tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/vietnam-veterans-58802/articles
Vietnam veterans – The Conversation
2022-11-20T19:04:43Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/191441
2022-11-20T19:04:43Z
2022-11-20T19:04:43Z
A Vietnam veteran anthropologist and an Arnhem Land community have worked together for over 40 years. Don Watson tells their story.
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494024/original/file-20221108-21-mi4wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C9%2C3313%2C1972&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dr Neville White at Donydji, 1986</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Neville White/Ronin Films</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/The-Passion-of-Private-White/Don-Watson/9781760855079">The Passion of Private White</a>, Don Watson has written a witty and compassionate book about friendship, Indigenous self-determination and people under stress. </p>
<p>“Private White” is Neville White, an anthropologist and Vietnam veteran who has spent two months a year since 1974 in Arnhem Land, as a guest of Yolngu families residing at the Donydji community.</p>
<p>Watson explains:</p>
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<p>For the last forty years, all the Indigenous people of north-east Arnhem Land (Miwatj) have been known as Yolngu – which means “person” or “people” or “human being”. They number about 3000 and all are members of one or other of several dozen intermarrying culturally connected clans.</p>
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<p><em>Review: The Passion of Private White – Don Watson (Scribner)</em></p>
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<h2>Yolngu self-determination</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1bgzbk1.22#metadata_info_tab_contents">Donydji</a> is an experiment in self-determination – that is, in Yolngu choosing the degree and forms of their involvement in Australian institutions. Before his first visit to Donydji, White was told that </p>
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<p>alone among the Yolngu clans, the people living here had never left their lands. Here, and only here, would he find a clan whose traditional knowledge was intact.</p>
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<p>Two policy changes in the mid-1970s afforded a greater margin of choice for Yolngu, including the residents of Donydji. In 1976, the Fraser government’s <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/aboriginal-land-rights-act">Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act</a> gave Yolngu title to the entire Arnhem Land Reserve, including the right to veto mining. </p>
<p>Until 1975, unemployment benefits were not available to remote Aboriginal people (as, in the absence of a local labour market, they were not seen as seeking employment). Without needing a change in legislation, the Department of Social Security decided to make unemployment benefits available to these previously excluded people. </p>
<p>This created a new and substantial income stream for remote communities such as Donydji, and many of them began to avail themselves of it in the form of the <a href="https://www.niaa.gov.au/indigenous-affairs/employment/cdp">Community Development Employment Program</a>. This income relieved them of the pressure to say “yes” to economic development.</p>
<p>Donydji became a permanent camp in 1971. Sitting down at Donydji was driven by the desire of certain Ritharrngu and Wagilak families to safeguard Country from exploration – such as test-drilling that had violated a site in the late 1960s. Donydji is strategically located on a road and an airstrip graded to service mining exploration. </p>
<p>So, to preserve their traditional lands, the families at Donydji have modified their way of life. Erecting shelters and demanding basic services such as schooling and access to manufactured goods, they have become sedentary.</p>
<p>You can learn all this by reading White’s <a href="https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p331981/pdf/ch16.pdf">history of Donydji</a> – downloadable (free) from Australian National University Press. He describes some of the consequences of Yolngu becoming sedentary. </p>
<p>At Donydji, Yolngu live on a combination of what they can forage and what they can purchase, and they seek whatever material support governments and citizens can offer them. They are gripping their country and they are gripped by it. As well, they are gradually losing some knowledge that had been essential to nomadic foraging. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Homeland Story (Ronin Films) is a documentary about the Donydji community, and Dr Neville White’s work. At time of publication, it can be viewed on SBS on Demand.</span></figcaption>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/paul-daleys-jesustown-a-novel-of-lurid-postcolonial-truth-telling-185498">Paul Daley's Jesustown: a novel of lurid, postcolonial truth-telling</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>An anti-Vietnam War veteran</h2>
<p>What Watson brings to this story is his compassionate, sardonic appreciation of White (an old university friend), his Yolngu hosts and the Vietnam <a href="https://theconversation.com/veterans-have-poorer-mental-health-than-australians-overall-we-could-be-serving-them-better-119525">veterans</a> who have assembled over many dry seasons as Donydji’s volunteer construction gang. White knows these men because he served with them. So this is not only a book about Yolngu self-determination. </p>
<p>Labelling White “an old-school Australian”, Watson explores his own affinity with this cohort of ageing white men whose troubled bond is their service in a war he experienced only through the antiwar movement. At the same time (and from a greater distance), Watson narrates his experience of getting to know Yolngu, through his many visits to Donydji. Watson’s well-honed and affectionate sense of the absurd flavours every anecdote. But the deeper subject of this book is what binds and divides men.</p>
<p>Neville White grew up in working-class Geelong. His father, Leo White, was a champion boxer and trainer of Aboriginal fighters. Becoming Neville’s friend brought young (“sport-addicted”) Don closer to a milieu he had reverently imagined. </p>
<p>Don and Neville could agree, when they met at university in 1968, that Australia should not be committing troops to Vietnam. But by then, Neville had already served. Accepting conscription (in the third ballot, on September 10 1965) while disputing Australia’s commitment, he had spent the second half of 1967 as an infantryman.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495263/original/file-20221115-12-6r61cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495263/original/file-20221115-12-6r61cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495263/original/file-20221115-12-6r61cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495263/original/file-20221115-12-6r61cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495263/original/file-20221115-12-6r61cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495263/original/file-20221115-12-6r61cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495263/original/file-20221115-12-6r61cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495263/original/file-20221115-12-6r61cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">White’s fellow Vietnam veterans have assembled over many dry seasons as Donydji’s volunteer construction gang, working with Yolngu.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Homeland Story/Ronin Films</span></span>
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<p>Bonds forged with other soldiers outweighed – in their moral force – Neville’s rejection of Australia’s policy. “He would hardly be the first,” Watson comments, “to fight a war in which he did not believe.” White’s demobilisation was not of his choosing either. The bitter politics of conscription had made it prudent to limit conscripts to two years of service. </p>
<p>His sudden extraction from the battlefield left White feeling like he had deserted his comrades. Coming home was almost as baffling as the fighting itself. “For Neville’s experience of the battlefield the anti-Vietnam War movement had no affirmative words, or sympathy, or respect.” </p>
<p>That sense of failure still agitated White in a December 2021 conversation recounted by Watson. However, by then White had found a way to remake battlefield mateship – annually mobilising several of his old platoon as a volunteer construction gang at Donytji. A day’s hard work – punctuated by “chiacking” – concluded with mutual solicitations, as the men reminded one another to take the medications required to keep <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-shell-shock-to-ptsd-proof-of-wars-traumatic-history-37858">post-traumatic stress disorder</a> (PTSD) at bay.</p>
<p>Neville White is thus the hinge connecting the two “tribes” (the Yolngu residents and the visiting Vietnam vets) that annually find common purpose at Donydji. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-forgotten-australian-veterans-who-opposed-national-service-and-the-vietnam-war-158958">The forgotten Australian veterans who opposed National Service and the Vietnam War</a>
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</em>
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<h2>At ease with anthropology</h2>
<p>But in 1974, when White began to camp and observe at Donydji, he didn’t set out to connect the two parts of his life – soldier and anthropologist/guest – in this way. His early mode at Donydji was respectfully detached, in the name of science. The data he collected included fingerprints (a measure of genetic distribution). Some now revile anthropology as colonial zoo-keeping. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495262/original/file-20221115-22-vliqyk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495262/original/file-20221115-22-vliqyk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495262/original/file-20221115-22-vliqyk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495262/original/file-20221115-22-vliqyk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495262/original/file-20221115-22-vliqyk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495262/original/file-20221115-22-vliqyk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495262/original/file-20221115-22-vliqyk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495262/original/file-20221115-22-vliqyk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>But Watson is not only at ease with White’s vocation; he admires the ethnographic tradition. His exposition of Yolngu ways draws on White’s predecessors, such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/W-Lloyd-Warner">Lloyd Warner</a> (a US sociologist and anthropologist who visited Arnhem Land in the 1920s) and <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/thomson-donald-finlay-fergusson-11851">Donald Thomson</a> (an anthropologist who worked with the Yolngu as an investigator, advocate and mediator, in the 1930s).</p>
<p>Ethnography thrives on partnerships between researcher and teacher. Tom Gunaminy Bidingal, the senior man at Donydji, agreed to walk the Country with White and to answer questions, while remaining “cagey”. White “had always wondered if Tom was unforthcoming because he didn’t want to divulge secrets, or because he didn’t want to simplify matters that were too complex or too ambiguous to settle on definitively”.</p>
<p>Starting his doctoral research in 1971, White asked how physical environments determined Aboriginal social organisation – for example, “the relationship of the dialects to the drainage basins”. This “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/human-ecology">human ecology</a>” approach to Aboriginal practices of social connection and disconnection emphasises the physical determinants (in geography and in human and non-human biology) of a society’s strategy of survival. </p>
<p>Within anthropology, the human ecology approach peaked by the 1980s. It has been displaced by accounts of Aboriginal civilisation that dwell on human agencies (both poetic and political), and that are not limited to reconstructive modelling. </p>
<p>While observing the practices and knowledge that enabled the Yolngu’s long-term survival, White found it impossible to ignore the rapid attrition of his Donytji hosts’ health. His scrupulous non-interference finally collapsed – unravelled by compassion – when he gave antibiotics to a man suffering a gum abscess. </p>
<p>Donytji’s suffering thus compelled White to become an agent of the unprecedented “human ecology” of Yolngu sedentarism. That is, White - his equipment, his knowledge and his capacity to advocate - became one of the resources the Donydji mob now had at their disposal, as they adapted their lifestyle. To ameliorate a pathogenic environment, he became:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>project manager, facilitator, money raiser, go-between, advocate, patron. Benefactor, urger – altruist. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>His diary of ensuing interactions with people and organisations beyond Donydji provides Watson with much material. The sentimental affinities of author and subject are evident in these stories, as no “white functionary” is spared mordant report. </p>
<p>From incidents so deftly told, individuals emerge. White functionaries, visiting volunteers and Yolngu are named. White’s academic publication practice has included giving pseudonyms to some Yolngu. </p>
<p>To name is to take an ethical risk – for while the named visiting veterans are likeable, helpful, humorous blokes, some of the Yolngu are problematic people (from any point of view, including Yolngu) and some are people with problems that they cannot easily solve. One of the named Yolngu (known to all as Cowboy) is opaque and menacing, and a man called Ricky and a woman called Joanne are each depicted as unhappily thwarted. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/you-cant-just-show-up-and-start-asking-questions-why-researchers-need-to-understand-the-importance-of-yarning-for-first-nations-187920">'You can't just show up and start asking questions': why researchers need to understand the importance of yarning for First Nations</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Surviving pressure</h2>
<p>Watson’s underlying question is: how do people (men in particular) survive pressure? A reader as analytically inclined as White might discern two models of coping in Watson’s tersely humorous, warmly empathetic book. </p>
<p>White and his veteran mates, damaged by their Vietnam experience, reconnect after many troubled years and form a new “platoon” dedicated to making useful things, in a remote place populated by welcoming people. As a “tribe” (Watson’s word), they have no duty to the future – only to each other. In the course of completing finite tasks with material outcomes, they will have companionship for as long as they continue their annual working bees. </p>
<p>The Yolngu “tribe” at Donydji face the more formidable task of preserving tradition while creating a viable future. As a “homeland”, they make claims on a colonising society that seems undecided about how much to help them, and about what “help” honours self-determination. </p>
<p>Among Yolngu, there are competing ideas about how to modernise. Social reproduction cannot be effected without political succession. Experience has taught White that in continuing community, human contingencies weigh more than social rules. </p>
<p>The composition of the Donydji mob has changed over the period of White’s stays. According to his 2018 paper, there are fewer of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritharrngu">Ritharrngu</a> families, none of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wawalag">Wagilag</a> clans, and more Guyula families (who have successfully asserted their customary right to sit down at Donydji). </p>
<p>“The Guyulas were taking over,” Watson reports, because they produced more children than the founding lineages – and because some traditional owner males married into other communities, or found their aspirations blocked. The tensions of political succession are on loud and violent display at Tom’s funeral, the climax of Watson’s story. </p>
<p>Watson’s closing “Coda” tells us “worn out” White continues to keep in touch with his Donydji friends, sharing their “dogged hope”. What makes hope realistic, Watson says, is “the place itself”. </p>
<p>In Yolngu cosmology, it simply makes no sense for Country to lack people who use it and look after it. The Donydji mob see their future – not just their past – in what they are making there.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191441/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy Michael Rowse does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Anthropologist Neville White has spent two months a year since 1974 in Arnhem Land, as a guest of Yolngu families residing at the Donydji community.
Timothy Michael Rowse, Emeritus Professor, Western Sydney University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/142558
2020-07-14T20:00:45Z
2020-07-14T20:00:45Z
What Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods gets wrong about veterans returning to Vietnam
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347039/original/file-20200713-54-qxg4xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C0%2C4500%2C2984&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Spike Lee’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9777644/">Da 5 Bloods</a>, out now on Netflix, tells the story of five Black US veterans who return to Vietnam to hunt for gold and recover the remains of their lost squad leader. </p>
<p>Beginning with the reunion of five old “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Bloods_an_Oral_History_of_the_Vietnam_Wa.html?id=kwnHMcGmbL8C&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y">Bloods</a>”, and peppered with flashbacks to their combat days, the film quickly turns into an action-packed recovery mission.</p>
<p>Lee touches on important themes from veterans’ return journeys: reuniting with former girlfriends, reliving “Rest & Relaxation” in Vietnamese bars, engaging in NGO work to <a href="http://vvaveteran.org/37-1/37-1_projectrenew.html">atone</a> for the war and the role of war films in reimagining Vietnam as a tourist adventure. </p>
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<p>But Lee depicts the Vietnamese as a hostile monolith, frozen in time with resentment toward American soldiers. In reducing the Vietnamese to angry victims, Lee fails to capture the reality of veterans’ return journeys.</p>
<h2>Open arms</h2>
<p>Since 1981, thousands of US veterans have returned to Vietnam. </p>
<p>In my doctoral research with returning US and Australian veterans, I found from the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/22/world/american-veterans-treated-warmly-in-a-threadbare-hanoi.html">very first return trip</a> these veterans were warmly welcomed back by the Vietnamese.</p>
<p>Over the decades, returnees’ stories of being welcomed back rippled through the US veteran community, inspiring others to embark on their own journeys to “<a href="https://vva.org/books-in-review/meeting-the-enemy-by-suel-d-jones/">meet the enemy</a>”. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-battle-over-long-tans-memory-a-perspective-from-viet-nam-64121">The battle over Long Tan's memory – a perspective from Viet Nam</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>Lee gestures towards this theme of reconciliation with a friendly toast from former enemy veterans in the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/11/30/apocalypse-now-and-then/91656358-e782-46c6-a89f-a6839006bbd6/">nightclub Apocalypse Now</a>. But the moment is overshadowed by the broader theme of Vietnamese retribution, with repeated instances of Vietnamese beggars, vendors and gangsters yelling war-related grievances at the US veteran-tourists.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347040/original/file-20200713-26-5pwb7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347040/original/file-20200713-26-5pwb7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347040/original/file-20200713-26-5pwb7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347040/original/file-20200713-26-5pwb7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347040/original/file-20200713-26-5pwb7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347040/original/file-20200713-26-5pwb7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347040/original/file-20200713-26-5pwb7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">At the nightclub Apocalypse Now, the veterans toast to the Vietnamese.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span>
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<p>While Americans dwell on the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/10/10/why-americans-still-cant-move-past-vietnam/">national trauma</a> of Vietnam, the American War — as it is called in Vietnam — was only one of many fought for Vietnamese independence in the 20th century. And with a <a href="https://www.indexmundi.com/vietnam/demographics_profile.html">median age of 31</a>, most of Vietnam’s population were born well after this war ended. </p>
<p>The Vietnamese tend to view returning veterans as remorseful (and useful) <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/22/world/hanoi-asks-us-veterans-for-talks.html">allies</a>. Many early returning veterans were radical anti-war activists, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-07-05-mn-136-story.html">searching for answers</a> and wanting to <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/reconciliation-at-my-lai">make amends</a>. </p>
<p>The Vietnamese government has consistently emphasised <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1995-04-27/news/9504270100_1_vietnamese-veteran-vietnam-war-family-altar">friendship</a> with returning veterans, American tourists and the United States for <a href="http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,969944,00.html">economic</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/04/world/asia/carl-vinson-vietnam.html">geopolitical</a> reasons. </p>
<p>Veterans told me both official representatives and ordinary Vietnamese welcomed them back, explaining “war is over” and “Vietnam is a country, not a war”.</p>
<h2>Ongoing traumas</h2>
<p>Early anti-war returnees reported experiencing Vietnam at peace was <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/1988/1110/uvet.html">profoundly healing</a>. By the 1990s, veterans were returning on “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/24/us/veterans-returning-to-vietnam-to-end-a-haunting.html?pagewanted=all">healing journeys</a>” aimed at relieving PTSD symptoms through redemption and reconciliation, often with months of therapeutic preparation in advance. </p>
<p>But even the most well-prepared veterans told me their first moments back “in country” were fraught with anxiety. Over time, veterans gradually relaxed as they came to terms with a peaceful Vietnam and realised they were no longer under threat. Yet Lee shows the Bloods immediately at ease in Ho Chi Minh City, with no indications of latent stress. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-shell-shock-to-ptsd-proof-of-wars-traumatic-history-37858">From shell shock to PTSD: proof of war's traumatic history</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Where Lee does address veteran trauma, he makes angry Vietnamese the trigger: a resentful adolescent beggar throws firecrackers at the Bloods and mocks them when they duck for cover; a vendor attempts to force a live chicken on one of the Bloods before screaming “you killed my mother and father”, setting off a panic attack. </p>
<p>In my interviews, veterans described how seemingly minor experiences could spark a flashback: a backfiring truck, a glimpse of familiar landscape, the monsoon rains, the humid air as they left the aeroplane. Lee could have instead shown children playing with firecrackers or a vendor offering war-memorabilia to passersby — each utterly unaware of their effect on visiting veteran-tourists.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347041/original/file-20200713-34-19s5fee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347041/original/file-20200713-34-19s5fee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347041/original/file-20200713-34-19s5fee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347041/original/file-20200713-34-19s5fee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347041/original/file-20200713-34-19s5fee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347041/original/file-20200713-34-19s5fee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347041/original/file-20200713-34-19s5fee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The return to Vietnam is often anxious and fraught.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lee’s reductive treatment of the Vietnamese limits his portrayal of war legacies.</p>
<p>The Bloods’ two-day mission to recover their missing leader is remarkably short, considering <a href="http://www.salon.com/2000/04/26/mccain_111/">the decades-long struggle</a> to recover bodies of former soldiers on all sides. </p>
<p>The film also makes no mention of the more than 300,000 revolutionary Vietnamese soldiers <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/opinion/vietnam-war-missing.html">still missing</a>, let alone the unknown thousands of missing South Vietnamese, who the Vietnamese government <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/24/world/a-war-story-s-missing-pages-vietnam-forgets-those-who-lost.html">do not count</a> among their dead. </p>
<p>Da 5 Bloods never acknowledges the sheer magnitude of Vietnamese loss and grief.</p>
<h2>Black resistance</h2>
<p>The movie is at its best in its exploration of anti-Black racism and Black resistance in American war and society. </p>
<p>Through the Bloods’ debate on <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">reparations</a>, Lee draws together <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/beyond-vietnam">civil rights activism</a> of the Vietnam-era with today’s <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/">#BlackLivesMatter</a> movement. </p>
<p>But by positioning Black veterans and Vietnamese in opposition, Lee overlooks <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/movies/da-5-bloods-vietnam.html">the potential for solidarity</a> between the two.</p>
<p>One Black US veteran I interviewed reflected on the shared experience of being oppressed by, and fighting against, American white supremacy. </p>
<p>Upon return to Vietnam, he met with former enemy veterans in Hanoi: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I told them that when I went home and I talked to my father I said ‘Daddy, if I was a Vietnamese, I’d be a VC [<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/opinion/the-30-years-war-in-vietnam.html">Viet Cong</a>]’. When I said that, the VC, they got the biggest smiles on their faces. … It’s a blessing. All these years I’ve been wanting to get back, and I’ve come back, and look at this. Look at the way they’re treating me.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142558/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mia Martin Hobbs received funding for this research from the Alma Hansen and Norman Macgeorge bequests and Gilbert Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Melbourne, and the Australian Historical Association-Copyright Agency's Early Career Researcher scheme. </span></em></p>
Since 1981, thousands of US veterans on “healing journeys” have been warmly welcomed by the Vietnamese.
Mia Martin Hobbs, Researcher, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/137675
2020-05-15T12:09:07Z
2020-05-15T12:09:07Z
Death by numbers: How Vietnam War and coronavirus changed the way we mourn
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334346/original/file-20200512-175268-68ifhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C5419%2C3621&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A lone visitor reads names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall during the coronavirus outbreak</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/woman-visits-an-empty-vietnam-veterans-memorial-on-april-14-news-photo/1209895341?adppopup=true">Drew Angerer/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At some point in late April 2020, COVID-19 claimed the life of its 58,221st victim in the United States. We do not know the victim’s name or the exact time of death, but the death was significant: It meant that the coronavirus had claimed more American lives than the entire Vietnam War. </p>
<p>That conflict, which lasted from 1955 to 1975, <a href="https://dcas.dmdc.osd.mil/dcas/pages/report_vietnam_sum.xhtml">resulted in the deaths of 58,220</a> Americans. COVID-19 surpassed that number in less than four months.</p>
<p>Much like the <a href="https://www.starnewsonline.com/opinion/20171112/back-then-vietnam-casualty-counts-reported-daily-in-1967">nightly death counts</a> that took place during the Vietnam era, the grim figures of the current crisis can obscure the fact that those who have perished were human beings, mourned by those they leave behind.</p>
<p>As a veteran and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aPnNyh4AAAAJ&hl=en">historian</a> whose research examines burial rituals, I know that the way Americans memorialize the dead is steeped in traditions that are both social and cultural. COVID-19 is complicating these longstanding traditions. </p>
<p>The virus is also making many people <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/opinion/covid-end-of-life.html">think about their own mortality</a> in ways they have never done before. As Princeton scholar Eddie S. Glaude Jr. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/06/pandemic-will-pass-our-grief-will-endure/?arc404=true">recently wrote in the Washington Post</a>, with COVID-19 Americans can no longer “banish death to the far reaches of our communities.” Instead, “Death is at our doorstep.”</p>
<h2>A ledger for lives</h2>
<p>In the war of attrition in Vietnam, the U.S. servicemen and women who lost their lives often became enumerated alongside their peers – relegated to a single numerical point of reference among the tens of thousands who died. </p>
<p>Then as now, newspapers and <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1967/05/27/televisions-war">televised coverage</a> included daily casualty reports as the government released the official numbers from Vietnam. These reports became a standard part of newscasts and developed into the central focus of efforts to combat the war.</p>
<p>The daily summaries helped normalize Vietnam deaths in the minds of Americans. The names of the American war dead were listed in numerical order by the date and time of death. Victory was assessed by the number of casualties inflicted upon the enemy. The daily ledger of all combatants who died on both sides of the conflict was used to suggest that America was winning the war.</p>
<p>As a consequence, quantitative data replaced the faces and names of the lost, dehumanized the war dead and influenced an obsession with raw data over traditional means of assessing progress, such as gaining or losing territory.</p>
<p>And much like today, the numbers became politicized as Americans’ <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/opinion/sunday/vietnam-the-war-that-killed-trust.html">trust for their leaders began to wane</a>. Many, both then and now, <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html">sought alternative measures</a> to account for the dead.</p>
<p>Media portrayals of the Vietnam conflict furthered this dehumanization by depicting the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/gallery/2013/oct/02/vietnam-war-ap-photographs">motionless bodies of American dead</a>. Rarely were <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-vietnam-dramatically-changed-our-views-on-honor-and-war-83021">the names of the those killed in action</a> included alongside these images. </p>
<p>Such media accounts helped to guide how the public processed death during Vietnam. </p>
<h2>Death during crisis</h2>
<p>The war against COVID-19 has continued these practices, immersing Americans in <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/coronavirus-deaths-united-states-each-day-2020-n1177936">daily death totals</a> against an enemy not fully understood. Daily counts of the dead, tests conducted and their results, compiled against the backdrop of overall percentages, is seen to determine success against the coronavirus. </p>
<p>Then as now, images of <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/03/30/disturbing-footage-shows-dead-bodies-loaded-onto-truck-outside-brooklyn-hospital/">lifeless bodies with no names attached</a> are shown – only now they’re being carted into refrigerated trucks. </p>
<p>In addition to the parallels in the way the dead are converted into quantitative data, Vietnam and the pandemic also share similarities in how the deceased are being mourned. </p>
<p>Vietnam veteran Bill Hunt wrote in 1990 that “In the end, all wars are about dying. When the dying is about honor, <a href="http://www.warletters.com/warletters.html">it is somehow OK</a>.” But during the Vietnam War, public sensitivity to the number of dead and apathy toward the conflict actually decreased support for what the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/174515?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=%22War%2C+Casualties%2C+and+Public+Opinion%2C%22&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3D%2522War%252C%2BCasualties%252C%2Band%2BPublic%2BOpinion%252C%2522%2B%26amp%3Bacc%3Doff%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff%26amp%3Bgroup%3Dnone&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_SYC-5152%2Ftest&refreqid=search%3Aa30dbdb704a64d0292631968e9a22da9&seq=1">American public viewed as “sunk costs” and the loss of 58,220 lives</a>.</p>
<p>Due in large part to this lack of understanding among Americans about what their loved ones were dying for, the casualties of the Vietnam War placed emotional strain on those grieving a lost service member. Deaths from the conflict were often <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=u9HVDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT114&lpg=PT114&dq=Memorializing,+Mourning,+and+Reconciling+the+Vietnam+War+Dead&source=bl&ots=mzU4uweC4D&sig=ACfU3U1OziJqFL5HRNgc37ioPHGNaqQPmw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi6mIf5orPpAhXionIEHTtRCqkQ6AEwAnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Memorializing%2C%20Mourning%2C%20and%20Reconciling%20the%20Vietnam%20War%20Dead&f=false">mourned privately and without public celebration</a>.</p>
<p>The same has been true of COVID-19 victims. Due to fear of contagion, families are <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/im-sorry-i-cant-kiss-youcoronavirus-victims-are-dying-alone-11586534526">unable to be present at hospitals</a> during the final days and minutes of their loved one’s lives. An <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/04/05/826972795/funeral-homes-overwhelmed-with-covid-19-cases">overburdened funeral industry</a> and shelter-in-place orders also mean family and friends cannot bury or memorialize their loved ones in traditional ways such as by <a href="https://twitter.com/scottEweinberg/status/1251020660161347585?s=20">holding a wake or funeral</a>.</p>
<p>In both the battle against COVID-19 and the Vietnam War, this isolation makes mourning, burial, memorialization and <a href="https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2020/04/05/woman-tells-story-of-her-sisters-death-from-covid-19-coronavirus-to-quell-doubters/2950950001/">saying goodbye</a> both problematic and private. As a result, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/11/reinventing-grief-in-an-era-of-enforced-isolation">reconciling the loss of their loved one</a> is much more arduous and making it harder for those left behind to find closure and process their deaths. </p>
<h2>Public remembrance</h2>
<p>Eventually, the names of the service members who died in Vietnam adorned the <a href="https://theconversation.com/american-women-died-in-vietnam-too-84405">Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.</a>, acknowledging publicly for the first time the sacrifices of those who died. Having a permanent place of remembrance <a href="https://www.bu.edu/writingprogram/journal/past-issues/issue-4/corbin/">helped to ease the pain</a> of those untimely deaths.</p>
<p>We do not know if those who perish during the current pandemic will be memorialized in a similar fashion. And sadly, not everyone will receive an obituary in which details of their lives can be read.</p>
<p>It may be that we have to find new ways to reconcile the deaths of those who lost their lives in the fight against COVID-19.</p>
<p>But to move on, we must acknowledge the men and women who are dying, give them names and faces and publicly honor them – not only for the dead but for the living who continue to mourn. </p>
<p>[<em>Get facts about coronavirus and the latest research.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-facts">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.</a>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137675/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shad Thielman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Unlike those who died during the Vietnam War, those who perish during the current pandemic are unlikely to receive a national memorial. Perhaps they should.
Shad Thielman, Lecturer in History, California State University San Marcos
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/122273
2019-08-27T01:52:42Z
2019-08-27T01:52:42Z
What Tim Fischer’s cancer tells us about the impact of Agent Orange on other Vietnam veterans
<p><a href="https://pressfrom.info/au/news/australia/-142267-former-deputy-prime-minister-tim-fischer-73-is-gravely-ill-in-hospital-with-acute-leukaemia-just-months-after-saying-he-was-almost-in-remission.html">Much loved</a> former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer, who died last week from leukaemia, has talked about the possible link between his exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam and his various cancers. </p>
<p>Mr Fischer had <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/former-deputy-prime-minister-tim-fischer-73-is-gravely-ill-in-hospital-with-acute-leukaemia-just-months-after-saying-he-was-almost-in-remission/ar-AAG24NI">reportedly</a> been dealing with cancer for the past ten years, starting with bladder cancer, then prostate cancer, two melanomas, and finally, a blood cancer called <a href="https://www.cancercouncil.com.au/acute-myeloid-leukaemia/">acute myeloid leukaemia</a>.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tim-fischer-a-man-of-courage-and-loyalty-dies-from-cancer-122188">Tim Fischer – a man of courage and loyalty – dies from cancer</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>While his is a classic instance of the challenge in definitively linking a specific exposure to a specific cancer, Mr Fischer <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-12/former-deputy-pm-tim-fischer-proud-of-autistic-son-harrison/10312854">told the ABC TV’s Australian Story last year</a>, “at least one specialist has suggested my immunity broke down a lot more quickly as a direct consequence” of exposure to Agent Orange. </p>
<p>Fischer’s death is a timely reminder of the long-term implications of Agent Orange to our Vietnam veterans and the many other hazards to which defence force personnel, and other Australian workers, are exposed.</p>
<h2>What is Agent Orange and how does it affect your health?</h2>
<p><a href="https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/history/conflicts/australia-and-vietnam-war/events/aftermath/agent-orange">Agent Orange</a> was a mixture of two herbicides, 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, and kerosene or diesel fuel. Each herbicide contained small amounts of dioxin, a highly toxic and carcinogenic compound. </p>
<p>US aerial spraying of jungle aimed to expose Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops who sheltered under the jungle’s thick canopy. It also sought to destroy “the enemy’s” food crops.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289346/original/file-20190826-170910-d7sc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289346/original/file-20190826-170910-d7sc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289346/original/file-20190826-170910-d7sc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289346/original/file-20190826-170910-d7sc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289346/original/file-20190826-170910-d7sc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289346/original/file-20190826-170910-d7sc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289346/original/file-20190826-170910-d7sc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289346/original/file-20190826-170910-d7sc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">US Army spraying Agent Orange in Vietnam.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Agent_Orange#/media/File:US-Army-APC-spraying-Agent-Orange-in-Vietnam.jpg">Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr. Collection: Agent Orange Subject Files, The Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some 60,000 Australians served in <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/event/vietnam">Vietnam</a> between 1962 and 1975. There were 521 Australian deaths and 3,000 wounded in the conflict. But the damage did not stop there. </p>
<p>Concerns about the effect of Agent Orange on Vietnam veterans emerged in the 1970s. A 1985 <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/from-the-archives-royal-commission-findings-clear-agent-orange-20190805-p52e0d.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed">Australian Royal Commission</a> recognised Agent Orange’s adverse health effects but could not find a definitive link to cancer in the veterans. It did, however, leave the door open to further investigation.</p>
<p>In 1991, the United States congress passed the <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/agent-orange-act-was-supposed-to-help-vietnam-veterans-but-many-still-dont-">Agent Orange Act</a>, which required a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, updated every two years, of Agent Orange’s health effects. </p>
<p>The most recent <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25137/veterans-and-agent-orange-update-11-2018">report</a> from 2018, the 11th in the series, lists diseases that are clearly associated with exposure to this herbicidal chemical cocktail. This <a href="https://www.nap.edu/resource/25137/111318_VAO_summary_table.pdf">includes cancers</a> such as soft tissue sarcoma, Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, as well as hypertension (high blood pressure). </p>
<p>Another 12 conditions including prostate and bladder cancer have “limited or suggestive evidence of association” with Agent Orange.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-can-go-wrong-in-the-blood-a-brief-overview-of-bleeding-clotting-and-cancer-76400">What can go wrong in the blood? A brief overview of bleeding, clotting and cancer</a>
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<p>The US Department of Veterans Affairs also <a href="https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/agentorange/birth-defects/children-women-vietnam-vets.asp">recognises</a> more than 18 birth defects among the children of mothers who served in the military in Vietnam. These conditions have been linked to the birth mother’s service in Vietnam and not specifically to exposure to Agent Orange or a specific component of it.</p>
<h2>Exposure to cancer-causing agents at work</h2>
<p>Too many Australians are exposed to to cancer- and other disease-causing agents at work. </p>
<p>But the longer the time between exposure and the occurrence of a related health problem, the harder it is to establish any causation link, and then to respond constructively. </p>
<p>When it comes to occupational cancers more broadly, we have taken action on asbestos, but <a href="http://www.phrp.com.au/issues/april-2016-volume-26-issue-2/asbestos-related-mesothelioma-in-australia-cresting-the-third-wave/">more cases of cancer and lung disease</a> are likely to emerge in future. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-health-threat-from-asbestos-is-not-a-thing-of-the-past-52060">Why the health threat from asbestos is not a thing of the past</a>
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<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289348/original/file-20190826-170922-jukr6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289348/original/file-20190826-170922-jukr6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289348/original/file-20190826-170922-jukr6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289348/original/file-20190826-170922-jukr6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289348/original/file-20190826-170922-jukr6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289348/original/file-20190826-170922-jukr6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289348/original/file-20190826-170922-jukr6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289348/original/file-20190826-170922-jukr6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">James Hardie and Wunderlich float ready for the Victory Day procession in Brisbane, 1946. The float is advertising asbestos cement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=james+hardie+asbestos&title=Special%3ASearch&go=Go&ns0=1&ns6=1&ns12=1&ns14=1&ns100=1&ns106=1#/media/File:StateLibQld_2_152895_James_Hardie_and_Wunderlich_float_ready_for_the_Victory_Day_procession_in_Brisbane,_1946.jpg">John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is much more work to be done on other occupational health issues such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-silicosis-and-why-is-this-old-lung-disease-making-a-comeback-80465">silica dust</a> which can enter the lungs of joiners making kitchen benchtops from stone, causing silicosis, a type of lung disease. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-silicosis-and-why-is-this-old-lung-disease-making-a-comeback-80465">Explainer: what is silicosis and why is this old lung disease making a comeback?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Specific hazards for defence personnel</h2>
<p>Defence force personnel are exposed to many more hazards in the course of their employment. </p>
<p>Death in battle, or in the course of <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/australian-soldier-dies-during-routine-training-drill-at-army-base-in-victoria-s-north-20190116-p50rlt.html">training</a>, are stark realities. </p>
<p>Exposure to physical, chemical and biological hazards is also greater than it is, on average, in civilian life.</p>
<p>Returned service personnel must also face the prospect of long-term health problems from exposures in their distant past, such as from nuclear radiation during <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10953817">nuclear weapons testing</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289350/original/file-20190826-170941-1ucn2hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289350/original/file-20190826-170941-1ucn2hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289350/original/file-20190826-170941-1ucn2hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289350/original/file-20190826-170941-1ucn2hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289350/original/file-20190826-170941-1ucn2hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289350/original/file-20190826-170941-1ucn2hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289350/original/file-20190826-170941-1ucn2hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289350/original/file-20190826-170941-1ucn2hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Defence force personnel were exposed to cancer-causing radiation in the 50s and early 60s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Operation_Crossroads_Baker_Edit.jpg">United States Department of Defense</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nuclear radiation is known to cause cancer; Australian defence force and related staff were <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10953817">measurably exposed</a> during the conduct of these tests from <a href="https://www.dva.gov.au/factsheet-dp83-british-nuclear-test-participants-and-members-british-commonwealth-occupation-force">1952 to 1965</a>. </p>
<p>Tim Fischer’s commitment to help those who have, or may have, suffered long-term health consequences of their defence force experience should drive our efforts to openly, systematically and fairly address these issues.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122273/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Terry Slevin is Chief Executive Office of the Public Health Association of Australia, which receives funding from the Commonwealth Department of Health. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Armstrong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
More than 500 Australians died in the Vietnam war and 3,000 were wounded, but the damage from Agent Orange was much more far-reaching, as Tim Fischer’s death last week reminded us.
Terry Slevin, Adjunct Professor, School of Psychology, Curtin University and College of Health and Medicine, Australian National University
Bruce Armstrong, Professor of Public Health, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/121487
2019-08-14T19:56:54Z
2019-08-14T19:56:54Z
Danger close? The battle over the meaning of Long Tan
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287816/original/file-20190813-9394-1iqlknj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Travis Fimmel and Jay Kiriona in Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan (2019).
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jasin Boland - © Danger Close Production</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Danger Close is a <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0441881/">new Australian film</a> depicting one of the most significant battles of the Vietnam war: <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/wartime/55/long-tan">The Battle of Long Tan</a>. “Danger Close” is a military phrase used in battle when forward and directing fire onto an enemy.</p>
<p>Danger Close might also be an apt way to describe what is one of the most controversial Australian military battles of the 20th century, but also the perils of producing films about events that are still in living memory.</p>
<p>On August 18, 1966, an isolated infantry group of 108 men from the D Company, 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment and three New Zealanders from an artillery forward observation party, plus RAAF helicopters and a relief force of armoured personnel carriers, fought a battle opposing a vastly superior force, in abysmal weather conditions, for an entire afternoon. </p>
<p>Seventeen Australians were killed in the battle in a rubber plantation at Long Tan, in southern Vietnam. A further 25 were wounded, one of whom later died. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AyUqZLwOo2Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Danger Close official teaser trailer.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Long Tan deservedly has a place in the pantheon of Anzac history. It is a tale of extraordinary bravery, fortitude and coolness under pressure and a phalanx of strong personalities. It also featured a live concert with performers such as Little Pattie and Col Joye, which happened at the First Australian Taskforce Base of Nui Dat and could heard in Long Tan before the battle began. </p>
<p>Vietnam veterans have long been caught in a struggle between a nation divided over an unpopular conflict, and the reluctance of our official culture to recognise their professionalism and bravery. Indeed the Commander of D Company, Major Harry Smith, and Platoon Sergeant Bob Buick <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-18/retired-colonel-harry-smith-pens-book-battle-of-long-tan/6701876">have fought for 50 years</a> to have the Australian government officially recognise the bravery of those in the battle.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287814/original/file-20190813-9415-1kliau4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287814/original/file-20190813-9415-1kliau4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287814/original/file-20190813-9415-1kliau4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287814/original/file-20190813-9415-1kliau4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287814/original/file-20190813-9415-1kliau4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287814/original/file-20190813-9415-1kliau4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287814/original/file-20190813-9415-1kliau4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287814/original/file-20190813-9415-1kliau4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Emmy Dougall as Little Pattie in Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Deeper Water, Hoosegow Productions, Ingenious Media</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Though Australian popular music has recognised the collective pain of Vietnam (think of Cold Chisel’s Khe Sanh), no major Australian film has tackled Vietnam since <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079652/">The Odd Angry Shot</a> (1979).</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EobaEWlYebo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Odd Angry Shot (1979) - NFSA Restored trailer.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Danger Close, producer, and former reservist <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1814822/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cr25">Martin Walsh</a>, Hollywood blockbuster writer <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0064181/?ref_=tt_ov_wr">Stuart Beattie</a> and auteur of precise and visceral emotion <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0826541/?ref_=ttfc_fc_dr1">Kriv Stenders</a> (Boxing Day, Red Dog) have created a film that combines attention to military detail and emotional intensity with a conventional cinematic narrative arc and characterisation. </p>
<p>Vietnam movies as a cinematic genre have evolved over decades in the United States. Danger Close is most closely associated with the memorialising genre of films like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091763/">Platoon</a> (1986). In such films, the battleground is imbued with religiosity - this helps reconcile the act of private remembering with more public notions of commemoration and sacrifice, in a healing way. </p>
<p>When I saw Danger Close in Canberra, the audience reaction reflected the kind of public ritualism most often seen on Anzac Day. There was a mood of profound, reverential, collective silence broken only by applause as the credits rolled.</p>
<h2>The battle from both sides</h2>
<p>No one doubts the bravery of the men who fought at Long Tan, and the respect they are due. But the film repeats some statistics that are the subject of considerable debate. The failure to acknowledge this debate obscures the complexity of the battle, and the military skill on both sides. </p>
<p>The official Australian War Memorial history <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/LIB28685">To Long Tan</a> estimates 2500 enemy troops were involved in the battle. Danger Close repeats this figure on screen. However To Long Tan states that only 1000 members of this Viet Cong force had direct contact with soldiers from D Company. It reports that “the confirmed result of the battle of Long Tan was 245 enemy left dead on the battlefield and three enemy captured”.</p>
<p>Ernie Chamberlain, a former intelligence officer and veteran of the Vietnam conflict, has produced a detailed monograph on <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/LIB100046138">Viet Cong D445 Battalion</a>, the opposing force against Australians and at Long Tan. </p>
<p>Combining Australian research with multiple Vietnamese sources, Chamberlain has <a href="https://vietnam.unsw.adfa.edu.au/the-battle-of-long-tan-viet-cong-numbers-and-275-regiment-s-qm-notebook/">questioned the figures in the film Danger Close</a>. He suggests the final figures are that 1,750 Viet Cong/NVA were in the region of the Battle, with 210 killed in action.</p>
<p>Indeed in May, a post appeared on the “History of the Anti-American Resistance War” section of a website possibly connected to the People’s Army of Vietnam.</p>
<p>This post, in response to its writer seeing the teaser trailer to Danger Close, pointed out that though “we beat them comprehensively” the film underplayed the technical skill of the Viet Cong Commanders - and inflated the figures of the Viet Cong casualties.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287467/original/file-20190809-144847-1pra75e.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287467/original/file-20190809-144847-1pra75e.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287467/original/file-20190809-144847-1pra75e.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=82&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287467/original/file-20190809-144847-1pra75e.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=82&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287467/original/file-20190809-144847-1pra75e.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=82&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287467/original/file-20190809-144847-1pra75e.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=103&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287467/original/file-20190809-144847-1pra75e.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=103&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287467/original/file-20190809-144847-1pra75e.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=103&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Blog Post, May 2019, ‘Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan - Official Teaser Trailer’, from the Discussions on the History of the Anti-American Resistance War Page, (post screenshot July, 2019).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Tactical confrontations</h2>
<p>There has also been a running debate in the veteran community about whether D Company wandered into an ambush. Chamberlain’s examinations of intelligence and a complex variety of Vietnamese sources suggest that the battle was a result of a Viet Cong (VC) tactic to “lure the tiger from the mountain” to fight the force of a new Australian base where it suited them. </p>
<p>The film depicts wave on wave of Viet Cong running at the Australians, seemingly with abandon. But closing on the enemy fast was a tactical technique used by the Viet Cong to get as close as they could to the Australian troops, to compromise artillery support - to literally bring the “danger close”. These kinds of depictions are in danger of depersonalising and othering the Vietnamese.</p>
<h2>Expanding the myth</h2>
<p>Commemorative storytelling in Australia tends to valorise tactical confrontations - individuals and small units engaging in direct hostilities to defeat enemies and hold terrain. Danger Close is emblematic of this type of narrative. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287819/original/file-20190813-9404-dw7lth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287819/original/file-20190813-9404-dw7lth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287819/original/file-20190813-9404-dw7lth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287819/original/file-20190813-9404-dw7lth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287819/original/file-20190813-9404-dw7lth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287819/original/file-20190813-9404-dw7lth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287819/original/file-20190813-9404-dw7lth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287819/original/file-20190813-9404-dw7lth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sean Lynch, Sam Parsonson, and Ethan Robinson in Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan (2019)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">idmb</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But this attachment to decontextualised small unit actions might not always be the best way forward for understanding conflict on a personal or political level.</p>
<p>Other veterans of Vietnam have teamed up with those from the Afghanistan conflict to use <a href="https://vietnam.unsw.adfa.edu.au/battlemap/?basemap=mapbox-terrain&layers=contact-individual&timeline=1965-04-30,1971-11-01&at=10.08286283967989,107.30977179961917,9">geospatial data visualisations</a> of every “contact” to tell a different, non-narrative version of <a href="https://vietnam.unsw.adfa.edu.au/">Australia’s Vietnam War</a>. Such approaches have led to genuine collaborative efforts, <a href="https://www.unsw.adfa.edu.au/moving-forward-operation-wandering-souls">sharing data</a> and helping a contemporary Vietnam find its own “<a href="https://vietnam.unsw.adfa.edu.au/the-operation-wandering-souls-project/">Wandering Souls</a>” Missing In Action. This kind of work acknowledges a new sense of military common purpose in Asia, which will only grow in the future.</p>
<p>We are headed towards an era of <a href="https://www.army.gov.au/accelerated-warfare-presentation">Accelerated Warfare</a> likely to occur in complex mega-cities and the cyber domain, and a new environment of <a href="https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/adf-chief-west-faces-a-new-threat-from-political-warfare/">political warfare</a>. The Australians who participate in these new kinds of wars deserve to see the Anzac myth expand to meet their experiences and new kinds of service.</p>
<p>In this urgent context, arguably Danger Close has missed a great opportunity. The film repeats disputed facts and interpretations, while the emotional force of its compelling story risks cementing in Australian culture this version as the only view of Long Tan.</p>
<p>It’s easy to say it’s a fictionalised movie, not a documentary, and cut Danger Close some slack. But how do we want to frame the stories we tell ourselves as we face a complex, uncertain future in our region?</p>
<p>Putting Australia’s Vietnam War on screen is way overdue. Commemorative storytelling is essential to heal wounds of the past. But Australian culture must begin to frame war stories with an eye to the present and future too.</p>
<p>There are other versions of “Anzac courage” that might be set in Timor-Leste, Rwanda, Iraq or Afghanistan, and new narratives that might accurately reflect the complexities within every conflict.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121487/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Sear does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A new Australian film tells the story of one of the most iconic battles of the Vietnam war - but the film repeats disputed facts and interpretations.
Tom Sear, Industry Fellow, UNSW Canberra Cyber, Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/102238
2018-08-28T10:38:58Z
2018-08-28T10:38:58Z
Why McCain and all POWs deserve our profound respect and gratitude
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233701/original/file-20180827-75984-1ny0f1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sen. John McCain pictured at a rally Oct. 15, 2014 in Marietta, Georgia to support Senate candidate David Perdue, who was elected a few weeks later. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Senate-Georgia-McCain/26c8e38de7c64bb5acc593a86037e7dd/5/0">John Amis/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Saturday, John McCain, the U.S. Republican senator from Arizona, a war hero and two-time presidential contender, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/25/obituaries/john-mccain-dead.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage">died</a>. As remembrances of him <a href="http://time.com/5286085/john-mccain-pow-remembrance/?xid=tcoshare">pour</a> out, let us not focus on partisan politics and which political <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/344976-poll-mccain-much-more-popular-with-democrats-than-republicans">party</a> currently favored him more.</p>
<p>As a trauma psychologist who has spent the past 20 years working with combat veterans and former prisoners of war, I implore my fellow Americans to say our goodbyes to this American hero in a very different way. As Senator McCain, a man who was held prisoner of war for five-and-a-half years in Vietnam, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/us/politics/john-mccain-arizona.html">lost his battle to brain cancer</a>, let us take this opportunity to open our hearts and minds to the men and women who serve in uniform, particularly the <a href="https://www.benefits.va.gov/benefits/factsheets/serviceconnected/formerpow.pdf">diminishing number</a> of former POWs.</p>
<h2>Horrors we cannot know</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233702/original/file-20180827-76003-9ktind.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233702/original/file-20180827-76003-9ktind.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233702/original/file-20180827-76003-9ktind.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233702/original/file-20180827-76003-9ktind.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233702/original/file-20180827-76003-9ktind.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233702/original/file-20180827-76003-9ktind.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233702/original/file-20180827-76003-9ktind.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">U.S. Army Master Sgt. Finley J. Davis was captured Dec. 1, 1950 in the Korean Conflict. His remains were identified only recently, on Aug. 8, 2017 and were buried in North Charleston, S.C., April 19, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Senate-Georgia-McCain/26c8e38de7c64bb5acc593a86037e7dd/5/0">U.S. Department of Defense, via AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I have had the <a href="http://www.apa.org/monitor/sep04/never.aspx">privilege</a> of clinically working with dozens of <a href="https://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/no-end-to-trauma-for-some-older-veterans/">former POWs</a>, typically combatants who were taken hostage and held by an enemy power during World War II, the Korean Conflict or the Vietnam War. What many Americans may not know or remember is that fewer combatants are taken hostage nowadays. The <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/05/why-there-are-so-few-pows-from-todays-wars/371951/">reasons</a> for this are many, including the changing nature of combat, such as the lower ability on our enemies’ part to use large amounts of mortar, artillery fire and airstrikes. Compared to World War II, where the number of POWs was over <a href="https://www.nps.gov/ande/learn/historyculture/pow_synopsis.htm">100,000</a>, the Vietnam War had relatively few, with fewer than <a href="https://dpaa.secure.force.com/dpaaOurMissing">800 Americans</a> known to have been held captive. But when you work with a POW and hear what he went through while in captivity, and the long-standing effects post-captivity, you realize that one is too many.</p>
<p>These men were cut off from the life they used to know, the comforts of home and the arms of their loved ones. They also suffered severe and extended exposure to captivity trauma. The <a href="https://www.healio.com/psychiatry/journals/psycann/1986-11-16-11/%7B4f04e608-34fb-4e14-a362-0321bf6dbb88%7D/the-power-relationship-between-captor-and-captive">tactics</a> commonly used by captors are isolation, deprivation, abuse and interrogation. Most U.S. POWs were treated very harshly, but imperial Japan, the North Koreans, Chinese and the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were particularly brutal. Our men, and sometimes <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-05953-001">women</a>, were actively beaten and tortured. They were forced to stand or kneel for hours and sometimes days on end. They were denied and deprived of food, water and medical care. They were threatened with death and had to see and hear their fellow soldiers being tortured. These men had their arms and leg bound by ropes, ratchet handcuffs, leg irons or stocks, and <a href="https://www.healio.com/psychiatry/journals/psycann/1987-8-17-8/%7B808ff57e-4efd-4c0e-abfd-edb39fc0bbfc%7D/the-prisoner-of-war-stress-illness-and-resiliency">were stretched</a> for long periods of time. Can you imagine the physical pain and the emotional terror?</p>
<p>And, on top of that, they felt profound loneliness and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/milmed/article/172/suppl_2/29/4578191">humiliation.</a></p>
<p>Understandably, these men were in a hurry to return home. Hardly any received reintegration or rehabilitation upon release. And, the results of their captivity trauma followed them. The lifelong effects of captivity cannot be overstated. The <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F1040-3590.8.1.18">consequences</a> of being a former POW are extensive and well-documented. </p>
<p>These men often have <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/088761779290156H">neuropsychological</a>, psychiatric, medical and social difficulties. Their <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/1981-12974-001">problems</a> include memory deficits, decreased ability to concentrate, gruesome <a href="https://www.jpsychores.com/article/0022-3999(94)90144-9/abstract">nightmares</a>, interrupted sleep cycles and an exaggerated startle response. Not surprisingly, they have much <a href="https://experts.umn.edu/en/publications/prevalence-of-somatic-and-psychiatric-disorder-among-former-priso">higher rates</a> of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder than the general population. </p>
<p>They also have higher rates of <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/406027?redirect=true">chronic physical health disorders</a>, particularly those of the peripheral nervous system, joints and back, and an increased rate of peptic ulcers. Because of the physical punishment or treatment with torture devices or procedures, they can also have long-lasting <a href="https://academic.oup.com/milmed/article/167/9/736/4819927">moderate to severe pain</a>. How they live with these long-lasting effects is nothing short of remarkable.</p>
<h2>Ongoing effects</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233703/original/file-20180827-75978-7byoo7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233703/original/file-20180827-75978-7byoo7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233703/original/file-20180827-75978-7byoo7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233703/original/file-20180827-75978-7byoo7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233703/original/file-20180827-75978-7byoo7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=628&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233703/original/file-20180827-75978-7byoo7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=628&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233703/original/file-20180827-75978-7byoo7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=628&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A veteran marches in a United War Veterans Council parade on Veterans Day, 2016, in New York City.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/new-york-11-nov-2016-vet-587522858?src=neLH86By6pH5uQ3yLeI-sQ-1-10">Glynnis Jones/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The enduring and painful psychological toll can also have an impact on their interpersonal relations and the lives of their spouses and children. <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0265407505058680">Former Vietnam War POWs</a> are more likely to divorce, have shorter marriages and have wives with lower marital satisfaction than Vietnam-era service members who did not experience captivity. It makes sense that POWs have greater impairments in connecting with others and a harder time with emotional and sexual <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2004-11293-004">intimacy</a>. </p>
<p>Former POWs also have higher rates of verbal and physical <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jts.20157">aggression</a> toward their partners. Many men I have treated over the years have talked about walking point around the perimeter of their homes because of concern that they or their loved ones might be attacked. Some go so far as to sleep with weapons under their pillows. Imagine having a partner with such afflictions.</p>
<p>Now it’s true that some of these men did not experience resulting emotional distress. Most did, however: some with continuous troubles and others with a <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/1097-4679%28198901%2945%3A1%3C80%3A%3AAID-JCLP2270450112%3E3.0.CO%3B2-V">waxing</a> and waning of difficulties over their lifespan.</p>
<p>I’ve never had the fortune to meet John McCain or had an opportunity to directly assess his mental health. But he <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2008/01/28/john-mccain-prisoner-of-war-a-first-person-account">talked about his struggles</a> rather candidly at times. And others have commented that he seemed most engaged when he was <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/john-mccain-%E2%80%98maverick%E2%80%99-of-the-senate-and-former-pow-dies-at-81/ar-BBMqOiT?ocid=spartanntp">outraged</a>, perhaps an effect of his captivity. </p>
<p>It doesn’t take a psychologist to tell you while McCain was incredibly resilient, there was also enormous pain. How can people know this about Senator McCain and our nation’s service members and not feel for them, not put ourselves in their shoes for just a second, imagine their agony, show them the respect they deserve and profoundly appreciate their sacrifice? At his passing, I ask other Americans to join me in saying, “Thank you, Senator McCain for serving our country with distinction and honor. America was better for your presence. Rest well, Old Soldier.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102238/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joan Cook received funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.</span></em></p>
Prisoners of war experience trauma, torture, humiliation and profound loneliness. A trauma psychologist explains how the effects can be lasting – and that Americans’ gratitude should also be.
Joan M. Cook, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/101299
2018-08-27T20:40:20Z
2018-08-27T20:40:20Z
Red-state politics in and out of the college classroom
<p>For two decades, I have taught U.S. women’s and gender history at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, a blue town in a blue state, <a href="https://cola.siu.edu/history/faculty-and-staff/faculty/zaretsky.php">marooned in an ocean of red</a>. </p>
<p>Bordered by Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta and the Ozarks, Southern Illinois is surrounded by the country’s poorest rural regions.</p>
<p>Some of my students arrive from white farming communities and are the first in their families to attend college. They grow up on church, military, patriotism and traditional family, and they come from a world different from mine. I grew up in 1970s San Francisco, and my parents were leftists.</p>
<p>As I prepared to teach about abortion and gay rights for the first time in 2003, I approached the classroom with trepidation. I feared that our discussions would mirror the country’s culture wars and lead to tension among students. </p>
<p>One joy of teaching is when students surprise you, and I soon discovered that my fears had been unwarranted. </p>
<h2>Students surprise; teacher learns</h2>
<p>Classroom discussions of “hot button” issues turned out to be not so hot after all. </p>
<p>Sure, a student might declare that marriage should be between a man and a woman, but her declaration had no fight behind it. Most students simply did not get worked up about gay rights. By the early 2000s, almost all of them had a relative who had come out. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233512/original/file-20180824-149475-1hx87os.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, where author Zaretsky teaches.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Southern Illinois University</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Regardless of what they might have been told in church, they asserted, who were they to stand in the way of the happiness of an uncle or a cousin? </p>
<p>Three decades after gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk had urged his brothers and sisters to come out, this tactic had borne fruit everywhere, <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300222616/harvey-milk">including the “heartland”</a> where I teach.</p>
<p>Thus, well before gay marriage became legal, I was telling friends back home that if my students were any indication, the question was not whether, but when.</p>
<p>It turned out that the issue that most angered my students was the Vietnam War. This was odd, I thought at first, because the conflict had ended years before they had been born. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fear-of-a-non-nuclear-family-102245">Fear of a Non-Nuclear Family</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But in one class, an older student who was the daughter of a Vietnam veteran recounted a story that had been passed down in her family since the early 1970s: Upon his return from overseas, her father had been spat on by anti-war activists. </p>
<p>Others chimed in that they had heard similar stories. These stories were mythical, not because such incidents had never occurred, but rather because opponents of the anti-war movement had overstated their frequency and intensity in order to brand wartime opposition as unpatriotic. When I gently suggested this was the case, <a href="https://nyupress.org/books/9780814751473/">as one scholar has argued</a>, my students swung back, insisting that the stories were true.</p>
<p>It quickly became clear to me that these stories felt true to my students because they resonated with their own experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. </p>
<p>Those military interventions were not abstractions to them. Some were veterans themselves, a few suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, virtually all of them knew someone in the service and many came from military families. </p>
<p>The Vietnam stories struck a chord because they presented a portrait that my students found painfully familiar: loyal Americans who had served their country but who felt forgotten by U.S. institutions and the broader political culture.</p>
<h2>Developing a theory</h2>
<p>This classroom episode surprised me, but it shouldn’t have. </p>
<p>My students confirmed what I had discovered through my own research on the <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807857977/no-direction-home/">recent history of conservatism</a>, which revealed a deep sense of betrayal among Americans who had sacrificed their bodies on behalf of the U.S. military and felt that they had received little recognition in return. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233519/original/file-20180824-149475-17h4hqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Prisoner of war Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm is greeted by his family as he returns home from Vietnam in 1973. Zaretsky’s students believed veterans were treated badly by the U.S.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP/Sal Veder</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scholars argue that in the early 1970s the “culture wars” erupted <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo20063403.html">and divided the country</a>. And there is no question that both conservative and liberal actors mobilized around issues like <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2006/05/23/is-there-a-culture-war/">abortion and gay rights</a>.</p>
<p>But my research pointed to something else that fueled the nation’s rightward march: the rise of an aggrieved nationalism rooted in a sense of bodily injury.</p>
<p>I first detected this nationalism when I studied the families of American POWs and MIAs in Southeast Asia, many of whom believed that their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807857977/no-direction-home/">had been left behind twice</a> — first by a U.S. government that had failed to bring them home, and then by a libertine culture that had turned against the war. </p>
<p>These were patriotic families who felt let down by their country.</p>
<p>Years later, I encountered something similar when I researched U.S. veterans who had sustained radiation injuries during their <a href="http://natashazaretskyonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/RadiationSufferingPatrioticBodyPolitics.pdf">World War II-era service</a> and who later became ill with cancer. </p>
<p>By the late 1970s, these “atomic veterans” and their relatives were leveling the same charge. They were forgotten men and women who had served their country, but who had been betrayed by the government, which refused to acknowledge that it had <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/radiation-nation/9780231179812">endangered its citizens</a>.</p>
<p>The 1970s gave rise to the culture wars, no question. But it also gave rise to the accusation that the most loyal Americans had suffered through sickness, injury and premature death, and had been forgotten and let down. </p>
<p>This claim fueled a rising hostility toward big government, which championed liberal reform on behalf of racial and sexual minorities ostensibly at the expense of white, <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780809026746">hard-working, patriotic Americans</a>.</p>
<h2>Empathy in the classroom</h2>
<p>When my students became so angry toward Vietnam era anti-war activists, I was taken aback. I had to go beneath the surface of our debate and ask why this issue had stirred them. </p>
<p>Yes, the debate was about history, and I appealed to historical accuracy in order to challenge their assumptions about the past. That is, after all, my job. </p>
<p>But swimming just beneath the surface were their own experiences as young people who come from economically struggling rural communities whose members shoulder the burdens of U.S. militarism.</p>
<p>Simply telling them that they had gotten the history “wrong” would not have sufficed. </p>
<p>Instead, I had to pair my commitment to historical truth with a no-less-powerful commitment to empathy — an attempt to make sense of their anger historically and hopefully provide them with the tools to do the same.</p>
<p>My friends and relatives back home sometimes thank me for being out here in the heartland, “winning hearts and minds.” </p>
<p>But is that even my role?</p>
<p>Certainly, my students have changed my worldview, but how much have I changed theirs? That question is hard to answer, because my interactions with students are brief. They spend just over 37 hours with me over the course of one semester. That is not a lot of time. </p>
<p>But during those hours, we break away from the gerrymandered world of social media and encounter one another face to face. </p>
<p>Those encounters can be difficult and frustrating. Yet they have also yielded moments when the divisions and suspicions that dominate our political landscape fall away. </p>
<p>I am not here to win the hearts and minds of my students, but I like to imagine that I have opened some of them. What I know for sure is that they have opened mine. </p>
<p><em>Our new podcast “<a href="https://heatandlightpod.com">Heat and Light</a>” features Prof. Zaretsky discussing conservative reaction to the 1960s in depth.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/heat-and-light/id1424521855?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="134" height="34"></a> <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9oZWF0YW5kbGlnaHRwb2QuY29tL2ZlZWQucnNz"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png" alt="" width="134" height="34"></a> <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=221807&refid=stpr"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233716/original/file-20180827-75981-pdp50i.png" alt="Stitcher" width="116" height="34"></a> <a href="https://radiopublic.com/heat-and-light-WYDE55"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="105" height="34"></a> <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/History-Podcasts/Heat-and-Light-p1149068/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="86" height="34"></a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101299/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natasha Zaretsky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A scholar raised by leftist San Francisco parents in the 1970s ends up teaching in the heartland, where her students represent a very different kind of politics. What she learns from them is profound.
Natasha Zaretsky, Associate Professor of History, Southern Illinois University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.