Winning Hearts and Minds: One Man’s Journey to Vietnam and Back Towards Peace Interviewer: Colin McDermott Interviewee: John Ketwig Date: May 30th, 2019 Instructor: Alex Haight Table of Contents Interviewer Release Form …..…………………………………………………………….……………... 3 Interviewee Release Form ………………………………………………………………………………. 4 Statement of Purpose ………………………………………………………………………………..…... 5 Biography ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 6 Historical Contextualization: The Vietnam War:……...………………………….……………………... 7 Interview Transcription ………………………………………………………………………………..... 19 Interview Analysis ………………………………………………………………………………………. 65 Work Consulted …………………………………………………………………………………………. 71 Appendix ……………………………………………………………………………………………...… 73 Statement of Purpose The purpose of this project is to gain a strong understanding of the origins and history of the Vietnam war; including the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and its place in the anti-war movement. The Vietnam war is one of the most questionable and misconstrued wars in world history and deserves continuing study for lessons that can be applied going forward. My interview with Vietnam Veteran, John Ketwig offers the vital first-hand perspective of a person who was an American soldier in Vietnam and also an activist in the VVAW. Contained in this interview is the story of John Ketwig and the lessons he learned from his Vietnam experiences. Biography John Ketwig was born in 1948 and grew up in the Finger Lakes region of western New York. As a boy he was a fan of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan and had a special interest in automobiles. He graduated from high school and in anticipation that he would soon be drafted and assigned combat duty in Vietnam, instead enlisted in the United States Army with the hope of assignment elsewhere. In September of 1967, however, he was sent to Vietnam. Following his year-long tour in Vietnam, where he reports morale was generally low, he chose to complete his military service in Thailand, having escaped serious injury in Vietnam but witnessing death and destruction nearby. When returning to the United States he continued his passion of working with automobiles for various automobile manufacturers. Also upon his return to the U.S., he became active in the antiwar organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Ketwig recorded his recollections of his Vietnam years and their aftermath in a well received memoir, “And a Hard Rain Fell, the title of which is based on an evocative Bob Dylan song from the 1960s, ”A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.” The Vietnam War A since forgotten rock band who once played at Woodstock, Country Joe and the Fish, performed a sarcastic song whose lyrics went as follows: “And it’s 1,2,3, What are we fighting for?, Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn, next stop is Vietnam!” In some ways, this lyric captures the spirit of the times (the late 1960s) as youth who knew little about Vietnam or its colonial history got swept up into a distant war they were powerless to resist. Young people were not the only ones who struggled to make sense of the far-off war. Voters and politicians searched in vain for a way out of the war, which dragged on without clear direction throughout the 1960s. Thus, the Vietnam War proved to be one of the most controversial and divisive episodes in American history. Some people referred to it as a “conflict” but others resented that term saying it was a “war” pure and simple. As John Ketwig, who fought in Vietnam, said in his memoir: “I don't plan to refer to the Vietnam ‘conflict’ LBJ saw it as a ‘conflict.’ To a pfc (private first class), 19 years old, that many dead guys earned it the title of ‘war.’”1 In addition to costing the country billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives it lead to the end of at least one presidents (LBJ’s) career and changed the way many Americans and non-Americans viewed the United States. For probably the first time in American history, large numbers of American soldiers came back from battle with opinions that no longer coincided with their government’s and with a willingness to express their dissent in public. Important newspapers posted damaging pictures and contradicted the government's statements, even describing the war in Vietnam as “a dirty, vicious war that Americans are caught up in in the swamps of South Vietnam” 2 and eventually many returning soldiers backed such statements with first-hand experiences explaining their 1 1. John Ketwig, ...and a hard rain fell (n.p.: Sourcebooks Inc., 2008), [Page 4]. 2 1. Eyewitness Report, "The Strange War the U.S is Not Winning," U.S News and World Report, September 30, 1963, [Page 1]. strong disapproval of the government’s conduct of the war. As citizens tired of the war and returning soldiers joined their cause, the momentum grew behind anti-war movements all over the country and the gradually eroded of both support for the War and trust in the government and the politicians in it. Protests took place from college campuses to the steps of the United States Capitol, itself. And, by the late 1960s when the tens of thousands of protesters were backed by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and not just students and youth, the government was forced to take the anti-war movement far more seriously. Together with a more sceptical mass media, the accounts of returning soldiers who publicly opposed the War changed the way the fighting in Vietnam was viewed throughout the world. Some of those soldiers (including one named John Ketwig) wrote about their experiences in and after the war. In order to understand the perspective of such a soldier, one of many who turned against the war and worked to end it, it is important to first understand how America got involved in Vietnam and how the war unfolded. The roughly twenty-year long American war in Vietnam had its roots in ignorance about Vietnam’s colonial past and America's arrogance and overconfidence in our military and technological superiority. The government promoted the idea that fighting in Vietnam was necessary to stop the spread of communism. The government ignored the corruption of the South Vietnamese government and ignored the fact that many Vietnamese people agreed with the North that the most important goal was to rid the county of foreign colonizers. So, in the U.S. the war was originally viewed by most people as a just war with America fighting alongside brave South Vietnam against North Vietnam and Viet Cong Guerrillas, with a clear theme of “good against evil,” and “democracy versus communism.” But as the war steadily increased in intensity and the U.S. seemed to lose control as the war dragged on without victory, the lines between good and evil blurred. People began to question whether the government was telling the truth about any aspect of the war. Frustration grew as the bloody war killed over 58,000 American troops and 250,000 South Vietnamese troops. Over 1,000,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong Guerrillas were also killed. And tragically over 2,000,000 North and South Vietnamese, Laos, and Cambodian civilians died and hundreds of villages were destroyed.3 It became harder and harder for Americans to see how the conflict could be brought to a successful end, as the North refused to quit even in the face of huge losses. The people fighting the U.S. recalled how their small and poor nation, located on the eastern Indochinese peninsula was imperialised by the French in the mid-1800’s because of the land’s natural resources. Years later in 1940, France fell to Germany, allowing Japan to invade and cruelly exploit Vietnam. Seeing the opportunity to free Vietnam from outside rulers, Ho Chi Minh, a popular charismatic political leader, left China for Vietnam after spending three decades in exile to lead Vietnam to independence from imperialism. The U.S. declined his requests for help in gaining independence from the French. In an attempt for the Vietnamese to defend themselves from both the French colonizers and the Japanese occupiers, Ho Chi Minh had formed the League for the Independence of Vietnam called the “Viet Minh.” The Viet Minh was founded on in 1941 to resist the French and Japanese forces to achieve independence for Vietnam. The United States and the Republic of China at first assisted the Viet Minh in their efforts to fight the enemy Japanese occupiers. In July of 1945 an OSS (Office of Strategic Services or pre-CIA) American team was sent to train Viet Minh troops. On this trip the men found Ho Chi Minh appearing as a “pile of bones covered with yellow dry skin” “shaking like a leaf and obviously running a high fever.”4 He was sick with malaria, dysentery, and assorted 3 1. The Vietnam War, directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, PBS/ WETA, 2017. 4 1. Richard Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency (n.p.: Lyons Press, 2005), [Page 306]. tropical diseases. The men treated Ho Chi Minh and he made a quick recovery, returning to his fight for independence. In 1945 Japan was defeated in World War II and completely extracted all its troops from Vietnam. With Japan no longer occupying Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh’s forces, lead by Vo Nguyen Giap, took control of the critical northern city of Hanoi. Following taking Hanoi, on September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh declared North Vietnam’s independence calling it the “Democratic Republic of Vietnam.” Though unable to keep control of northern Vietnam, the French regained the south including its capital Saigon, lead by French-influenced emperor Bao Dai. Ho Chi Minh reached out to the Americans for collaboration using letters and telegrams stating in vain, ““your statesmen make eloquent speeches about .