come to visit at my house and bring me g·if t s 0 very Vietnamese types of things o like fruits :from their g a. rdens or little cards with Vietnamese paint­ ings o n them~·=many lovely little th.ings 0 and what was most lovely was the g esture o They would come and talk to me 0 and always this pat-o ience 0 to hel p me learn Vie t namese even though their English might be much better than my V.ietnameseo

I spe nt most of my free time with my Vietnamese friendso occasionally with some Ame rican friends 0 but mostly with Vie tnamese friendso I d on"t know of any o f the other American secretaries who were as friend­ ly as I was o In fact 0 I d ated one of the Vietna."tlese AID employees o something· that American g irls u s ually don't doo "' Those Vietnamese men" How can you like them?" Their attitudes are rather funny.

Th e man I dat ed is a very fine person 0 and I have a great deal of respe ct for himo He taught me many things about Vietnam; he took me places in Saigon and for rides out on the Bien Hoa highway o Most o f the country areas a.round Saigon were questionable security=wiseo and also 0 the roads were not so goodo But this big 0 - -lr!€ W four-lane-­ h ighway that the .Americans had put in was well trave lled and was where many Vietnamese would go in the evening to cool off after a hot day in the cityo There ~ere places like parkways along the side o This was in the good old d ays before industry cluttered the hi9hway from Saigon t o Bien Hoao I had a Vietnamese girl friend and the three of us would go out and buy pomelo or -someth ing on the highway 0 or take

along tiny 0 delicious little b anana s 0 and eat and talk and enjoy the cool e v e ning after a hot d a.y. This was just the s ort of thi ng that Vietnamese people doo

Relation s with American Personnel

Anyway 0 I had a very good and 0 I thought 0 a very d iscreet r e lationship with this Vietnamese man. But there were Ameri cans in the office who were suspicious of such atypical behavior . I usually get along pretty well with the people with whom I work, and I got along quite wello I

t.houg·ht 0 with the Americans working in my office as well a s the Viet­ name se personnel. My immediate supervisor and I got along in face-to­

face relations 0 but it developed rather soon that there were some d if­ ferences i.n attitude toward many things . I think there were a number of aspects to this. One 0 I'm a rather independent person 0 and I like to take my own responsibility for the jobs I do and have the opportun­

ity to use my head about some things. He o on the other hand 0 was a

persono whoo I think. 0 needed v ery much to have peopl e look to him and

take direction from himo I was immediately responsibl e to him0 but I was also supposed to be responsible both to h i s project and to another

project 0 the Technical Vocational Education project 0 and h e was rather jealous of things I did for the other project.

I would like to digress a bit to tell about the man in charge of the

Tech-Voe project 0 who was a very effective t echniciano I wish we had many technicians like that--a very admirable person. He was knowledge­ able and interested in his fie ld. He was a very responsible and res­ ponsive type of person who got along very well with all the Americans under him and above him and got along with the Vietname se minis try of­ ficials with whom h e worked and with the Vietnamese in the office un­ der him. They all liked him very much. He treated other people with respect and was very dedicated to his job and to doing what would be the best thing for technical education in Vietnam. He gave all the credit to the man who preceded him for designing a good proj e ct and

setting u p the program for years to come and looking ahead 6 but he fol­ lowed through very we ll and continued t o prepare the Vietnamese voca- · t.ional schools in terms of equipment and layout and also in terms of

training t e achers to work in them . They planned everything f-ar ahead0 consulting continually with the Viet namese people concerned. Eventually

he was 0 u.nfortunate ly 0 reassig-ned to Washingtono He i s now no longer in AID but in HEW in Washing·tono

Why does it always happen that someone has to be jealous of a person who is very effective? I'm sure that this was the case with my super-

19 visoro And j ust as he was j e alous of the other technician"s effective­ ness and his popularity with the Vietnamese 0 so was he jealous o f my language ability and popularity with the Vietnamese in the officeo So all these: differences sort of piled up and_ e v entually 0 unbeknownst to meo he went about seeking ways of 9etting rid of meo

Finally he ·vims able to convince a Vietnamese girl who had worked in the office before to leav e her job with a business firm downtown and come back and replace meo He justified this on the grounds that we Americans are supposed to be working ourselves out of jobs and that we should be replaced by what was called "local hire." This is true and quite legitimate 0 but tLe whole purpose behind it wasn' t thi s at all, and it wa.s very evident that it was not the purpos e ~ not only as far as he was concerned but as far as the personnel office was con~ cernedo When the personnel office call ed me over to tell me 0 they didn't have the finesse o r grace to say 0 "We are in desperate need of s ecretaries over h ere 0 and so we asked various offices~ particularly those offices that have two American secretaries 0 to try to replace one of their American secretaries wit h a Vietnamese secretary so that we can spread the Americans out more where they are needed.n Now they 0 could have appr oached it this way very reasonably e and said 0 ° And so 0 therefore 0 weare sorry to move youo We hear you've been d oing a good 11 jobo and blah blah blahon But they started right out withe We ll 0 we were able to get this other person to replace you and so you"re going to be transferred to this office where we need some other secretarieso"

The other o ffice 0 incidentally~ already had one American secretary and were getting another; I was going to be the third American secretary in that off.ice o

The Education office was extremely busy and had a tremendous amount of worko Of course 6 I was involved in it and was very much interested in wh at was going on :so I was v ery much upset to be transferred0 and for such obviously pho ney reasonso And the thing that really d istressed me and disgust ed me wa:s the fact that· this man obtained the cooperation8 whether under pressure of influence or what 0 of a whole set of people -=a whole element of bureaucracyo On the basis of a personal grudgeo he got their cooperation in carrying out a procedure that was of no benefit to the a.g·ency and was detrimental to many personal and working relationships . The realization that this can and does happen far too often in AID missions filled me with disgusto Also 0 I am quite sure that as more ammunition against me, he gossiped with them about my friendship with the Vietnamese man I datedo 'I'here were things that happened that made this very evidento I tried to get them to come out in the open with me and they would not; they just maintained an awkward silence. Furthermore 0 someone-~probably the woman personnel officer (there were both a man and a woman who were personnel officers and wit.h b o th of whom I talked ) gossiped outside the personnel o ffice, because I got feedbac k from other secretarieso Well 0 in some ways I wanted to laugh a.t themo If this is the sort of thing that's going to o c cupy their mi nds and timeooo

20 What d i s appointed me in respect to these administrators was that they were not open o . They were acting upon information--right or wrong-­ about me 0 but provided me no opportunity to speak for myself. They went ahead and acted. The fact is that this reflected on them as ad­ ministrat.ors o My feeling is that this sort of thing can happen so easily in an AID organizationo I 1 m sure it does happen many times in small ways and also in big ways, because there are enough little _odds and ends of things that I've -known about people who are in really big positio ns--wel l~known people--who have run into difficulties because they have a rlif ferent way of thinking than the ordinary administrator and bur eaucrat o I suppose it's inevitable that these things . happen in this kind of business where you have a top-heavy bureaucracy as we have i n the governrnento So many things and ideas get lost in the shuffle of "my career vso your career."

In t he new office I proceeded, naturally, to make friends with the Vietnamese people in the office, and they were fun to get to knowo The Public Saf e ty Division was quite a different situation from the

Education nivision 0 and my work was so different. To me, a lot of it was pettier s t uff 0 and a lot of little things that everyone seemed so concerned about seemed to me to be just petty little things. Also, the type of American personnel who worked in Public Safety were dif­ ferent from the educ ators . A lot of them were policemen from back home . Some of them were very nice, very fine guys, but it was just a differen t kind of e nvironment. And the discrepancy between the type of pe rsonnel on the American staff and the type of personnel on the Vietnamese staff was much greater than in the Education office . The Viet namese employees in Public Safety Division were, like the Vietnamese employees in the Education Div ision, people who had progressed as · far as they could in their education until the war interrupted it anda were it not f or t he war and the unstable economic situation in Vietnam, would most likely have gone on to college and been highly educated people. And they were working beneath police advisors 0 some of whom were also quit e competent people 0 but as I said0 it was just a differ­ ent kind of environment .

I , myself 0 welcomed the small amount of contact that I was able to have with the Vietnamese employeeso I was working most of the time in a small office wh ere the classified materials were filed so no Vietnamese were allowed in there 8 a little cubbyhole between two offices. But wh e never I had a chance , I would get out for a few minutes and I would talk with them. By this time my Vietnamese was much improved and I had go tten to the stage where 8 even though my vocabulary was limited,

I could appreciate puns 0 which are so easy in the Vietnamese language because of the tonal business and compound_wordso It 1 s lots of fun, and we would do this and they would teach me new words and expressions. It was a nice relief for me from a job that I thought was very un­ imaginativ e . (I was really not a secretary but a file clerk.) _

After a few months in Public Saf ety, my immediate supervisor left and was replaced by a man who was apparently bothered by my speaking Viet-

21 nameseo though I didn "t realize it for a long timeo He was bothered for· different reasons from the cause of my trouble in Education . With the exc eption o f three or f our of the American police advisors 0 there was hardly any pretense in Public Safety of friendly relations between the Ame:c.i~.;ans and the Vietnamese o There was much more of an element of distrii.st toward the Vietnamese and looking on them as inferior cre atures o Because he c o uldn" t understand what I was saying and be·­ ca.1.rne he cou.ldn" t understand why I would wish to be so friendly with the Vietnamese 0 h e was suspiciouso

Apparentlyo it. b othered some of the Americans that I had all t h is ac~ cess to classified material and that I spent so mu ch time talking to the Vietnamese o What they didn 't realize and which they would prob~ ably never understand is that I loved nothing better than to get away from a ll that stuffo I 've never shared the passicinate preoccupation with "juicy information that only a few of us know" that inflicts some Foreign Service personnel. (As a matter of fact, in that office I sometimes typed material classified as "Confidential '° which I had heard a month or two b efore as common knowledge in t h e Vietnamese com­ munity a I f ound this t, be not uncornmon 0 in Hue as well as in Saigon: Americans pull long faces and tippy-toe around over information that is often commonly known among the Vietnamese and is in all probability insignificanto If the Vietnamese become aware of the American atti­ tude., they get a g ood laugh. If the Americans living in Vietnam would become mo re a part of the Vietnamese community 0 they would get a bet­ t er perspective of what es happening and the relative significance of happening·s. )

As I s aid0 I didn°t realize for a long time that my supervisor disliked my speaking Vietnamese in the officeo One day I d i d a very rude thing: In front of him I spoke in Vietnamese to a Vietnamese person. Since the Vie tnamese person c ould speak English and since my · superior coul d not speak Vietnamese 0 ! s hould have spoken in Englisho Well 0 my s u p­ ervi s or blew his stack.a I apologized 6 and he said 0 "Don't you speak Vietnamese in th.is office any rnoreo" I said, uyou mean when I Jm 11 talking· in fro nt of youo Of course I won" t againo" ".No 0 he said. iir me an anywhere i n the office 0" I prot ested 0 "But this is Vietnam. "

And he said 0 "But this is an American office and these people have to learn Englisho so you spe ak to them in English. No speaking Vietnamese .in the Public Safety Div.is .ion office. And you shouldn"t talk to the Vietnamese anyway because y o u have work to do and they have work t o do." (Never a ny complaint about my talking to Amer.icanso )

I wa.s re ry upset and cried over my typewriter most of the afternoon D,n t i l the Vietnamese interpreter to · whom I had spoken in Vietnamese stuck his head in the doo r and said. "Don 1 t worry." The way he said it I realized that he was very understanding of my situation and that these are the things you have t o put up with if you ere 9'0ing to work in this office. He had b een there a long time and was familiar with the attitudes in the office o

22 After I recovered f rom my shock over this slupen~ous .k ind of dictum0 t he irony that struck me was my supervisor 0 s justification that "these people need to learn English"" But one of the noticeable things to me

in that office was that the Americans 0 except. a'" few technicians who worked directly with Vietnamese assist.ants, rarel y had any conversa­ tion at al:~ . ~~ even in Eng lish--wi th the Vietnamese except when it was

ne cessary to t ell them 6 "Do this and do that. " The first thing that comes to mind when I think of that office is the Vietnamese word 11 buon 11 11 which means sad 0 lonely. gloomy"" I don°t thi nk the Vietnamese people

there we r e really happy at all in their work 6 and a lot of them were unhappy because of the unfriendly atmosphere and because they were so subordinate o

Another situation that added to the oppressive atmosphere was that the American secretary in charge of the Vietnamese translators and typists

was very gung-ho for putting the Vietnamese in their places o She d·is­ trus ted them as non-Americans and was always afraid that they were goofing off and cheating on their responsibili ties . Because s he was

l~cking in imagination h erself 0 she didn't give them credit for any

imagination 0 and s he d i dn't give them any respect . One sweet-faced typist. who was the most prone to goofing off and was jealous of two g·irl translators o complained about them frequently to the Ameri c an secretary and accused them of goofing off a nd not doing enough typingo Instead of checking up on the translators 0 duti es and trying to see

what was behind the accusations 0 she believed the typist.and became even more oppressive o This was distressing to me because I was friend­

ly with a ll the Vietnamese 8 including. the typist0 and knew that the two translators ·were responsible women and were actually much more cop.- . scientious than the typist o I tried diplomatically to point out

she was quite sympathe tic with the restriction on speaking Vietnamese 0

an d ~ when I tried to defend the two Vietnamese gir ls 0 she became e ven more suspicious of me o

All in allo the situation for the Vietnamese personnel in Public Safety

was not too happy o Pinally 0 the distrust and lack of respe ct went too far when the Chief of the Divi s ion required the Vietnamese translators to give a written account of their time at the end of each dayo Imagine. What an insult this was to intelligent responsible people. A few d ays of this and three rnen~~thr ee of the most competent translators in the office--s ubmitted their resignat.ionso USAID Personne Office tried to

persuade them to stay in USAID and work in another office 0 but they s a:.d "Noo" They'd had it ; they j ust weren't going t o work for USAID any moreo They all got good jobs elsewhere, at least one of them doing profitable free-lance translatingo Th is is a deplorable thing to happen .in an American office where there are supposed to b e respon­ s ible Americans who presume to advi s e o ther peopl e on how to do things.

I left USAID and Saigon in the spring of 19640 I resigned from AID be~ause I had applied to go into International Voluntary Services as

23 an English teachero Earlier 0 I had r equested to stay in AID and re­ turn to Vietnam as a Rural Affairs worker because one of the RA people sug·gested that I try to get into rural worko I had put that on my r e­ quest pa r t ly t o legitimatize my s ubsequent resignation in order to work close1y with Vietnamese people and not in an office in Saigono I made it cl.e a r that I was interested in project work more close ly r e lat­ ed to grass ~·roots dev elopmento Th e executive officer r esponded to my 8 request w·ith, "Well 0 that s fine 0 but we r e ally have nothing open right nOl,J o" He j u st wasn" t .interest ed in this switch and I ' m sure h e thought 1 I d dutifully SlJ.bm.it to remaining a secretary" Howev e r 0 when I s ub­ mitted my resignat ion to AID in order to work for I VS 0 the executive offic er and other administrative people were v ery pleasant and support­ i v e o

AID ~ An Evaluation

I n looking bac k over my experi e nces in AID and I VS and comparing the attitudes .in b o th organizations 0 I am impressed with the emphas is in I VS o n the v alue t o the I VSer o f the ove rse as experience as well as the \'alue o f h is c on t ributio n to overseas worko I think AI D s hould not o verlook the positive fac tors o f its employees having po sitive exper­ iences themse l ves o As well as creating a good image of this countryo I think as individuals they can be mo.re effective in their own work if they ' re having positive experiencesa I felt this v ery much when I first met IVS--International Voluntary Ser vices~-worke rs in Vie tnam whe n I was there with AID . One thing that struck me when I associated with them0 vis ited them outside of Saigon at the ir stations 0 was how happy they seemed to be. It just struck me a s a c o ntr ast to s o many of the Americans I worked with who seemed t o be s o frustrated in so many ways. I didn't feel this so much with the I VSers; they were just m re at ease and enjoying themselv es o Th e y lived more in the Vietnamese community and were not so much at o dds with the commun ityo It just seemed to me that they were having experiences that were valuable to themselves as individ uals 0 and out of this kin d of positive business t hey could b e more effective in whatever the y were doing 0 and in their relationships with Vietnarnese o

We can asko what are the Americans doing over the r e anyway? I think it"s s o rt of a dual kind of business o One 0 a v ery .idealistic--and a good part of the time an uninformed--notion that we can do something good for somebodyu I think the primary reason we ' re t h ere is we have the .idea somehow that we can protect ourse lves by this business of c ontaining Cornmunism 0 and that we can c ontain Communism by dev elo ping a country. I think that theoretically and e ven practically this is tru e. but s omehow it doesn't come off the way i t "s supposed too

I tend to a g ree with Thomas Loeber who wrote the b ook , Foreign Aid-­ Ou r Tragic Experime nt g The weakest a spect of AID is their recruiting policies; we tend to g e t people who have little or no i deal ism 0 people who are not highly motivated to study language or to have an attitude of learning as we ll as g o ing and a dv i s ing 0 or just a s working people.

24 It seems to me the attitudes of people going a broad are as much if not more important than their technical abilities and skills 0 though those are important if you 0 r e going to presume to advise people; but the attitu des with which you attempt to impart these skills to somebody else mak e all the difference in .whether or not your advice i s e v en accepted a t all 0 much less acted upon . . So that a person°s attitudes toward t h e l anguage and communication and toward customs and ways of beha vior and being polite and considerate of other people--all these things are a v ery crucial part of whether or not you can be e ffective on your job"

In recruiting AID workers for overseasa there shoul d be much more con­ cern with the applicant's attitudes toward oth er peopl e and toward fore i gn aid work ~- as much concern with that as with the applicant 0 s abi l i ty i n his specific area of work (and I think the r e should be more c oncern with tha t 0 too). Personal recommendations should reflect an emphasis on t 'he'Se" aspects . Also, there is available now a tremendous var i ety of t ests=-·apti tude and attitude tests " There 's no reason why AI D cann9t use tests of this 'sort in reviewing candidates. Test s would probabl y be more reveali ng than references .

In its bro chures a nd recruiting materials, AID should put less emphasis on what it offers and more on v.hat it expects of its people. Nearly al­ ways you get higher quality people when you make demands . High quality people want to be associated with organization s which demand high qual­ i ty. Once you begin to get quality, you can get more -~ quality attracts quality. Higher caliber people will be more interested in going partly because of the r eputation of the organization and because they can work with people they would like to work with. I don°t know whether this i s possibl e in such a bureaucratic organization.

AID a l ways makes a lot of the goodies it offers to its employees-­ making it seem that AID is hard up for people and therefore not too concerned with quality 0 and tending to attract people who join AID just for those goodies. 'I'hey shouldn't talk so much about the advantages o In facto I ' m incli ned to belie v e that AID shouldn 't give so many ad­ va ntages. They ought to cut way down on their advantages 6 particularly in Vietnam. Vietnam has become more and more just ·a big place to make mo ney. It ' s been that ·way for about three or four years--a very up­ wa rd drive in that direction. Of course, before that 0 it was a money­ 0 ma k i ng· place 0 but .it s really that now.

Of cou rse 0 you can ' t ·ask people to be volunteers such as the IVSers are o especially people with families--they can 't do that " People like t o t h i nk they 0 re not only making enough money to live on but are saving up f o r other things in the future. But it seems to me this can be done without padding everything so much. For example 0 when I went to Viet­ n amu we were getting a fifteen per cent increase for hardship post. At that time I thought that was a little ridiculous because 0 in the first place u you could live off the PX--even locally grown vegetables were

25 sold in the PX 0 like the s upermarket at homeo Prices at the PX were sometimes lower 0 sometimes not~ at that time 0 it depended a lot on the product., In the second place 0 if you. d.idn°t live off t he PX 0 there was evexyt.hing o:n the local e conomyo Saigon is a big commerical city and there 0 s everything there o And servants were phenomenally cheap accordinq to American standardso It wasn°t a hards h ip post-~we were not out in the mountains somewhere or where it was difficult to get supplieso We had all the advantageso Then we had a security scare-­ grenades were ·i::hrown into a couple bars; that time no Ame ricans were

injured 0 a couple Germans were inj ured 0 and0 of c ourse 9 as alwayse there •1111ere more Vietnamese hurt than anybody" But then the y upped the ha:r'dship post allowance to 25% because of the problem o f securit y o My feeling was that the people who manage these things--whoever it is who pushes these th.ings--were just sort of making a case to increase the incomeo I was on t h e bottom .income bracket in AIDo but I had

plenty of money fo:r living and travel and 0 in a ddition to accumulated

savings 0 $ 8 00 for summer school after I left AID.

Besides concern with attit u des 0 I think I would have s omewhere in the literature an indication that prior knowledge of a foreign language ~=·any fore i gn language whether it has to do with the are a where you" re going or not--would be looked upon with f avoro I think there should be all the encoura9ement possible in t his directiono I c erta inly don't mean to indicate that because a p erson has l earn ed a f oreign l anguage or because they're willing to l e arn a foreign language this will make them g ood AID workerso I think attitude is more i mportant

than language a But knowing· one foreig·n languag e -~especially if i t" s a non-European language--helps to broaden a person's perspective in regard to the way people thinko The. way we think is expressed through

our language 0 and when we learn another language we learn a l i ttle bit another way of thinkingo This is good=-it h e lps to broaden a perso no

It would even be good to ask for t his in a s e cretary 0 though secre­ taries generally speaking probably aren't as likely as t echnic ians to have prior language trainingo Regarding the recruiting of secretar~

ies 0 for the sake of off.ice efficiency 0 I would make minimum require­ ments on typing and shorthand speeds ·a nd th.is sort o f thing o But I think again I would put more emphasi s--in letters of recommendation and in the recruiting brochures--on t h e person's attitudeso For in­

stance0 in asking for lette rs of recornmendation 0 a sk for a judgement a.bout how well the recommender thinks the person would be able t o live with different kinds of people0 what kind o f attitudes does the person have toward fore.igners--all this sort of thingo It should be stressed that all AID peopl e ~~s e cre tari es and e verybo dy-~ should go as interested s tudents as much a s anything else--to l earn so that we will know what it is that is need o f uso

AID needs to encourage this kind of i nte r est in a person seeking employmento I know myse l f that there are a lot of people who have never considered working for AID who might consider it and might be very good workers if the emphasis would change and there would be an

26 emphasis on higher quality~ ~and if there was less bureaucracy 0 but I don °t know if that 0 s possibleo

I think an orientation program is a valuahl.e thing if it tends to en~· courage t~h e person towards the attitudes I talked about. . I like the i dea here at ATC of language training for secretarieso There are sec­ retaries who have these attitudes or the potential and can be encour­ ag·edo A1.so 0 other secretaries who aren ° t particularly interested might become interested0 or ·at least their eyes .are opened to a wider view of thingso I th.ink it 0 s inevitable th.at you get a lot of sec­ retaries going to Vietnam who are v ery interested in the American military there because most of th.em are single women and Vietnam is 0 good hunting g·:.round 0 :f:'or fun or for a hu.sbando That s inevitable 0 but 0 nonetheless 0 I think it s definitely worthwhile to train secretarieso

The criticism has been made that it's a wast e of time and money to teac h secretaries Vietnamese when they 0 re going to be working f or Am.er.icans who are going to be speaking Englisho It's hardly necessary 0 to say I don"t agreeo For one thing 0 the secretary 0 though she s work­ i ng in an American office and working for Americans 0 is quite likely to be working with as many if not more Vietnamese people than she is with Americans. Of course 0 the Vietnamese working for the American s speak English to one degree or another 0 but they're Vietnamese and it is their country and they appreciate interest in their Languageo I think it 0 s important for everyone going there in any capacity to have some kind of awareness that there might be attitudes different from their own 0 and ways of looking at things and languages that are just as valid as their owno Also 0 in a working situation 0 even though she may use English with the Vietnamese personnel in the office all of the timeo the fact that she has learned some Vietnamese and especially if she continues to make some effort to learn and use it a little bit 0 this could make a big difference in the relationship with the people with whom she 0 s workingo They very quickly know how sinc erely inter­ ested a person is1 we all can feel these thingso When they feel this interest 0 it can change a whole working relati.onship 0 a whole personal relationshipo I think that' s a very important po.into

The other thing i.s 0 she lives a life outside the office and even if 0 it s entirely with Americans 0 she has a servant who is Vietnamese or Chinese and one would hope that she would have contacts outside her job with people in the local cornrnunitya if only in shipping or only peripherally if not close friendships or a lot of s ocial contacts.

There are just many 0 many instances when she can use Vietnamese~-if she go es in a taxicab or pedicab or something 0 she has some contact with the people thereo It seems to me a narrow attitude to say 0 well 0 an American°s going to be working in an American office with American 0 peopleo But the Americans are not living in America 6 they re living in another countryo I think that for everybo dy going overseas 0 it's worth the spending of mo ney on training and orientation if the train­ ing and orientation are applicable and attempt to do really relevant thing'S o

27 Within AID, as far a s perso n n el are c o n c erned 0 I t h i n k we should rec­ ognize tha t t here i s a n a pparent difference in goals between AI D Washingt on a nd AID i n the field ~ (This has .been a ppar.ent in I VS late lyo tooo) Washington naturally has to t hink in broader terms b ut often fails t o come down to specific needs. They seem to think in terms of n umbers o r the distribution map o n the -wall o There should be c l o s er c ommunication between Washington and the various posts as to the spec i .fic needs of the pcs t and of the country of the post" This requir es closer c ommunication between the Stateside recru iters and the personnel officers :in the fieldo

That brin gs me t o ·another th.ing--the perso nnel officers in the fieldo

I f you hire a t e chnical advisor 0 you expect him to be competent in

his f.ie l d o This should be true of -administrators 0 too 0 especially in pers o nnel . Personne l officers shou ld be t rained in that field and should not j ust be Foreign Serv ice personnel who hav e moved up to this 1 rank because o f tenure o r Foreign Serv ice rating 0 Here ag·ain there s the p racti c e of putting available ratings into available openings ~­

filling s lots . I n s tead 6 personnel people should be trained for per­ sonnel wor ke t r ained t o work with people a It ' s a v ery complicated business o ass ign ing p e ople to the right places and making judgments

abo ut people 0 h andling personnel problems in a complex sit u a t i on. We should try to cut down on the u se of the personne l office a s a means to manip ulate people for per s onal e n ds a n d p owe r p lay. The personne l office is the most d angerous p l a c e for thi.s b ecause it c a n s o easil y manipulate peop le 0 and it should n ot.

In this r e gard 0 more attention should be pai d t o matc h i n g peo p l e a n d jobs" In my observa·_ion there seem to b e two o r three major frust r a­ tions for AID ted:1n.icians going overseas o The f irst a n d mos t obvious

is 'Lb.at people a.re hurried thr ough proc esses 0 e v e rything i s u r gento and then they get to their sta tions and o f t e no n o t only are t hey not 0 expec' e d 0 but the:re s not e v en a place for them . Some p eop l e. as told

in a number of debr iefs 0 even have t o g o around looking for jobs .. Th is is rid.iculouso If AID is goi:ng to hire peo p le o AID s hould know wh ere and into what jobs the people are going at the time they 0 r e h ired. In

other word s 0 people s hould be hired f o r specific jobs -·-peop le a n d jobs shou.ld be ma ched ,. There 0 s too muc h in t h e g o v ernme nt o f fitting

bod, es in· ·o openings-=· fillers for s lots o I thi nk t h.is causes a lot of frustration~ People fee l that t h ey a r en' t being used for what they

were hire d for 0 for what the y believ e they were hire d foro and often feel that the y aren°t d oing anything u seful. I f e e l this has t o b e ironed out i f AID is going to b e an eff ective d eve lopme nt or gani za~ tion,.

0 As I said before 0 I r e a d Le d erer and Burd.ick s Th.§ Ugly American a nd thought it was superficial in that the Ame ricans they portr ayed i n the book==the ones concentrated on==we r e ste reotypes t o t he point o f creating black and w_it.e contrasts. I didn°t f e e l they were real. His objectionable people were the -ype of A.me r icans who blow them-

28 selves around and drink and say nasty things to Vietnamese peopl e--or

Sarkhanese people. And a good man. such as Ambassador White 0 was the good naive man who was just a little too naive. And the ugly American himself 0 the man who was physically ugly but had a good h eart and all that 0 seemed a little unreal, too. This was especially true in t h e way he went about helping. After I had lived in Vietnam I felt that Lederer a nd Burdick themselves had not gotten very close to the real­ ities of a country like that . For example, they had the ugly American running around collecting spare bicycle parts to make a water pump" Well, I just know of no situation in Vietnam where you have spare thing·s lying around; everything that Is usable at all is used. But the authors just didn't seem to be aware of this fact .

There was another case in which there was a priest who was supposed to have the Right Attitude. He was going to eat the native food and live like the na tives 0 so he went out into the countryside and pro­ ceeded t o get dysentery and everything that you can get; the implica­ t ion was you can. get it and get it over with and get in there and really live with those people. In the first place, t his i s unneces­ sary-~you can naturally a djust your body to different things by going i nto it easily. And the other thing is , once you get amoebic dysen­ tery you don't get it and get it over with; it reoccurs . That seemed to me to be very unrealistic and artificial. Loeber' s Foreign Aid­ our Tragic Experiment is a much more realistic appraisal of the American program in other countries.

29 IN I VS IN HUE

When I had been in Saigon for almost a y e a.r 0 the first I VS education

team came to vietnam--the s ununer of 19620 Before that 0 International Voluntary Services had had only an agriculture t e am in Vietnam--since 1957" Now they brought in young colle ge grad uates t o be ~n gl.i s h and scie nce "::each.ers in Vietnamese schoolsg primarily public high schools.

(IVSe:::'.'s work ::nuch the same way a.s Peace Corps volunteers. In fact 0

Peace Corps was patterned after I VS 0 the ma.in difference _being that PC is part of the .State Department and trains lar ge numbers of volun­

te e rs~ I VS is a snall private organization 0 in Vietnam under contract to AID ,)

I begar. to .meet these education I VSerso I had alre a dy felt that I VS was a tremendous organization but I d i.dn°t know a lot about iL When I discovered th.at t h e English teac h ers were not professionals in the field of teaching Eng lish as a foreign language--many of them were political science majorsc some o f them had done some teaching but not in th.is area--I thoughtowe lle maybe even I could teach English in Viet­ nam" The ide a grew in my mind 0 and 0 as I became more acquainted with

IVS and me t more I VS e rs 0 I became more and more interested.

My first visit to Hu e 0 whe n I was sti- 1 working in AID in Saigonu was to vis it the three n ew IVS teachers who had just been assigned there.

Besi des thern.0 there we r e two agriculture team members who had bee n there a long time o One of them i s a wonderful person who j ust made himself at home with the Vietnamese people of Hue~- talked with e very­ body ererywhere . We all went running around out in the countryside and talked with people; we we nt out in a boat on the river in t h e e vening and talked and joked with the old ladies who ca.me O:lt to sell

us foodo I walked .in the market 0 and the wome n thereo instead of saying "Madame" as t~ey often did in Saigcn" spoke to me .in Vietnamese and smiled those wonderful warm Vietnamese smileso All these experi­ ences and warm contacts opened up a wonderful world to me, and I 11 thou.ght. 0 I want to be in IVS a n d work in Hueo " At the time I never thought such a thing wou.ld be possibleo But shortly after that one. of the members oi the IVS Board of Directors came to Vietnam for a v isit and I talked to him ; it seemed possible t hat I might be able to join I VS as an English teachero

'l'he reasons why this would appe al to me m.ore than working for AID were several, One 0 during my stay in Saigon I gradually f e ll more

and more in love with Vietnamo enjo y ed myself tre me n dously 0 and wanted to stayo With I VS I could work mo::=e closely with Vietnamese people

instead of working in a._ Ame r ican office " Two 0 I could teach 0 which is scme thing I prefen..·ed to being a secre tary. An d three o I felt I would like to be associated with the kind of organization that IVS is. Naturally, since it is a volunteer o rganizati6no ~here i s a lot of idealism and ind ividuality in its membe rs e v en though t hey have d:if ferences and the re are varying degrees of how well I VSers get

30 alo ng in their situatio ns o But, all i n all 0 it l ooked like a good de alo so I began to think in these terms. I extended my stay in AID fo::'.' six months so that I could stay in Vietnam t hrough the winter and so t h at t h e t iming would work out for me to v isit my family in the spring 0 go t o summer school and return to Vietnam in time for the be­ ginning o f the school year in the fall. I wanted to prepare myself f o r t h i s Eng l ish teaching and decided that I would go to surruner school at the University of Michigan English Language Institute and take their summer prog-ram :i n teach ing English as a foreign languageo

There we r e moment s of doubt--not on my part0 however. At one point I VS had about dec ided not to take any more volunteer s because the wo­ men ma de problems that I VS wasn't accustomed to--housingo etc. I t h i nk the a gricultur a lists were sort of thrown off their balance. And then there were s ome persons both in IVS and AID who thought that vol­ u nteer work in the field was not for women. But the rough period passed 0 a nd I b e came a n IVSer o I not only nel\t'er regretted making· the cha nge 0 I was a lways very happy with my decision to go into IVS. I wo n ' t say0 h owever0 t hat. IVS doesn't have its fru s t rations; they're just of a d i f ferent natur e~ instead of having professional bureau­ c rats 0 we have non-professional people as administrators.

A Vietnamese High School

On my retu r n to Vietnam I spent a few days in Saigon doing· such things as getting my Vietnamese driver ' s license, etc . 0 a n d t h en went to Hue t o replac e t h e girl I ha.d visited two years before. This was teaching Engl i s h at Dong Khanh g irls' high school o Dong Khanh school is the oldest girls n high school in South Vietnam. It's directly across the river from t h e Cit adel, next to Quoc Hoc boys ' high school1 which is the oldest h igh school " Both these schools are quite prestigious, partly because o f t h e i r age but especially because they are the high s chools of Hue , the old i n1perial capitol. They' re public schools which requ i r e entranc e examina tions. Now 0 there are several more public high s c hool s in Hu.e - - o ne girls' junior high school in the Cit­ ade l 0 one boy s ' full h igh school. 0 and two or three more boys' junior high schools o J unior high school is the first four years ·and senior h i gh is t he last t h ree years. (This follows five years of primary s chool. ) Dong Khanh is famous throughout the country for its Hue lo­ cale and f or its b eau t i ful s t udent.s o And they certainl y are lovely with their white dresses 0 their long black hair, their beautiful eyes and t heir sweet smiles o

Ann Wr ight (n ow Parso ns 0 s he married t h e IVSer who taugh t at Quoc Hoc s chool ) was very well liked at Dong Khanh school . She's quiet and gentle and h ad r espect f o r t h e s c hool's desires o This helped me a great deal becau se the sch ool was v ery open to doing anything I asked f o r ·a nd tried in e v ery way t o make things pleasant for meo The IVS edu c ati on team c hie f t ook me t o the school for my first visit and in-

31 troduced me to the principal 0 and from the f irst the school was so cooperative " My feeling was that i t was l.. who s h o uld cooperate with themo They have a tremen dously difficult task--they have almost

3 8 000 stu dents but not enough teachers and. not enough classrooms. The c lasses are very large and scheduling problems are immense Q but the adrninl.stration was so generous and open to I VS attitudes about l anguage teaching o Their tendency is t o group at l e a s t two hours class t ime together because often their teachers would like to h ave all their teaching h ours on two or three days of the week so that the y can have the other days free--many of them are married and have families and like to spend time at homeo But we try to put forth the i dea that language cla sses need to be spread out--having them e v ery day, if possible--especially the pronunciation and c o nversation hours

that we I VS ers specialize ino In this respect 0 the y were so c oopera­ tiv e and h elpful to me. They were so wonderful and wanting to make me happy there 0 and they certainly s ucceededo

I n conne ction with the language used in c onv ersation 0 I'd like to t ell about o n e incident . There were two teachers a t t he school--sisters-­ who taught EnsLis h; I had h eard of them but hadn't me t the m. One day during class break when I was sitting in the t e ache r' s room d rinking tea and talking in Vi e tnamese with a couple teachers beside me o another teacher spoke to me in Englisho Aft er we t alked for a few moments 8 I told h e r I would like t o meet the two sisters who taught Englisho She laughed and pointed to the two t eachers I had been talking to in Vietna mese and said they were the sisters . Everyone laughed, but it pointed up how self-conscious Vietnamese English teachers are about speaking in English t o an American--they 're self- conscious about their own pronunciation. a n d f eel embarrassed to be English t e achers when their own English i s nat v e ry good o So I took their lead and continued to

talk to them in Vie tnamese usually 9 not wanting to put them in a n em­ barras sing positiono There were other teachers who preferred to talk t o me in Englis h.

I mu s t say that all the teachers 9 regardless of whatever the ir political fee lings might have been or the ir a ttitudes toward Americans , were al­

ways at l e ast v e ry gracious 0 and often v ery warm and open and frie n dly. Even during the struggle movement I was able t o maintain frie ndly re­ lations with anti-governmen t teache r s o It was a v ery reward ing experi­ ence to know the people a t Dong Khanh school and to have them as friends.­ When my two years were about to b e up I decided it was too early to leave Vietnam and extended another t e n months in order to b e able t o teach the following school year. Th e n the following June I still was not r e a dy to l e ave so I extended another two months to August 1 967, so that I was there a full three y ears with IVS o

The last y ear I wa.s the r e was the most personally rewarding as far as

my s chool experience went 0 and it was the best school year that anyone in Vietnam had had for _several y e arso It was the mo s t settled politic­ ally==we had no political in~ e rruptions during the f u ll yea r ~-th e first

32 time in four to five yearso There j ust seeme d to be much more stabil­ ity and continuit y o I got to know my fellow t eachers much better u at­ t e nded t h e t e achers 0 meetings, spent more time with my s tudents u and became mo re of a fixture in Hueo

There wa.s anoth e r thing o The IVS teach ers usually don°t teach all the hours of En::;lish.u but only two or three of the s ix hours a weeku and the Vietnamese t each er teaches the o ther hours for g rammer o {Every high school s tudent must study one foreign language, either English or Frenchu througho ut hig·h schooL I n junior highu they hav e six hours a. weeko In senior highu t hey b egin the oth er foreign language and continue the f i rst fore i gn language o Wi th a ll that language train­ ing they should b e able to speak well 0 but the tea ching me thods leav e s ome thing to be des.ired and they seldom h a v e native spe akers of English to pract:!.ce witho) I requested my last y ear there t o be allowed to take two of the beginning c l asses for all their hours of Englis h. They v e ry generously l e t me do that . and I took the three other beginning classes for t h e usual two hours a. week each. Ac t ually I had my two classes sev e n hours a. week 7 I request ed an extra h our that was to be voluntary for the stude nts and in which I planned to do great things

- ~have English 9'ames a nd songs , make our own vis ual aids 0 all sorts of i deas , but always that hour was needed to k eep up with the regular pro­ grams o Ther e we re inte r ruptions to class t ime u such as teachers 0 meet­ ings. floods u and odds and e n ds u so I never got around to my big plans except here and thereo

So I was with these students seven hours a week--there were just over 60 stu dents in each class--and I got to know them much better which wa s good not only for teaching purposes but my relationship with them was so great" They 0 r e wonderful sweet little kids--12 and 13 mostly o Sometimes a group of them would turn up at my hou se about a half hour b efore time to go to school and want to walk to school with me , or they would stop by other times just to visit meo Also I got to know them more a s individuals o I wish I could have had more time and per­ haps fewer students so that I coul d have gotten to know more of their families and been able to understand more of their personal problems . It was a wonderful experie nce for me--I'll never forget their wonder­ ful smiles--I miss those girls o

My last year t here I was able to teach a class of Dong Khanh teach ers in Eng lish conversa.tion o It was a very rewardin g experience for me because of the friendly relationships I had with those teachers and being c loser t o my colleagu e s in t h e schoolo A few times the class met in my home and we had very informal and e njoyable sessions o On these o c casions we would e at 0 often fruit from the trees in my yardo Eating toge ther is an important aspect of hospitality and friendship in Vi e tnamo as I suspect it i s i n many non- American cultures"

I had a l i ttle university teaching 0 tooo Early in 1965, when Presi dent Johnson ordered the American dependents out of Vietnamo the American Consul in Hue decided that h e d idn° t want to be responsible for Ameri-

33 can women in Hue o and three of u s 0 though we weren°t depen dents 0 were evacuated to Saigon with no assurance o f e v er b eing able to return to Hue . In Sai gon I taught two English classes a.t the University of

Saigon Fa.cul ty of .Law which had requested an I VS teacher 0 These class­ es were good language classes because I had requested t o have no mo re than 20 s"::. u.dents to a class o and they were highly motivated and quicko They had a little background in English and they needed c onversational

facilityo We h ad a lot of fu.ne they were very responsive 0 and I lea rned a lotu b oth abo·.J.t teaching and how to use the textbook I s ubsequently used in Hueo It -was a v ery rewarding- experience a nd many of the stu­ dents became my frie nds.

Being in Saigon for three to four months gave me the opportunity to become acquainted with a number o f active youth groups and with the

1 965 Summer You.th Work Pro grarn. 0 assisted in part by USAID. After the

end of s chool .in Ma.y 0 I VS requested permission from the American Con·­ sul for me to r e turn to Hue. Permission was granted and the first of 0 11 June I returned Ghome 0

Vietnamese Education

I 9 m not v ery familiar with the upper ech elons of the Ministry o f Edu.­ 0 cationo but 0 like most things in Vietnam 0 it s highly centralized o The teachers are appointed to their specific schools by the Ministry of Edu.cat.ion in Sai9ono They 1 re sometimes appointed to the town they

c ome from if they request it 0 but not always. The ultimate decision

is i n the hands of the ministry 0 not the individu al school. The c u r­ riculum is deci d e d pretty much on a nation-wide level. This is very

i mportant 0 particularly in senior high school 0 because the baccalaure­ ate examinations are national exam.so The textbooks are standard throughout the cou ntry o E'or example. when upo n USAID 0 s r e commen d a~ tion a Vie tnamese teachers 0 committee s aid that a certain series of books was the best for teaching English, the Ministry of Education is­ sued an order that all high sch ools would use that series. So all the schools a do p ted th.is series even though few of the teachers had been trained .in how to u se those texts. I don 't know how general this sort

of thing is--perha pso in this case 0 it was pressure from USAID. But I understand that in other subject s textbooks are standardized. There

are t eachers who write their own texts 6 but I would suspect that they use these texts in addition to the standard text. I don't know very well what the situation is in subjects other than English.

He r e is anoth er example of c entralizationo During the week of the

national holid ay in Novemher 0 .if a teacher wants to leave his province --even tho~gh the s chools aren't in session because of v acation--he has to get permission from his province chief through his school prin­

cipal a The first y ear I was teaching in Hue 0 I VS began having, during this hol i day. seminars in Saigon f or teachers of Englisho Each IVS teacher woul d invite a couple of interested English teachers--Viet­ name se-=fr om his school" These Vietnamese teachers would be the guests

34 of IVS in .Saigon and IVSers and Vietnamese teachers together would participate in sessions on problems and met.hods o .But I VS requested permission o f t he .Ministry of .Education for these people to come to Saigon t o participate in the seminar o So there is a lot more over­ all control and particularly central control than we have in American

s chools a

Regarding -che comment by an American education advisor that Vietnam could do a lot. more education and handl.e many more students if their administration was better, I don ' t know how they could handle more students unless the administration built some more classrooms and trained more t eachers o Of course 0 now 0 with the war 0 teachers are really at a prerniumo It 0 s terrible tha t s o many of the teachers, es­ peciall y primary school teachers, have been draft edo Most of the teachers a t my school were women; being a girls 0 school , I suppose t. hat 0 s t o be expectedo We have a few men t eachers; a very rough guess would be perhaps 10% meno In the boys ' school next door there was probably an e ven smaller p roportion of women teach ers.

At the high school level the schools are not coeduca tional , except at what is called the semi-public school. In this school o I believe the government assists so that the tuition can be l ower. These semi­ public schools are usually pretty crowdedo Children who don't pass the examinations for t he public schools often go to the semi-publi c school o The Catholic private high sch ools are usually divided--a boys 0 school and a girls' schoolo The Buddhist private high schools

in Hue were all 0 I think, c o educationaL By all, I mean the different physical setups o There was one administration, but there were several

schools 0 the main ones being one large one in the citadel and another on the s outh side of the rivero Wheth er the seating was separate or not, I don ' t know. I t aught a couple hours a week during one summer at a Buddhist school--many of the students were from the Buddhist orph­

anage nearbyo There d idn°t seem to be a set seating plan 0 but the girls always t e nd to sit together toward the front and maybe on one s i de; it appe ared to be a preference, not a rule or even a rigid cus­ tomo Elementary schools are coeducational" I think the children are d ivided according to sex; I suspect that here again it ' s customary practice o

The re are p of c ourse 0 private high schools owned and operated by in­ dividu als as money-making propositions. These schools teach courses t o h e lp people prepare for the baccalaureate examinations ·and courses in English--there are many small s c hools that teach only English. These private high schools are particularly numerous in na..Nang and

Saigon 0 in f.act 0 the r e _is only one public high school in the ·large

city 0£ Ila Nang. When I was living in Saigon 0 I taught some hours at a private school there; this was my first experi ence in teaching English in Vietnam" In this class there were both sexes and all ages --a few high school students but mostly adults who worked during the dayo And they s at in any order all over the room; I don°t know

35 whether this was because t h ey were a d ults or wh et.her they just didn °t think a bout t hose things g e n erallyo My impression i.s that in Vietnam separation o f the sexe s isn°t as s harp a s it is in some other Asian countries '"

Regarding ~ompara.t i ve educational systems 0 my own opinion about t h e relative v alue o f educational s ystems i s that t h e American system 0 with all its faults, is probably the best in the worldo Re latively 0 speaking 0 I think it s very good--at least for us . I think there are a. lot of American i deas a b out education that are v ery applicable to Vietnam o r c oul d be used by Vietnamese peo ple . There 0 s always this problem. of our i mposing our ideas--I don °t feel t hat we have a ny right as indi idual advisors t o go in and say i t s hould be done t h is way and that way and try to get the Vietnamese to see our point of view and cooperate wi· h us.

I th.ink the moving away from the Europe an education system can come about mostly by the efforts o f young Vietnamese who are themselves con­ cerned about the situation. Some of them come to t h is coun try and study and go back 0 and t h en there a re those who haven °t left the c oun­ try and yet who are concerned . I think that they would be open to new ideas . But it has to have at least t h e a2pearance of growing from the .inside , and there 0 s a lot of old cha ff that has to die out. Most of the educators over 30 we re educated i.n the French s y s t em 0 but I woul d say if they're in their 30 °s there ' s still hope --I don' t agree with the Ame rican youth who say if you're over thirty you 0 r e dead" Of c ourse 8 .it depends o n the individual; in Vietnam a s e v erywhere there are individuals who are l imited in their views and who resist change.

This r e sistance t o change was part icularly s trong in Hu e at t he Facu lty of Pedagogy. I t became a political thing; many of t h e p rofesso rs were adamantly opposed to anything that smel led of Americanizatio n 0 and it became a strongly anti-Ame rican stando Bu.t I think their political views were v ery 0 ver y closely tied up with their own positions being threaten ed: They were Fr e nch educated and t h ey were holding on to their little have n s 0 their little systems . With changes , they would be out unless they change with them 0 but they've bee n thinking in the old terms a l ong time and I t hink that many of t h em a ren ' t able to change . Th e d ifficulty is that these older influential educators are the people who have prestige and powe r and the y ' re not going to re­ lease this prestige and power i f they can help it. I t hink this is whe.re the biggest d ifficult y l.ies 0 a n d it takes time for these people ~o b e r e placed by younger people with new i deas .

That edu.cation a dvisor said that during the two to three years h e was there they trained 3 0 000 teache r s but that the se 3,000 teachers had a fifth-grade edu cation to b e gin with and were trained only one to thre e months o He was talking about the n eed to s ubstitute quality for quantity. I would agre e t hat quality is important. Without qual­ .itya quantity .is rather meaningless. I believ e h e's t a lking about

36 training teachers to teach 1.n elementary schools and I worked with high school teachers, so I can't say too much about quality in elemen­ tary _..school teaching. The quality at my school was quite high.

This i s the thing in Vietnam: the higher the level you teach0 the more trai.ro i ng you have to have 0 the more qualified you have to be and the more p rest ige you have. The elementary teacher is sort of middle or lower-mi ddle class economically and socially, though he has some prestige because B.ducation is a prestigious field . I .t depends of course on the school. In urban areas elementary teachers usually have h a d normal school training, which is a two-year program 0 not a three­ month one. To go into the normal s.chool I believe they have finished junior high sch ool . In urban high schools 0 teachers have to have at least passed t h e first baccalaureates 0 which means they have finished their high s c hool education. If I understood correctly, those who have had some university training teach in senior high school. This isn't absolute 0 o f course; I know some teachers who have had university training who are tea ching in junior high school 0 some at their own choice .

I t' s hard for Viet na mese persons to understand that the lower levels of schoo l are so impor t a nt. For example, many Vietnamese people would expect me - -especiall y a college graduate--to teach senior high school i f not -at the university 0 --to teach advanced level--conversation and discussion o lt. takes a l o t of explaining to make people understand that I £eel t h at , as a native speaker of English 0 I can do the best good by teach ing the very beginning students so that the students just beginning to learn would hear the correct -pronunciation and natural way of speaki ng . I think t h at those in my school who didn ' t have some of this notio n already were beginning to appreciate that it was a good t h ing for me to teach at the beginning level. I often had the feeling, however 0 that they still felt that I was being very generous and kind to lower myself to that level--demonstrating my volunteer spirit when

I could do somet hing more prestigious. And 0 of course o I with my American up-bringing was very proud to say I taught the beginners.

The People of Hue

It seems true that the people of Hue consider themselves to be dif­ f erent from other Vietnamese people . But we might also include all of Northern Central Vietnam o r what the French call Haut Annam--Upper Central Vietnam. This woul d be the provinces of Thua Thien- -the prov­ ince wh ere Hue i s 0 Quang Tri; and going across the 17th parallelo

Quang Binh 0 Ha Tinh 0 and Ngh e An . This is really what Central Viet­ nam is; as far as lang·uage is concerned, it 0 s a very distinct group­ ing. North of Da Nang a t the sout hern border of Thua Thien province t h ere ' s a high pass a n t hat seems to be a natural border. I just learned recen tly t h at language ch ange in Vietnam has been much slower in this area. This area is much more conservative in many ways . I think this is natural. Ther e isn ' t the easy communication, physically there a ren' t t h e rivers of the del ta areas and the easy ways of getting

3 7 around~ life i s mo re difficu lt and mo re of a struggle without the fer­

tile delta areas 0 and so there has been less mobil.i.tyo Thus the lan­ g·uage has changed the least there o This also has been t h e area out of which the s trongest nationalists have come~ the nationalists who

fought the French-·~Phan Boi Chau 9 Phan Chu Trinh 0 many others--and more moder n nationalists such as Ho Chi Minh who comes from Ngh e An. Ngh e An seems to be the breeding place for the discontent--the strong individuals who want to change things o It seems funny to say that t h.is are a' is conservative and yet you have this kind of individual. Perh aps it's a combinat,ion of young hopefuls who want to fight the con­ servativism0 and the struggle for life making it natural to struggle 0 politicallyo In fact 0 now that I think about it 0 I think i t s prob­ ably true for the whole world-- that revolutionaries tend to come from

conse r irative backgrounds 0 and they spend their lives fighting the en­ trenched conservatism of their chil dhood environment.so I do feel that the feelings o.f nationalism are much s tronger in Hue than in .Saigo n o

Saigon i s a mo re cosmopolitan city 0 more adaptable in some respects to t h e French or at least didn°t have such strong emotional reactions ·o t h e Frencho

Furthermore 0 Hue was the imperial capital of Vietnam.. Vietnam was

united a s a single country only as late as 1802 0 at which time Hue was made t h e capital of the whole countryo Vietnam was a united in~ dependent country including all the areas of Vietnam today for only about 50 years of all of its hundreds of years of history. It was

Hue o o f course 0 where the French attacked and took over the govern­ ment o f Vietnam--the home of the emperor o So naturally this was the

place where resentment was v ery0 very strong against the French. There

were two or three empero rs 0 i n the 80 years of time the French had

Vietnam as a colony 0 who joined the undergroun d against the French while still being titular emperors above groundo They were exiled 0 one to France o I think this was Duy Tan o He fought a s a pilot with

the Fr e nch ag·ainst the .Germans in World War I o In gratitude 0 the Fr ench offered t o return him to Vie tnam, but he said only on the con­ dition the French would giv e Vietnam its .independenceo The French

r efused 0 and in the process of sending him ba.ck to his Mediterranean isle prisono h i s plane mysteriously dev eloped difficulties and went down i n t h e seao The Vietnamese believe that this was a deli.berate murder o because a s long as he lived and held out and everyone knew that h e wa s in prison becau se Vietnam wa s not independent, this would

be a disgrace for France o So 0 nationalism is very strong in Hue and throughout Central Vietnamo This i s some of the background of nation­ a l ism.

One person from Hue told me once that Hue provided more t each ers not only for Central Vietnam but also for South Vietnam than any other

p art o f the c ountry 0 meaning that i t is out of Hue t hat culture and education come o Hue feels this type of prestige v ery much. that ed­

ucati on is an important t hingo Of course 8 this is generally felt in Vie tnamese and Chinese socie ty--that edu cat ion is v ery importanL

38 (I presume t hat part of their education system is Chinese rather than French; the practice of learn ing by rote is quite Chinese.)

I myself think there are other more ethnic reasons for this d ifference b e tween Hue people and the southern peopl e o The Red Riv er delt a in the north iso of courseo the home of Vietnamese civ.ilizationo Viet­ namese legends go back ab out 4 0 000 years BoC. Their conflicts with China go back 30000 years. The Vietnamese are pretty aggressive peo­ ple and have continually pressed south" The.re a r e indications they came from southern China and mixed with mountain g r oops further south. Their legend is that the dau.9hte.r o f the God o f the Sea mated with the dragon of the mountains and produced the Vietnamese people"

But 0 at any rate 0 there has always b een this pu s hing south; Saigon 0 I bel.i.eve 0 was not settled by the Vietnamese until the l.600s 0 which is pretty recent in Vietnamese historyo So the s outh i s a v ery recent conquesto The whole delta area was primarily Cambod ian. and the southern coastal areas we r e part of the Cham civilization which was pushed mountainwards by the Vietnamese and has long since died out 0 leaving some Cham people who h ave been pretty much absorbed by the Vietname se and some - f the mou ntain tribes in s outh~r n Vietnam; t4e Vie tnamese consider them to be a mountain tribe t h emselves. Th e de­ cline of the Ch.am Kingdom was not only by conquest; I think prior to that 0 the Vietnamese bargaineq wit4 the Chams for territoryo Some­ one told me that Thua Thi.en and Q~ang Tri provinces were given by the

Chams for a Vie tnamese princess in marriage. At any rat e 0 the push south seems to have halted with the acqui.sit~on of th~ ricP. Mekong delta; thou9h the Cambodians are skeptical--they don't trust the Viet­ names e ~-an d for good reasono

Probably the further south the Vietnamese movedu the more mixture of peop les there waso particularly with Cambod ian peopleo I don't know too much about this 0 bu.t I suspect there is more mixture in the south. It seems to me that physiologically the southern Vietnamese tend to be a little d iffere nt from the northern Vietnamese, though I may be wrong in this broad generalizationo It seems to me generally speak­ ing that the southerners don't have as much epicanthic eye fold--that their eye s are more round o The seeming tendency t o be darker may be delta sunshine; in Hu e we have several months of rain 0 which may ac­ count for lighter complexions. It's not really fair to judge north­ erners by those we see in the south; they may not be representativeo but I think that there are both physiological and e thnic differences.

Maybe I should say a little about feelings of Hue people toward the Com­ munistso It may b e that there is more sympathy f o r the Corrununists than in other parts of the country 0 but I would think it wasn't so much for Communism as it was strong feelings of nationalism and resentment t o­ ward a government that is not only f ar from i deal but is corrupt and unwis e . and there's tremendous resentment against the military. It's been pointed out. about the tra ditional grouping of people in Vietnamese

39 s o cie ty ~ The top group-~the group with the most prestige--are scholarsD the second group are farmers 0 the third group-=a low third~-are t h e b u siness and trade people, and the bottom are the militaryo To have a military g o v ernmentg partic ularly one that c anno t even be respected in t e r ms of judgment 0 integrity 0 or___µo_litical enlightenment 0 is a kind o f indi g-ni.ty 0 especially for Hue people who pride themselv es on being the sour ce o f government fami l ies o Of course there is strong anti­ go vernment f eeling in Hue ; I suspect sometimes it 0 s a matter of prin­ c i ple as well a s a matter of specific government o

Al s o ther e a re mo re anti-American feelings because of the feelings of natio n a lism and t h e feeling that the American s are more and more in­ truding t h emselves on Vietnamese decision-making o (A Vietnamese friend 9 here i n this c o u n t ry said to me the other day 0 °Now American planes fly d i rectly t o Da Nang and Cam Ranh o Now Americans come into my country with.out e ven permission from my government o " ) There is 0 of c o u rse 0 a mbigu:it.y t here in that they wa nt the Americans to help change the g ove r nmen t or make it bett er and yet they don°t want the Americans to inte rfere in t h e g overnment o Yet 0 in the expressed desire that they want the Americans t o do somet hing to better the government. I think the y 0 r e b eing quite r e alistic in that they know the Americans cano The Americans h a ve the wherewithal to pressure the Saigon government in a lmost a ny directio n-·-not always and not in any direction but pret­ ty much 0 and t h e Vietnamese people know this o 'l'his is another c ause f o r resentmen t~·-who of u s would like to feel that we 0 re just kind of owned b y a nother people-Uo matter what the good intentions might be? My own experience is that there are many people in Hue who appreciate a nd are grateful to the Americans for coming and helping to fight the

Communists 0 b ut the y don °t feel the American s should t ake over t h e country or tell t hem wh a t t o do o

Youth and Students

Besi des my t eaching in Dong Khanh School, I taught a few of what I VS cal ls " vol unteer '~ c l a sses g c lasses we do on our own outside. of our r egular teach ing· assignment. I did most of my outsic;le teaching to a

Boy Sc out grou p a nd to the Voluntary Youth Association 9 because I want ed to h elp a n d assoc iate with these young people who were engaged in the k i nds of activ ities that their country so badly needs ~ activi­ ties that dev elop a feeling of community and activities to bet ter the we lfare of their. f ellow c o untry men "

•rhe Boy Scout o rganizatio n in Viet nam is a member of tl'E International Boy Scouts and h as been qu ite a ctive o The organization in Hue has been p a rticularly viable with a minimum of i n ternal conflict 0 which i s s omething :j:o say i n v iew o f the situation of complex conflicts which exi sts in Vietnamo Th ere a. re catholic t roops and Budqhists t roo p s and o ne mixed 0 the r e is a g roup of Girl Sco uts and Girl Guides and some gir l s are Cub S c ou l e a ders 9 and all groups cooperate with

40 each othero At least this was the situation before the Tet offensive last y earo Sinc e then the Scouts have --attempted to help in the re­ building but it 0 s v e ry difficult because of the situation and atmos­ phere of uncertainty and the fact that the Rov er Scouts and most Scout l eaders a.re draft age o In factc most of the leaders I knew have been draftedo The g-roup I taught were mostly Cub Scout leaders who happened

also to be mainly primary school teachers--young men of draft age 0 some with familieso some not yet married. Th ere were in the class two o r three university students and one high school student who were active in the Scouts.

The university stu dents for whom I have a great deal of respect are those in the VoJuntary Youth Associationo This is a group of students who have mixed b ackgrounds--Ca.tholic 0 Buddhist 0 prominent families,

rural homes-=whc have gotten together for 0 oneo to establish a commun­

ity spirit among themselves; they get together 0 sing songs 0 go on day camps t ogeth er o The y gave a wonderful feeling of togetherness which is very much needed in Vietnamo The main purpose is to do things in

their spare time for their countrymen 0 things that are neededo For

instance 0 they held a work camp to build a fence around the school yard in a poor distri ct because buffalos went across the school yard, and the fence would keep the buffalos out and the children ino At Tet time they make •ret rice cakes and take them to the leprosarium along with other little gifts that they have bought and prepared them­

selves" For preparing the rice cakes 6 they have an all-day and all­ night part y to make and cook the cakes which have to be cooked many hourso They dig a hole in t he ground 0 make ·a fire and cook the cakes in a barrel buried in the ground, and while the cakes are cooking they

sit around the fire singing songs 0 playing games until late and then a few of the boys stay watching the fire all night. They not only do

things for people 0 they give of themselves in a wonderful way. I was very close to a lot of these students; I not only taught English class­

es there 0 I went with them on a work camp and attended many of their activities. A lot of IVSers have worked closely with the VYA since the organization's incept.ion in Saigon several years ago. Not all the students were inclined to these kinds of group endeavors or were a b le to find such constructive outlets for their frustrations.

I 've tried a lot to figure out the motivationso especially of those who were activ e with the Struggle Movemento What was the whole scene in Vietnam? It seeme d to me that the whole thing was largely one of great big frustrationo None of these university students have ever lived at a time when their c ountry was not involved in sorre kind of s truggle o There were rela.tively quiet years in the middle to late 50s-~ seemingly quie t--it was not until about 1958 or 1959 that there we.re terrorist activities on the part of the Cornmunists6 but there was always the memory of the war with the French and the disruptions

caused by that war 0 the p artition of the country 0 political instability and the increasing tyranny of the Diem governmento The intellectuals,

I know 0 in the late 50s were becoming increasingly disaffected with

41 the Diem government. So there has always bee!1 this uncertainty of the future, t o say nothing of t h e present.

We can ask 0 why are these kids in college? One a nswe r i s that thi s is what a.n "J..pper middle class person does, and also th.is is a means of acquir::..nq a profession so that one can ha.ve the mean s to lead a good life. B"u.t is there an answer for the st'J.dent who will study in school C:!ly to leave school to go to war, wh o sees no meaning i n the future, whose primary hope is simply to s urvive? What do they have to look to? Surely the t hinking stu dent is a very troub l ed and frustrated person; h elpless i ri. what seems to be Viet na.m 0 s fat.E:i. And the song s and literature for many years h ave reflected t his kind of tragic en­ vironment.

Th.is e l e ment o:f frustration and helpl essness is everywhere, a n d fo r the student who desires to overcome this frustration and make some~ thing of the future, where is he to channel t h ese desires , through what outlet can h e work off his feelings of frustration? The South Vietnamese government has been ineffective i n build ing some s ort of i deological program or some thing that will unite peo p l e--that will draw peopl e to anything ; there 1 s just no unity in South Vi e tnam. And I um s orr~, to s ay, the American government and its efforts in Vietnam have b een just as if no t even more ineffective in this respect t~a n t he South Vietnamese gov ernmento The governme nt. especi ally after the s t r uggle against the Diem regime 0 was so appre h e nsive of s tudent power that t h ey did e v erything they cou l d to try and hold the s tudents d own rathe r than to c hannel their energies or their f rustrations into something constructive. rv.i.r. Stubbs, who talked in his debrief about t h e s truggle against the Huong government, said that the Buddhists claimed that the Huong government was against the Bu ddhists. Wha t he didnu t mention was that Huong put out an order or i t was believ ed that h e put out an order that u niversity students were not t o participa te in politics, they were not to b e poli t ically active, they were no t to o rganize themselves int o political groups, and the same went for t h e

Buddhists. If it weren 't for t h is 0 t he stu dents might h a ve gone along with the c ivilian Hu ong government--I t h ink t h e re was a great d e al of respect for Huon9 as a man of integrity 0 but thi.3 seemed t o put the top on the pressure cooker and the pressure mounted and blew, because stu­ dent s are naturally interested in politics; they 1 re interested in their own future s and t he future of their countryu and most of the s tudents I know a.re very much concerned abou t Vietnam a s a nation and what is to become of Vietnam.

There are just s o many mixed f eelings--ambivalent feelings : f eelings of prid e in Vietnamese traditions a nd Vietnamese culture and particu­ larly in Vietnamese literature and poetry and music; and feelin9s o f inferiority- ~th e yuve been dominated by the Chi nese, they 1 ve been dom­ i naLed by the French and are domina ted now by We stern t echnology and t h ey f eel infe rior in t his r e spect o So 9 with these ambivalent feel­ ing s o one moment they may b e fie rcely p r oud of their country and the next moment this hopeless f eeling of, "Oh we ll, we can 1 t do anything right anyway. "

42 Politics and the Struggle Force

Into t his atmosph ere of uncertainty 6 ambivalence , and futility comes a group who will channel the frustrations and desires o This was t h e S-cruggl e Mo vement or Struggle Force--not the Buddhist strug­ gle against the Diem regime, but the Struggle Force (Luc Luong Tranh Dau; h e reafter referred to a s SF) whi ch b ubbled and boiled through most of 1964 and 1965 and burst into full bloom in the spring o f

1966 i n Hue and Da Nang 0 and whom most American n ewspapermen called the Buddhists o

I have a rather d ifferent view from Mr. Stubbs regarding the begin­ 0 ning of the 1966 s truggle movemento Perhaps it s irrelevant 0 but he seemed to f eel that the popularity of General Thi played the major r ole in the s t ruggle in Hue . In my opi nion and in the opinion of others-~in fact I wa s t old this by an Ame rican newspaperman--the SF was p lanning· and organizing for an outbreak and push in May when Thieu and Ky provided the logical cue by kicking out General Thi in Ma rch--the ma tch to light the pile. But by t his t i me I think that General Thi would have b een effective with the SF only if he went along with them. By this time they were pushing along on their own and they just used Thi 0 s oust as a weapon, because after they got underway we heard very little about Thi. Maybe Mr. Stubbs, in his official position 0 h e ard more about him, but my impression was that talk very quickly went on to other things that they were using to rouse the public o

What I want to do i s connect all this up with the involvement of the students o There seems to me to be a big tendency on the part of the Ame ricans to lump all the students who opposed the Vietnamese govern­ me nt and t h e Americ ans under the label of Communist. This has been the tendency of whatever government has been in power in Saigon as long as I have been there; this was something the Diem government used to do--anyone 8 from political opponent. to highway bandit , was a Conununist. I think our government went along with this ; and there was a lot of f eeling 0 I think 0 that the studen ts in Hue were more Cornmvnist than those in Saigono This may be true to some extent but I rather da ub ... i L I don ° t mean to say that there may not have been more s ympathy for the Communists , but as far as being Communists is concerned 0 my feeling was th~t no, most of t h em were noto I believe mo st o f them thought of themse lves as being anti-Communists p I don ' t mean to say that there weren 1 t Communists among the students ; of course there wereo

My own opin.ion--and I may be wrong--is that t he SF wa s 8 if not con­ trolled by corrununists, a t l e ast manipulated by Communists to the ex­ tent that was necessary for Corrununi st control . Whether or not every aspect was controlled by Conununists was not important as long as t h e y c ould use the movement for t h eir own ends o Most o f the students belie ved themselves if not fighting against the Conununists at least not fighting for them . The r eason why I felt that the SF was pretty

4 3 mi.;ch Cormnunist cont.rolled was that it was so we ll organized 0 and I know of no group in South Vietnam that is s o well org·anizedo Even the Buddhist church was first 0 split on whether or not the church should be politically involved 0 and secon d 0 those that were politi­ cally J_n,<, lved we.re split as to what direction i t should takeo This was my .~ r tiression,, So 0 where as the toppling of the Diem regime might have beer:. made possible by t he Buddhist church because they had the w:t:erewi.thal :..:n 1 963 to organize and implement what was n ecessary 0 the SF was :not a strictly Buddhist organizatio:no

T:~.e SF tried to i dentify themselves with the Buddhist cause in t he Diem re9ime for v ery obvious reason s ~ This would give them the sup­ port of t h e vast majority of the people o would give them respecta­ biliLYc and they tried to uti.lize some of the martyrs and even some f the cau ses that were so effective in 1963. In Hue soon after the st.ruggle moveme:n ~ c:.ook over the r adio station and in effec ·· took

v er the town 0 there we r e signs all along Le Loi Street--the street that runs along t:he s outh bank of the riv er-~about Qu ach thi Trang 0 the girl who was shot by Diem soldiers in front of the Saiqon market in the summer o:f 19630 The mark.et had been r e named for her and a statue of her built in front of the marketo The struggle move mento

I think on its first d ay o f broadcasts 0 said the Ky government had destroyed this statue o They made it s ound as though t h e Ky govern­ ment had done this to show their d isregard for the Bu d dhist struggle. I felt it was ridiculous to b e lie ve such a thing-~why would Ky do that 0 what would be his purpose in destroying the statue? But many of the Hue people believed ito perhaps because so many t hings had happened with the various governments and so many awful things were believ able in s ituations like this, and t h ey have a tremendous ten­ dency to b elieve anything that is said in the news. on t h e radio ~ or in printo The next day the struggle radio came out and said there had b een a mi stake; they had gotten this from the Saigon newspaper and t:t:e paper was wron9· 0 that only the p laque had been stoleno

It was ?.!ll rii:;ht .for them t o make t his correction the next d ay because the emotional reaction they wanted t o create had already been created and people paid little attention to t h e c o rrection--who c ares what really happened if Saigon hates the Buddhists? (I s uspect that it was the Bu ddhist activist group in Saigon that took the plaque so as to star:~ t hin.gs going o) So then they had all these signs down Le Loi about this girl 0 trying to recreate her martyrdom. I think one time an American walked up to one of the signs t o see what it was all al·oute a n d an uproar was made about thaL I t was v e ry obvious that a ni little thing could be a spark to light t h e emotional fire that w :;,. s needed to make t he movement roll and capture e veryone' s support. 'l'hat is why t hey were tryin9 to reclaim a three-year-old martyr o because they were desperate for a marty r for their cause o and at that time no one was willing to burn themselv es t o get rid of Thieu and Ky o There j u st wasn °t the same feeli ng behind this o

44 The SF tried for about a we ek to make something of this girl but it didn°t worko Then there were a couple mm.successful attempts at self­ immolation .on the steps of a pago d a in Hu e o There was a nursing stu­ den t girl who nailed her h and to the table and wrote a protest letter in blood from her hando The n urses around tried to sto p her or dis­ s uade he:r but she c ontinued until they toted her t o t he hospitalo At this po i nt 0 a lot of young kids got carri ed away and d:id terrible thingso but there was no one of real stat.u re 0 s u c h as in 1963 0 who ma.rtyred the mselveso In 1.963 0 there were sev eral highly respected people who martyred themselves for a valid cause and they were v ery effectiveo But in 1966 there was not t his same cause nor the same feeling 0 and s uch atte mpts j u st didnut come 0££ 0 and the SF went with­ o ut a big martyr o They almo st got one--if General Ky h ad been stupid enough to send in his tanks at the time when the SF i n Hue was expect­ ing him and were all set u p on the streets with road b locks and young students out manning them" There were big rock piles along some main s treets ready for handy throwingo A grou p of university students were organized as a suicide squadron with flashy orange neck scarves and rifles they 0 d been i ssued by somebody o All the SI' needed (and rum s ure wanted 0 because there were plenty of dispensabl e students ) was f o r the tanks to come 0 the students fighto and f or one student to get killed" One would have been e nough 0 and the movement would have had a martyr to carry all Hueo But someone in Saigon was very wise and d idn.0 t send in troops at that time and we lost none of our s tudents a

Here was an organization that was going full swing; there were people to writ e up incendiary art icles 0 people to manage t h e strikes and demonstrations and the market s hut-downv people to run the radio station--they had the statio n going almo s t a.11 dayo They began hav­ ing bro adcasts in Englis h for the Americanso I'm afraid the student announcer with the bes t English was one of my v ery clo se friends who had learned some of his English from me" But I 0 m .sure he was quite naive as to the behind-the-scenes operations. It was very in­ t eresting to watc h all this=-the obvious manipulationso They would say one thing on the radio one day and the next day contradict them­ selves 0 and each time the people would believe even the contradic­ tions . Of course there were some of t h e well-educated people who were skeptical and who were forced to just sit back and be quiet and wait and see what was going to happeno

Th.i s unwillingness to c ome o ut on one side or the o ther is another thing that Americans donut f ully understand-=a.nd Bill Stubbs indi­ cat ed that prevale nt among the American officials was a n attitude of resentment and injury tha t the Vietnamese were ungratefu l in their destruction of American "gifts" to the Vietnamese peopl e and that s ome of the peopl e wouldn"t come out in support of the govern­ rre nt 0 What Americans really don ° t realize is that it is frequently not only a person°s job and live lihood that is at stake, but it could b e his life o As long as the SF was able to control the town and t h e people and control the police force and the army--which was

4 5 really the thing·=-·no one wou l d dare to res.isto No policeman could

keep order contrary to t he SF " In fact 0 n o po liceman h as d a red make a move since the fall of the Diem regime because f the u npopular

rrcove s they made during the Diem regime 0 and t h ey fear retaliati on or; t.~ei.:: f ami Jies o As a law enforcement agency they couldn at do mu.ch more th.a.n direct traffic and collect fines from overloaded

busesa For a n ordinary citizen 0 e v e n one in a responsible po sition 0 to take a .s .. "md was risking his necko He might be willing to do that for himself c but what about h ·' s family a n d all the people who depend 0:'.'.1 h.irn f o r th.e.ir liv elihood? These too a re things that we don't

r ealiz e ~~how interde pendent Vietnamese people are 0 and in what uncer­

ta1.nty and dang·e.r they live; individuals are not free 0 either in

te!'.'ms o f independence or in terms of po litical safety 0 to expose themselves as we doa

There was one brave soul in Hue 0 an in de p e n de nt~t:hinking woma n who had b een i nvolved for y ears in activit ies to help h er country 0 s peopleo She got along well with Americans (ca.using jealousies and

suspicion among some people of Hue ) 0 was extremely h elpful and friend­

ly t o t h e I VS people in Hue 0 thought always in terms of meaningful projects o and was not sympathe tic to the Communists o Because s h e rema ined friendly with the Americans through the S:P 0 s anti~American campaign and because she was well known in Hue and y et was critical of the SF, she finally found it necessary to lea•e Hue since s he felt (with good reason ) that her life was in dang ero She then took action to g et h er sister out of the areaa Becau se one couldn ' t pre­ d ict the dir ect ion the s tru9gle in Hue would take . speed was a dvis­ ableo

Her sister was wor king f o r a n AID contract medical team in Quang Tri 'Wh en she rec e ived word to l eave Quang Tri as s oon as possible " I beli e v e she l e ft with only a day or two's notice, which was an un­ f ortunate thing, but she had little choice under the circumstanceso

The top AID man in Qu ang 'I'r i was justifiably put out 0 but 0 unjusti ­ fiably0 h e refu sed to try to understan d the reality of the situa­ tion and the type of family responsibility tha t exists in Vietnamo

In fact 0 he was s o lacking in understanding and s o spitefu~that for a iong time after that h e quite deliberately tried t o make trouble for the older sister who got a job workin9 for AID in Nha Trango I t ' s ironic that a Vie tnamese person who had been so supportive of American e fforts should suffer a s much tro uble a s she did at the

t..ands of o fficial American agencies o

(In the y ounger sister 0 s situation in Quang Tri there is anoth er example of American lack o f u n derstanding of Vietnamese cultu ral 'i?'o.lu.es" The Americans liked to have parties and would invite the Vietnamese g.i.rls working for themo Vie t namese as a rule don't have tl:e kind o f parties that Americans like and those girls preferred

.;ot to g o to t h e partieso Howev er 0 they felt o bliged t o go o felt that in order to hold their j obs they were expected to attend the Amer.i can parties o· Whether this was the intent of t h e inv ita.tions

46 or a misperc eption on the part of the girls . it was nevertheless how the y felto As if that -weren ° t enough 0 the Ame rican men nagged the Viet­ namese g irls to dance with t h em o often would not take no for an an­ swer o I t was a s though they couldn°t conceive that t h e girls really d idn °t want to dance . I 0 m sure it never crossed their self-confident American ma. le minds that such behavior might be offensive or even repugnant to the girl.s o But ~ worse than that 0 was that those Ameri­ co.ns--quit e u naware of the signifi~anc e of the differences in values --were actu ally trying to alienate those girls from their own society. Th e y we r e trying to force them into social behavior that wa s not gen­ e rally acceptable in Vietnamese society and t hat would i dentify them as being t he Americansi g irl friends . From a Vietnamese point of view 0 part icularly in the con servative Hue and .Quang Tri areas 0 there 0 s no t much worse y ou can say about a respectable Vietnamese girlo)

The remar k i s oft en ma de that the people in Hue are always a n ti-this and anti=that but never for anything. I think this is typical of protest groups . This was my feeling particularly at the time of the protest aga inst the Huong government . There had been so much c l amor for a ci ~ri lian government and Huong had been appointed or chosen by a group of pe ople who were supposed to r epresent all f actions o It seemed the best of all possible governments at the time, despite some failings and the dictum against political activities . It was the anti~anti-expression in the p rotests without any pro- that im­ pressed me a.t t he time o

I talked to one monk who was very active in the Buddhist protests. I asked him three times in three differ e nt ways what it was h e wanted t o replace the Huong government 6 granted that the Hu ong government was at fault in denying the Buddhists and students the right of polit­ ica l activity. and he s i de ~ stepped my question each time--very ob­ vious s i de-steppingo I was wishing afterwards I had been clever enough to have a s ked him in Vietnamese for the benefit o f his young a dmirers in the background 0 but perhaps it was just as well that I d idn't make him lose face--if i t were likely--in front of his co­ horts and possibly compromise the safety of my c ompanion--a Vietnam­ ese girl 0 or compromise my own relations in Hue--the political sit­ uation was quite tense. This monk--who wa s a farce as a monk as far as I "m concerned--was very 0 very fluent in English-- a little too

fluent-~he gave me his Speech for Americans 0 c omplete with beauti- f ul ana logies and appropriate shrugging of shoulders; h e wa s a very smooth arrogant man who was d isrespectful toward his s uperior ( a real monk) a nd who 0 I heard later, used to work for USAI D in Saigon and became a monk at t h e time of t h e overthrow of Diem. Whether or not he was a Communist I don "t know; but h e was certainly not a r e al BuddhisL

4 7 Attitudes Since the Tet Off ensive , 1968

Reg·arding the feelings in Hue since Tet i) I should fir st say that my

knowledqe is limited because I know o n ly what I hear from my f r iends 0 and nnt b~ing t h ere I have no contact with c ertain levels of people

that I ' "· J:inar.i ly would :have if I were there o For exampl e i) I don ' t have consact with man y students ; many stu dents naturally are strong­ ly no.tiona.Li.stic and want to do something po sitiv e for their country,

soc also qu.ite natur ally 0 some of them are v ery a:n t.i ~ Ameri can o r at least anti-American-policy in Vietnamo B'!.:;.t I don " t have any way now

to g·et any real react.ion from these people o Letters are not suffi~ cient because people c an't s a y what the y r e ally t hink in letterso Even if there were no such thing a s c ensorship or q uestion o f s ecur­ .i ty o :itas hard enough t o c ow.mun i cate havin9 to write things down a nd without person-to~·person c o n tacto So I don ' t have t h e s e contacts .

bu.to from what I d o h e ar 0 I h ave the impression that a substantial proporti on of t he population o f Hue really hate t h e VC o Th e VC killed so many people" But there is growing feeling again st the Americans .. --what I first heard was that some peo ple hate the VC the most and t h e Ame ricans next and the rest o f the peo ple hate the Americans t he mo st. and the VC next; there isn't much d ifference b e­ tween them- ~they ' re both evil. An American who went to Hu e a few months after Tet made t h e remark that the only differer.ce b e tween the VC and t h e Americans was t hat the VC were d iscriminate and the

Americans were :indiscriminate 0 The Americans succeeded in slauglit- ·. ering· more people than the VC did.

But what I've been h e aring recently--over a period o f mon th s ~·-f irst 0 was t hat t h e people in Hue f eel that the Americans blasted Hue the way they did on purpose in r evenge against the Hue people being ant.i­ America:n and a.nt.i-govern.menL I myself feel there 's a great deal o f justification for this f e e ling; becau se of wh at I "ve known of Ameri­

can fee lings 8 this would be v ery consistent 0 it might ver y well be true that a lot more damag·e was d o ne than rn.igh. t otherwise have been done . Th e feeling I 've bee n h earing more recently is that they're bla ming the Americans for l e tting the VC come in in the firs t place. The Americans l et them come in s o that t he Hue people would see

what the VC are really like 0 or they could have protected Hue but they didn 't because the y d idn't care abou t Hue u Of c ourse , a lot of th.is do esn't seem reasonable a n d my own. feeling is that these feelings e x aggerate , but what i s imEortant is wha t the 12eo ple be~ Jieve whe ther :it 0 s justif i ed or not. {Since the time of this de­

b '::.ief (December 1 968 ) 0 I have learned t hat South Vietnamese officers rs ~;E'.ived orders to show no mer cy t o the civi lian population in Hue .ir, f.1ghting the Communists at Te to The o fficers who received t hese orders, having n o love for Hue people , were entirely sympathetic w.i th the orde rs ~ }

I would like t o make clear what I mean by the term "'Viet Cong" (VC) o When I say i•vie t Con g L' I mean what the wo rds literally mean~ Vie t­ namese Communists or Vietname se Co m.mun.ism (Viet Nam Cong San) Q

48 (It is a customa ry p:r:actice in Vietnamese language to take one ele­ ment from each of two or more compound words a nd combine themo ) So

I mean Vietnamese Communists 0 wh e the r Southerners or Northerne r s 0 Northerners b eing the North Vietnamese regular army and Southerners beir:g members o f what is po pularly called in the West the National Liberation Front but which is more correctly trans lated as Front for the 'Libera.tion of the South Region (Mat Tran Giai Phong Mien Nam) or People 0 s South Region Liberation Front (Mat Tran Dan Toe Giai Phong Mien Nam) o I had thought. o rig·inally that t h e Liberation Front itself gave the t i tle National Liberation Front in order to give more r espectability in West ern e y es 0 but I was interested to note ina book in Eng-lish pu b lished in Hanoi that I saw i n a bookstore here that t heir translation was a more correct one 0 without the name Nation.ala

I understand that in the VC groups in Hue at the time of Tet there were sometimes Northerners and sometimes local peopleo I. presume that most of the Liberation Front people there were from Central Vietnam, there wouldn°t be too much reason f or b ringing Southerners up to the Central regiono Bu t 0 at any rate 0 both groups seem to work very closely togethero I heard this from the Ame rican girl who replaced me in September 1967, was captured by the VC at Tete and spent two months as a captive in -the mountains. I ' ve also heard this from Vietnamese f riendso For example 0 a friend of mine in Hue had been working for the Americans and was also well known in Hue. Her brothers who were in the army and were home for Tet were cap­ tured by the VCo She herself was able to hide. When s h e woutd hear VC around who ·spoke Northern dialect she would c ome out and help her sister with the cooking 0 but if she heard Hue dialect she knew they would recognize h e .r and s h e remained in hiding. She was v ery lucky; she managed to escapeo

Tet 1968

The story of Sandra's capture i s an interesting one" I 'm n ot s u re my version of it is entirely accurate 0 but I think it' s close"

Firsto I should explain that IVS likes t o encourage its members to stay at their s t ations during Tet because this is the mo st i mportant time of y e ar for the Vietnamese 0 and this is the time when IVSers can visit their friends and be visited by them!> exchange all the proper greetings 0 and participate in the many Tet season activities.

At the timeo three IVS girls were living in the house in Hu e 6 but two of them went to Saigon f or Teto One of the girls h as a Viet­ namese family in Saigon whom she considers her family o (She used to t e ach in the south 'and nearly always spent what t ime she spent in Saigon with this familyo) Of course, it was natural for hei; to go lflf.home '3 to Saigon for Teto The other girl also used to teach in the south and went. to Saigon to visit friendso Another woman wh o wa s a Quaker do c tor in Quang Ngai province came to Hue for Tet and was

49 staying in the IVS house with Sandrao In our house in Hue we had a typical Vietnamese b unker--a very heav-y wooden bed which was three

large five=inch-thick hardwood boards across two horses 0 and sand­ bags a round the sidesa This is where the girls would go if there was firing 1.;i r mo rtar attacks o The.re had been warnings that the VC might

attack a.' .. Tet 0 but Sandra assu.med 0 as did everyone else apparently 9 that this would be the usual kind of VC attack.-·~a small force coming in in the mi ddle of the night and withdrawing before daylighto She wa s very wakeful. 0 and when she heard heavy firing which seemed close,

she woke up Marge 0 the doctor 0 who shrugged and went back to sleep~­ being accustomed to shelling and fighting in Quang Ngai. But the firing became more intense and was closer so t h e two girls got under tre bunk.era

The details and periods of time are not at all clear to me 0 but it mu.s t have been some hours later--during the day--that the VC banged on the doors o tried to get in but didn 6 t break in the doors which were heavily barred against thieves 0 and called out asking i.f therre was anyone inside to open up. The girls didn 6 t respond and t he VC went awayo For a couple of days they remained hidden in the bunke~ s neaking out of the bunker to the toilet which was closeby and subsisting on water from the bottle of boiled t oothbrushing water and driet sweet potatoes that had been brought as a Tet present by a Vietnamese f riend. (The door between the main house and the kitch­ en was locked and barred because it was so easy to break into the kitchen from the outside.) The girls were able to peer out and see

that the VC had set up a gun emplacement in our yard 0 which was a good place (for them) because we had a well and there 'Were lots o f trees for camouflage. The next day or so they tried again to enter and f ired some shots into the air. This alarmed the girls so they

opened up and two or t hree VC came in and searched the house 0 pre­ sumably for weapons or other hidden people.

Then they talked to the girl s 0 explaining what they were doing in

the yard 0 that the girls were to stay in the house 0 and making clear

that they 0 the VC 0 were not going to take anything from the house. (Both g irls h ad be en in Vietnam only about five months so their Vietnamese wci.s not very fluent but communication was possible o) They asked the girls questions and when one of the girls asked them where the y were from 0 t hey replied matter~of-factly that one of them was from the North and one was from Thua Thi.en provinceo While they were talking 0 the American military began dropping mortars in the a reaG It's :interesting to note that when there was a close one the 6 g irl.s "hit the floor" but t h e VC didn t move 0 just nonchalantly waited f or t he girls to get u p o Then they went back outside and the

g irls returned to the bunker 0 but Sandra just escaped being caught by one mortar that came right through the roof into the livingroom.

Sometime after that=~perhaps very soon o r perhaps the next day- ­

the VC 0 apparently withdrawing from the area 0 came back in and took t:_e girls away into the mountain s. At times they were in groups

50 with other prisonerso including American men 0 and young Vietnamese me.p who were presumably b eing taken for training or indoctrinationo For sev eral days they were kept on the mov e; it was a difficult time because they weren°t accustomed to long hours of marching 0 and some­ times especially at night it was coldo The girls were treated well, not mistreated in any way apparentlyo Marge 0 the doctor 0 was very helpful in qiving small medical assistance and maintaining morale 0 but s h e became quite sick herself and asked the VC for medicineo They brought in a VC doctor for her who gav e h er better medicine than s h e had asked foro The first of April the girls were releasedo They were luckier than other Americans capturedo Marge has just re­ turnedo e ight months later, to Vietnam to continue her work as a doctoro

I would like to say one thing for the record becauise I don°t know if itns been said anywhere publicly 0 and that is about the behavior of the American Marines .in Hueo After the fighting was over and Hue was occupied almost solely by the miJitary 0 many people were not in their homes; they had fled to the countryside or had refugeed to the

University Fac"iJ.lty of Pedagogy areao During- this time 0 the American Marines occupied many homes and defiled the Buddhist altars, defe­ cating around the alt ars and in oth er places (such as in suitcases, as I know from one resi dent) 0 destroyed f u rniture and shot up cars and other items of personal propertyo

The point I want to make is that this sort of thing happens often in war ~-s o ldiers behaving q uite badlyo The interesting thing- is that the Viet Cong 0 th.ou9h they killed many people and restricted mov e­ ment in some areas ·so that people weren°t able to escape the fighting 0 d idn°t do any of these wantonly destructive things" From all I gat:her, they didn°t destroy propert y just to be destro ying it1 they didn't defile or do anything to the Catholic church or to any of the relig­ iou s plac es 0 a n d they didn °t stealo They make quite a point of this --of not s t ealing- and n ot lootingo Th ere was a troupe of musicians from North Vietnam · ·hat came in; they took three instruments from the Nat ional Conservatory of Music in the Citadelo and left a note saying that they had taken them" After the fighting when the VC had withdrawn and the area was occupied by the South Vietnamese troops and the 1'JTiericans 0 all t h e rest of the musical instruments were des­ troyed or stoleno

One district was occupied by the VC for 26 dayso b ut one of those days the VC withdrew taking the people with themo and the South Viet­ namese marines came inu (During the time the VC occupied the areao they didn°t allow the people living there to leave so as to escape the fig-htingo) When the VC came back in to that districto bringing the people back with them 0 the people found that just in that one d ay so much had b een s tolen from their homeso I heard that from two sources o I 0 v e heard from several sources that the American Marines ·s tole tape recorders and radios and the Vietnamese govern­ ment troops s tole e v erything· else-=clothes a n d other things o One

51 womano when t:he streets were clear enough 0 went back to t h e home where s h e 0 d been liv ing and not even her conical hat was l e ft. Apparently there was a J?Eriod of time during· which 0 in some areas 0 the peo ple were £creed t o withdraw because of occupation by troo ps~-perhaps about the time the fighting was overo Some of t he peo ple who lived on the south bark o f the river= ... the area firs t to b e held by America_n troops ~·~came L2ck to the ir homes to find them first defil ed and damaged by the Americans and after a s e c ond f orced withdrawal 0 l ooted by the South Vietname se troops" This kind of t h ing seems t o b e consistently reported"

I know these things go on in a war--these are the t h ings that happen" The soldiers r e ally donut care about the people in the area: itu s n ot their ho~e 0 their families are not living t h ere--th ey j u st donut care" But cf course 0 this has its effect on peo p l e " And it" s inter­ e st::Lng to note that the Communists apparently did none of this 1 they seemed to be for the most part v ery well organized 0 and I j u dge mo rale was qo.ite 9"00do There was some indiscriminate killing" I heard one case 0 which wa s told in a rat.her vague way 0 about one house wh ere t h e re were two cyclo a.rivers sitting in the back wh e n s ome VC came to the fronL I don n t know whether or not t he drivers were hiding or just sitting o penlyo (I have the impression that the Communists tended to k ill people who attempted to hide o r escape themo) The VC asked a girl in the front of the house if there was anybody there and she said Noa Again 0 it us. not clear whethe r s he said no because t h e two drivers were in the yard behind the house o r b e cause she was at­ temp t ing to shield them0 but the vc came throu gh and d iscovered the d riverso Without asking any questions they killed the two men on the spot; I don' t remember whether or not they killed t h e girl" But we can be sure that these two cyclo drivers were not bad corrupt g overnment officials or enemies of the people in any way==just two poor lower-class people" So this kind of thing went on 0 and r um sure t here was much persona.l=spite killing. Also 0 undoubted ly some units were not as well beha,1ed a s others"

It is extremely difficult to j u dge the reasoning b e hind many of the VC actions o r to pre dict what they will do in any given situationo but it is evi dent t hat the r e is reasoning--and cons i derable d is­ cipline" Whereas 0 on the Ame rican side 0 the seeming lack of dis= cipline and ideology 0 the cer tain lack of any attitudes of respect or concern f o r the Vietnamese peo ple 0 and the lack of any real understanding of the political and psychological factors operating in Vie tnam and in Hue only served to worsen the American image and po sition"

Youth Programs

In read ing the u•nebr.ief of a Youth Adv iso r 0 Viet na.m" l which discu ss=­ es Vietnamese youth programs prio r to 1966 0 I thought that s ome of t he observ ations and e valuati o ns o f the observations were good " I la De brief Noa 186612 52 felt that overall he was rather optimistic 0 but I suppose you have to be that way if you 0 r e g·oing to push or instigate these kinds of progra."Il.so I myself am much more skeptical about the effectiveness of the way t he American and Vietnamese governments are organizing such programsv One thing that impressed me s o much about his discussion was that. these youth programs are so much an American-initiated thing.

Even though h e doesn 't want .the .American influence to be obvious 0 I 0 m s ure that American .influence and domination is qui te apparent and cer tainly felt by the Vie tnamese you.tho

In connection with that 0 I want to bring up a statement h e made about anti-American feelingso He said 0 "In v arying forms there is an anti.­ American dimension to all of these tendencieso In some cases it is d isagreement with the American way of working and in oth ers it is a deep and violent resentment against t he total American presenceo While this does not r eceive a great deal of overt expression at the moment 0 .it has within itse lf a great possibil ity for disastrous ex­ pression in the futureo" Yet I felt that he didn 't carry this ex­ c ellent observation into later considerations for Ame rican-implemented programs o My O 'lll.1Il feel ' ng is 0 only by Vietnamese people actually doing the initiating and organizing can you get a really basic movement.

A nation can°t be built by outsiders 0 it has to be internalo There are a lot of young Vietnamese intellectuals who have already worked in youth programs o including initiating programso There is the pos­ sibilityo of courseo that the bulk of them have become t o o disillus­ i oned and resentful to b e effectiveo Some of them have become so disgust ed and discouraged that they've just quit these kinds of ac­ tivities because they feel so helpless and the situation has so de­ terioratedo Oth ers can n o longer be effective because they've be­ come too closely i dentified with t o p Vietnamese power groups ; one previous l y v ery a ctive and well-liked person is now working for the government and has thus alienated many of his previous associates who don' t trust the governmento

What role s hould the American governme nt play? As small a one as possible 0 and whatever it is 0 it should be limited to pressuring the Vietnamese government to initiate its own programs and perhaps making available t raining programs in s ocial organization and group dynarn.ics 0 But it should be Vietnamese doing the organizing within a framework of Vietnamese values 0 not American values. The UoS . s hould not do the f und i ng-=Vietnamese people always know when the

UoS. i s behind something 0 especially they can always smell the CIA. Any association with the CIA cripples any program. The reason I s uggest training programs is because the UoS. is probably foremost in the world in the field of social psychologyo One of the big­ gest failings of the American government in terms of .international relations is its failure to acknowledge and utilize the intelluc­ tual resourc es of its own c o untry 0 much less those of o ther coun­ trieso

53 If thereas going to be any alternative to Communism in Sou thVietnam 0 I th.ink there has to be the sort of movement that the you th adviso r talks about in h is debrief. but it has to take place within a Viet­ namese f r amework; Vietnamese values. not American 0 have to operateo

And 0 if we as a nation are going t o have ou r hand in it 0 we have to underst a nd thoroughly these operating Vietnamese values and have to understand a ll the complexities of the situation itself6 which we certain l y dona t now. judging by the decisions and actions that have been taken o If we're not going to do that. we might as well go ahead and agr ee to a compromise situation in which the Communists will e ventua lly c ome out on top and which we will call a compromise or neutrality or something to save faceo Maybe it's too late for any­ thing else 0 anyway o

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