Museum Activity Instructions

1. Museum Activity Instructions Your group is in charge of a museum, and you are planning an exhibit that will help visitors understand the U.S. war in Vietnam. Step 1. Pass around your primary sources and make sure that everyone in your group studies each source. If any images or documents are puzzling, discuss in your group what they might mean. Ask the instructor to answer any lingering questions. Step 2. Think of ways to organize the sources into categories (4 to 5 categories maximum). Imagine that each category represents a room in a museum. Each room should have not just a common topic but also an overall argument. Visitors to your museum should walk away knowing each room’s mainargument or interpretation. Step 3. After sorting your images, write down each room’s argument on an index card (one card per room; 1-2 complete sentences per room ). Remember, do not write merely descriptive sentences. Instead, write sentences that have an argument. If you can’t create an argument for a group of sources, revisit Step 2. Maybe you need to re-arrange some of your sources. Step 4. Assemble your museum on poster board. Tape the sources and argument cards together to create your rooms. If you have extra time, add decorations and extra comments to your exhibit.

2. Source 1: Buddhist protest against Diem Context: In June 1963, Buddhist monk ThichQuangDuc committed self-immolationin Saigon, as part of a larger Buddhist protest against the South Vietnamese government of Ngo DinhDiem. A Catholic, Diem distrusted Buddhist leaders. Source 2: Eisenhower on the Domino Theory Context: President Dwight Eisenhower explaining to the U.S. press what would happen if Vietnam fell to communist rule, 4 August 1953. If Indochina goes, several things happen right away. The Malayan peninsula, the last little bit of the end hanging on down there, would be scarcely defensible--and tin and tungsten that we so greatly value from that area would cease coming…. All India would be outflanked. source: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/ps7.htm Source 3: Strategic hamlets Context: Strategic hamlets were a counter-insurgency tactic used in the early 1960s. To better identify and isolate NLF fighters, U.S. and South Vietnamese soldiers forced peasants in the surrounding area to leave their village homes and to live in guarded compounds. Despite access to U.S. medicine and popular culture, peasants generally disliked living in these fortified enclaves.

3. Source 4: “A Lullaby of the Cannons for the Night” Context: A 1967 song by the Saigon songwriter, Trinh Cong Son. Son’s song was popular in South Vietnam, even though it was banned by the South Vietnamese government until 1968. …Every night cannons resound in the town A street cleaner stops sweeping and listens Every night cannons create a future without life Cannons like a chant without a prayer Children forget to live and anxiously wait. Every night cannons resound in the town A street cleaner stops sweeping and listens Every night cannons sing a lullaby for golden skin The cannons sound like a prelude to a familiar sad song And children are gone before they see their native land. source: Michael H. Hunt, ed., A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 153. Source 5: The Tet Offensive Context: A Communist Party leader in South Vietnam in March 1968offered this account of the “success” of the TetOffensive and its impact on public opinion. These successes have … won the sympathy and support of the socialist countries and the world’s progressive people (including the U.S. progressive people) for our people’s revolutionary cause, seriously isolated the U.S. imperialists and their lackeys, deepened their internal contradictions and thereby weakened the U.S. will of aggression. source: Michael H. Hunt, ed., A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 98-99.

4. Source 6: FDR on Indochina Context: President Franklin Roosevelt speaking with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin at a wartime conference in Tehran, Iran,in November 1943. Stalin supported independence for French Indochina. [Roosevelt] said he was in 100% agreement with Marshal Stalin and remarked that after 100 years of French rule in Indochina, the inhabitants were worse off than they had been before…. He added that he discussed … the possibility of a system of trusteeship for Indochina which would have the task of preparing the people for independence within a definite period of time, perhaps 20 to 30 years. source: Michael H. Hunt, ed., A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 22.  Source 7: A South Vietnamese leader on Americans Context: Nguyen Cao Ky was a key leader and U.S. ally in South Vietnam. He gave this interview in 1977 and lived for a time in Orange County. Most of the time the Americans just smile, and very politely, but the problem is they never listened to me…. When they handed the fighting responsibility to the Vietnamese, they handed [it] to the people they felt most comfortable with. One general officer, Vietnamese, was well known among the Vietnamese as the most corrupted and incapable officer. Every American who came to me said: “Oh, he is a real tiger.” That is the reason why at the end [in 1975]… the whole army … collapsed. source: Michael H. Hunt, ed., A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010),192-94. Source 8: Chicano movement poster Context: Poster from the late 1960s or early 1970s, suggesting that Mexican-Americans and the Vietnamese were engaged in a parallel struggle against colonialism.

5. Source 9: A U.S. soldier describes peasants Context: U.S. Army soldier John Dabonka writing a letter to “Mom and Dad,” 23 December 1966. The people live like pigs. They don’t know how to use soap. When they have to go to the bathroom, they go wherever they’re standing, they don’t care who is looking. Kids not even six run up to you and ask for a cig [cigarette]. The houses they live in are like rundown shacks. You can see everything—they have no doors, curtains. I’m real glad I have what I have…. Right now our big guns are going off and it sounds good knowing it’s yours and they don’t have any. source: Michael H. Hunt, ed., A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 127-28.  Source 10: Wartime mutilations Context: U.S. Army sergeant George R. Bassett writing a letter to “Mom, Dad, and Kids,” 28 March 1966. Charlie [Viet Cong] doesn’t take any prisoners nor do we… Therefore surrender is not even considered in a hopeless situation. He [Charlie] has only got about five men from our brigade. We found two of them that had their privates in their mouth, sewn shut, hanging by their ankles from a tree. That’s when they gave us hatchets and we lifted a couple heads. Also tied bodies on the fenders of 2 1/2 ton trucks and drove through the village as a warning. We haven’t had any mutilations since then that we know about. source: Michael H. Hunt, ed., A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 127. Source 11: Bombing as diplomacy Context: A Philadelphia Inquirer cartoon criticizing the U.S. strategy of bombing North Vietnam as a way to force North Vietnam to compromise more in diplomatic negotiations.

6. Source 12:Ho declares independence Context: Ho Chi Minh’s declaration of Vietnamese independence from France, 2 September 1945, announcing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness… This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776…. Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, the French imperialists… have deprived our people of every democratic liberty. source: Michael H. Hunt, ed., A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 12-13. Source 14: A critique of the Communists Context: Le Van Chan had been a communist leader in the South. After his capture in 1962, he offered this view of their land reform platform. The peasants felt that they had spilled their blood to drive the French from the country, while the landlords sided with the French and fought against the peasants…. The [Communist] Party apparatus took advantage of this situation to propagandize on how bad the government was, how it was the government of the landlords, stealing the land from the peasants. Added to this were the issues of corruption and abuses by officials… After all, the peasants are 90 percent of the population of Vietnam, and land is their lifeblood. If Diem took their land away, how could they be free, no matter how else he helped them?... In this situation, the communists are extremely clever. They never propagandize communism, which teaches that land must be collectivized. If they did, how would the peasantry ever listen to them? source: Michael H. Hunt, ed., A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 41-44. Source 13:Americans view their ally Context: This 1967 cartoon depicts President Lyndon Johnson with South Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Cao Ky (see Source 7)

7. Source 15: An NLF Guerilla Remembers Context: Tran Thi Gung, a young woman from Cu Chi, 25 miles from Saigon in South Vietnam), describes her experience as the only woman in her Viet Cong (NLF) guerilla unit. She joinedt the NLF after South Vietnamese soldiers killed her father and others in her village. I felt very scared and very nervous because I was just a small girl and the Americans were so big…. I killed an American. After he fell, some of his friends came rushing to his aid. They held his body and cried. They cried a lot. This made them sitting ducks. Very easy to shoot. From then on we knew that if we just shot one American soldier others would rush to him and then we could shoot many more…. One time I even captured an American… Before I met a GI in person, I called them all “American errand boys.” But this man was so big and tall I didn’t dare call him that… I hated the enemy but when I captured that American, I felt sorry for him…. But I never felt guilty about the killing I did. It was war…. I think it was justified. But if I went to America and killed people there, I would feel very sorry and guilty. Since the Americans came to my country, I don’t feel guilty. Source: Christian G. Appy, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides (New York: Penguin, 2003), 15-19. Source 16: An American Protestor Context: In November 1965, a Baltimore Quaker named Norman Morrison burned himself to death outside the Pentagon to protest Lyndon Johnson’s recent troop escalation. In this interview, his widow, Anne Morrison Welsh, describes a visit to Vietnam decades later. When we were in Vietnam for those two weeks in 1999 many, many Vietnamese men cried in front of us. And women too, but the men more…. It was amazing how many people remembered Norman. We met a lot of people and they all wanted to tell us where they were when they heard about Norman’s death and how it affected them. I know Norman’s death was used politically by the government in Hanoi…. They … even printed a postage stamp with his picture on it. But the political uses of Norman’s death cannot alone have had the power to move so many people…. It was like an arrow was shot from Norman’s heart... One of them said, “We were such a tiny little country. It was like a gnat fighting an elephant. But someone from that huge country cared enough for us that he gave his life for us.” Source: Christian G. Appy, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides (New York: Penguin, 2003), 150-154.