[Vision2020] “His View: My West Coast journey as a Vietnam War protester”

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today’s (October 12, 2017) Moscow-Pullman Daily News with thanks to Nick Gier.

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His View: My West Coast journey as a Vietnam War protester

As I watched Ken Burns' and Lynn Novick's "Vietnam War," a flood of memories came over me. Although I flinched and occasionally cried during the film, I stuck with each episode from beginning to end.

In the summer of 1964, I was working for the U.S. Forest Service on the Olympic Peninsula. As my crew got off work on Aug. 5, we turned on the radio. An announcer reported that President Lyndon Johnson had ordered the bombing of North Vietnam. We all cheered and shouted, as close as I can remember, "Get those dirty Commies!"

Thanks to the publication of "The Pentagon Papers," we now know that the pretext for the bombing was a lie. Johnson claimed that the destroyer USS Maddox had been attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats, when in fact the Maddox was in an offensive, not defensive position. It was gathering intelligence for South Vietnamese raids on North Vietnamese islands.

I returned to Oregon State University that fall, and by the spring of 1965, in a dramatic about-face, I was being called a "Commie lover." Along with my adviser in religious studies, we founded the Student-Faculty Committee to End the War in Vietnam. We organized on-campus protests, and we also went out to picket at regional military facilities.

During that time, a State Department representative visited campus to defend the Johnson administration's prosecution of the war. After his talk, I stood up and protested the carpet bombing by B-52 Stratofortresses. I was near tears when I also pointed out the immorality of using napalm, which causes huge fire storms when dropped.

The Burns/Novick series gave us more details about the 9-year-old girl Kim Phuc, who was badly burned by napalm while fleeing Trang Bang. South Vietnamese photographer Nick Ut won a Pulitzer Prize for an iconic image that symbolized the atrocities of the Vietnam War.

Phuc is now a Canadian citizen and peace activist, and the film's unnarrated image of her holding her infant with her horribly scarred back turned to us is just as heart-wrenching as Ut's prize-winning photo.

In the spring of 1966, I was called up for a physical, even though I had a student deferment. Along with a busload of other OSU students, we were driven to an induction center in Portland. As far as I could tell, I passed the exam, and upon returning to Corvallis, I was seriously considering moving to Canada.

Soon thereafter I received a 1-Y classification, which meant that I was "qualified for military service only in time of national emergency." Some friends told me, without verification, that 1-Ys were being given to war protestors to avoid dissension in the ranks. I chose not to follow up on this.

In 1967, I started my studies at Claremont Graduate University in California. I followed the war, but my main focus was on my classes. That changed with the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970. Once again, I took the lead (I was president of the Graduate Student Council), and about one hundred students joined me in a sit-in at campus administration offices.

When I came to Moscow in 1972, I was occupied with a new job, a new wife, a mortgage and, soon, a baby daughter. My last anti-war effort came in campaigning for Sen. George McGovern, a veteran bomber pilot, and one of the most honorable men to ever run for the presidency.

A President McGovern could not have done much to mitigate the disaster for the South Vietnamese that years of lies had made inevitable. He would, however, have served a full term, and he would have facilitated a national healing far better than a corrupt and disgraced President Richard Nixon.

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Thanks for the memories, Nick.

“Ohio” by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young
http://www.TomandRodna.com/Songs/Ohio.mp3

(sing along . . . )

“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio”

Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .

"Moscow Cares" 
http://www.MoscowCares.com
  
Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
  
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