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New York Times
17-06-2025
- General
- New York Times
Torn Between Artifice and Authenticity
This personal reflection is part of a series called The Big Ideas, in which writers respond to a single question: What is history? You can read more by visiting The Big Ideas series page. I was born in Saigon in 1960, and I experienced the war in Vietnam firsthand. When the war ended and Saigon fell to the Communists in 1975, the U.S. government evacuated me and my family in a C-130 cargo plane. We ended up in California. Now, 50 years later, I work as a landscape photographer, viewing my medium not only as a tool for witnessing past and present conflicts, but also as a space suited for contending with the paradoxes that define history itself. One particularly pivotal experience shaped my approach. It began in 1999, when I contacted a group of war re-enactors based in North Carolina and Virginia. I worked with and photographed them over several summers, and the images eventually became a series titled 'Small Wars.' This small group of young, conservative men was dedicated to recreating key U.S. military operations and battles from the war in Vietnam on one member's 100-acre wooded property. Among them were a product manager at Thomson Financial, a former National Guard driver, a mortician and a carpenter. Too young to have served in the conflict, none of these men had ever experienced real combat. Yet they were obsessively committed to the authenticity of their 'impressions' — meticulous in their attention to equipment, clothing, food and supplies, whether portraying the Vietcong, the North Vietnamese Army or American soldiers. Participation was by invitation only. To engage with multiple perspectives, I alternated between the role of a Vietcong fighter and that of a Kit Carson Scout — an N.V.A. soldier who defected to assist the Americans. Armed with an AK-47 loaded with Hollywood blanks, and clad in either Vietnamese-made black pajamas or an N.V.A. khaki uniform, I walked the trails and immersed myself in the dense bamboo thickets the re-enactors had planted. This vegetation — an obvious signifier for Vietnam and other Asian landscapes — was incongruously situated in an area that once witnessed the U.S. Civil War, on a site densely populated by pines, spruce, horsetails and kudzu. The result was a striking conflation of histories: theirs, shaped by vicarious experiences filtered through news footage, literature and myth; and mine, formed by personal memory, family lore and ambivalent feelings about a devastating war — one perpetrated by a government that ultimately saved my family and me from Communism and granted us a new life. The re-enactors and I spontaneously connected through a shared fluency brought on by the popularization and retelling of the Vietnam War in popular culture. We bantered back and forth, testing one another's knowledge of classic war films, as well as fiction and nonfiction books. One-time participants from other states occasionally joined us, and the organizers would disclose my participation only at the last minute as a 'reveal' for the unsuspecting visitors. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Otago Daily Times
09-06-2025
- Politics
- Otago Daily Times
Few affinities as Donald and I blow out 79 candles each
Tomorrow is my birthday. I'm 79. Friday is Donald Trump's birthday. He is 79. There the similarities end. Trump is tall, rich and a dangerous lunatic. I am short, poor and simply a harmless eccentric. How we mark our birthdays also emphasises our differences. Trump, on the flimsy grounds that his birthday coincides with the founding date 250 years ago of the United States Army, is planning a birthday military parade at which he will take centre stage despite avoiding military service during the Vietnam War. He initially received four deferments as a student and then underwent a medical which disqualified him on the grounds of "having bone spurs in both heels", widely regarded as a trumped-up diagnosis. In fact, Trump wriggled out of war simply because he couldn't face getting a decent haircut. In my own case, at much the same time, I was balloted for National Service and passed the medical easily. My treasured memory is the medical officer's comment, "This man is small but perfectly formed." Obviously, I was not deformed by bone spurs, whatever they are. While Trump was enjoying his student life I was trapped within the military system learning how to salute and use morse code, both of which I was assured would reduce the Vietcong to gibbering surrender. Even now, I can still throw a decent salute. Trump, on the other hand, is incapable of saluting properly but nevertheless, emboldened by his status as Commander in Chief, attempts feeble salutes whenever he sees someone wearing a peaked cap, including airline pilots and railway porters. Our greatest divergence is probably the way we've decided to mark our birthdays. On Friday Trump will make a sloppy salute as 7500 soldiers form a 90-minute parade through Washington. Trump boasts: "We have the greatest missiles in the world. We have the greatest submarines in the world. We have the greatest army tanks in the world. We have the greatest weapons in the world. And we're going to celebrate it." In Patearoa a military parade was planned for tomorrow but Norm, who uses an old Bren gun carrier for feeding out, tells me he can't get the damn thing started. Norm's Bren carrier would have harmed no-one, but Trump's tanks could cause $16 million worth of damage to the streets of Washington. The overall cost of the parade will be about $45m. Trump has asked for at least seven marching bands, parachute jumpers, an evening concert and a fireworks show. I have asked that my birthday be ignored. Mainly for economic reasons, as the American troops are being given three meals and $50 day while taking part. Feeding and paying cash to Norm is just not the way things are done in Patearoa. All Norm requires is a jug of Speight's at the debrief. Some American soldiers will wear uniforms from the War of 1812 and all Norm could offer was his old man's lemon-squeezer from World War 2, which reminded me that Patearoa's contribution to both world wars was substantial, but it's best marked on Anzac Day rather than on my birthday. Trump is reported as saying: "This country has been in some beautiful wars. We even fought ourselves back in the 1860s, so one of us was bound to win. We came off the bench in World War 1 and World War 2 and won them both. There's hardly a country we haven't fought against. Gee, we've even invaded countries just for the hell of it. Watch out, Greenland and Canada, I know where you are." Worrying, eh? That's enough of Trump. In fact, it's far too much of Trump and his birthday. Back in the world of sanity I'll mark my birthday by shouting for the blokes I usually have a drink with. I've been doing that on my birthday for over 20 years now. The only time it didn't quite work out was the year I was up north on my birthday and told the publican to shout the regulars and I'd pay when I got back. There must have been about 200 regulars in that night. These days, as a pensioner, my shouting is rare and rigidly supervised but it's enough to mark what is simply the passing of another year. So, don't worry about not sending a present. That you've read this column is more gratifying than yet another pair of socks. For me, the birthday will be pleasing just because it's happening. After all these years I hope I've learned to keep a reasonably low profile and be not too annoying to too many people. Lessons Donald Trump would do well to learn. — Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.
Boston Globe
26-05-2025
- Sport
- Boston Globe
After 60 years, Lewiston's place in boxing lore will be cast in bronze
At a time when boxing was the sport of kings and championship fights of this caliber were global events, Ali knocked out Liston less than two minutes into what is perhaps the most unusual championship boxing match in history. 'I saw the punch,' Platz said. 'I saw him swing.' Others didn't, and still others wondered if Liston, a heavy favorite, threw the fight, for whatever reason. Advertisement But that was for the pundits to argue over. For Lewiston natives such as Platz and Hewitt, what happened that Tuesday night in May of 1965 was nothing short of a phenomenon, when people all around the world heard of Lewiston for the first time. The nostalgia wrapped in civic pride on the 50th anniversary convinced Platz, an architect and developer, and Hewitt, an artist, and eventually many others, that Lewiston's moment in history needed to be preserved, forever, in bronze. They turned to Zenos Frudakis, the Philadelphia-based sculptor known as the Monument Man, to create Zenos Frudakis stood next to his Muhammad Ali statue in clay. Frudakis Studio, Inc. That effort will culminate on Saturday, May 31, six days after the 60th anniversary of the fight, when the Ali statue is unveiled at the entrance to Bates Mill No. 5. Advertisement The symbolism is rich. It was mills such as No. 5 that put Lewiston on the map more than a century ago, attracting thousands of French Canadians to move south and work in the textile and shoe factories along the Androscoggin River. But those mills started closing in the 1950s, and by the time Muhammad Ali showed up, the decline of the city's industrial base was at full steam. Platz was heavily involved in efforts to redevelop the old factories, such as those in the Bates Mill Complex that house the Baxter brewing company, one of Lewiston's newest, burgeoning businesses. 'This was always a very diverse community, built by immigrants,' Platz said. 'When the factories started closing, Lewiston had to re-invent itself.' The Baxter Brewing Co. building on Thursday, March 6 in Lewiston, Maine. Brett Phelps for The Boston Globe No one represented reinvention more than Ali, the brash fighter from Louisville who shocked mainstream America by converting to Islam and changing his name from Cassius Clay after becoming heavyweight champion in 1964 by defeating Liston in Miami in their first fight. Ali later shocked even more in 1967 by refusing to fight in the Vietnam War, saying, 'I ain't got no quarrel with those Vietcong.' The rematch was supposed to take place in Boston, at Boston Garden. But Massachusetts officials were wary. Just a few months earlier, Malcolm X, the Black nationalist leader, had been assassinated as part of an internecine feud in the Nation of Islam. Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali arrived at his training camp in Chicopee, Mass. to launch final preparations for his May 25 title rematch with Sonny Liston in Boston. The match was moved to Lewiston seven days before the event. AP Ali had broken with Malcolm X prior to the assassination, and Massachusetts law enforcement and boxing officials feared retaliation at a high-profile bout. Racial tension was high in many cities. Advertisement Just 17 days before the scheduled bout, the fight was moved to Lewiston. All over the world, boxing fans asked, 'Where is Lewiston?' But in Lewiston, even as a boy, Platz could sense the energy and optimism the heavyweight title fight brought. 'The excitement was palpable,' he said. Hewitt remembers thinking of Ali and Liston, stars in the ring who were not embraced by most Americans because they were Black, as symbolizing something else in Lewiston's past. Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) whispers an aside to Angelo Dundee, his trainer, during a poolside press conference at his quarter in Lewiston nearby Auburn, Maine on May 24, 1965. Harry Harris/Associated Press 'Ali and Liston, having survived that racial trauma, were a lot closer to the French Canadians, who faced a lot of discrimination when they showed up here in such large numbers,' Hewitt said. 'The KKK was intimidating French Canadians who were coming down to work in the factories. When I was a young man, the narrative I learned was the people of Lewiston didn't like the KKK, that they supported the American spirit, which was that people came to work, and good luck to them.' St. Dominic's Arena, also known as the Central Maine Youth Center, and now as just the Colisse, held only 4,000, the smallest venue for a championship fight in the modern era. But whatever it lacked in size, it made up for in gritty character. The Ali and his wife Sonji gestured at a press conference after his successful title defense in Lewiston, Me., May 25, 1965. ASSOCIATED PRESS Robert Goulet sang the national anthem, mangling a couple of words. Prior to the opening bell, boxing royalty mingled inside the ring: Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Floyd Patterson, James Braddock. The fight was, in the end, anticlimactic. At 1:44 into the first round, Ali landed that phantom right, and Liston went down in a heap. Advertisement Ali stood over the fallen Liston, yelling, 'Get up and fight, sucker!' Liston did get up, but had already been counted out. That image, of Ali standing over Liston, Zenos Frudakis with the molds for the Ali statue. Frudakis Studio, Inc. The statue of Ali created by Frudakis is more subtle than that angry image of Ali, Frudakis was commissioned to make the statue before the 'Lewiston has this inner strength,' Frudakis said. 'They can take a punch. They can get knocked down. But they always get up.' Hewitt believes it's a message that resonates in old mill cities across New England. 'Lewiston represents Fall River, Waterbury, Holyoke, all these towns that have tried to remake themselves,' Hewitt said. 'The thing about Muhammad Ali and these towns, he didn't win every round, but he fought every round. That's like Lewiston.' Another irony not lost on Hewitt and Platz is that Ali might have been the only one named Muhammad in Lewiston that night 60 years ago. Now, two decades after Sub-Saharan Africans became the latest wave of immigrants to re-invent Lewiston, Muhammad is a common name in Lewiston. Advertisement 'What happened to the French?' Hewitt says. 'They're Somalis now. We get up and keep moving forward.' Charlie Hewitt's "Hopeful" sign on the side of Bates Mill No. 5 in 2024 where the Ali statue will be unveiled. Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
From Agent Orange to 'Hanoi Jane,' traces of the Vietnam war remain
Vietnamese people are celebrating the unification of their country after the Vietnam war that left people and land alike deeply scarred - and divided. Some veterans and activists from the United States joined the parties, celebrations and parades, and spoke of their ongoing sense of guilt at their involvement. Bill from Florida was a peace activist back then and was imprisoned in his home country for it, he says. "It was very important to me to be here in Vietnam for the anniversary to honour the people of this country," he adds, tears coming to his eyes. The complex war, fought in bloody jungle battles, began shortly after Vietnam became independent from France, a Colonial power until 1954. After the mid-1960s, the US became heavily involved, supporting South Vietnamese troops in their attempt to prevent the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. Vietnamese people, looking back at the conflict, call it "The American War." The North Vietnamese fought as the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam – or "Vietcong" - backed by the former Soviet Union and led by Ho Chi Minh, affectionately known as "Uncle Ho." He is still revered in much of Vietnam today. And Saigon's official name became Ho Chi Minh City after the war. When the US withdrew in 1973, it had suffered the first major military defeat in its history and lost 58,000 soldiers. Deadly weapons - no match for the Vietnamese Despite the use of horrific weapons such as the incendiary agent napalm and Agent Orange – a highly toxic defoliant – the GIs ultimately had no chance against the sophisticated guerrilla tactics of the Viet Cong. The victorious communists remain in power and keep alive the memory of the war, estimated to have cost the lives of 2 to 5 million Vietnamese people, also for tourists. Directly behind the entrance to the impressive War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, visitors see fighter jets and tanks and also Hui, 56, who lost both arms and one leg and is blind in one eye. "I was eight years old when I stepped on a mine from the war times in the Central Highlands," he says. Unable to work, he sells books in front of the museum and tells tourists his life story, over and over again. Inside, a room is dedicated to the US chemical weapon Agent Orange, showing photos of generations of Vietnamese people and documenting their torment and later suffering from tumours and deformation, causing many visitors to burst into tears. World famous photo Other photos have become burned into the collective memory - like the one in 1972 of a little girl who tore her burning clothes off after a napalm attack. Phan Thi Kim Phuc, known as the "Napalm Girl," still suffers from severe burns. The photo, credited to AP photographer Nick Ut, who was 21 at the time, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 - though who actually took the harrowing picture is in dispute. A documentary released this year raised doubts about the photographer, suggesting that it was more likely that a freelance AP employee captured the scene. He is said to have received $20 for the picture. The World Press Photo Foundation has suspended the author attribution for the iconic photograph. Not under dispute is that Ut drove the injured girl to a hospital in Saigon, where she received treatment for months - and they are still in touch. "Fifty years on from that fateful day, the pair are still in regular contact – and using their story to spread a message of peace," US broadcaster CNN reported in 2022. The Viet Cong tunnels Two hours' drive from Ho Chi Minh City are the Cu Chi tunnels, a legendary tunnel system extending more than 200 kilometres that contributed significantly to the Viet Cong's victory over US troops. Now a tourist attraction, the claustrophobic tunnels were far more than underground secret passages. People lived on three levels that housed accommodation, kitchens, schools, infirmaries and command centres. The tunnels were home not only to male Vietcong fighters, but also to many women and children who were also fighting against the enemy, as can be seen in the film "Dia Dao" ("Tunnel: Sun in the Dark") by director Bui Thac Chuyen. It is an epic released to mark the 50th anniversary and is breaking box office records in Vietnam. Meanwhile two hotels in Vietnam show you history up close. During the war, the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi in the northern capital Hanoi not only accommodated many reporters and embassies, but also prominent US peace activists such as actress Jane Fonda. She caused a scandal in 1972 when she had her picture taken sitting astride a Vietcong fighter's cannon in North Vietnam, earning her the name "Hanoi Jane." Like folk singer Joan Baez, the Hollywood star sought shelter in the hotel's bunker during a bombing raid, as the hotel's historian Nguyen Thanh Tung recounts. Meanwhile at the Continental, visitors can stay in the room where British author Graham Greene once wrote his famous Vietnam novel "The Quiet American." The hotel also features prominently in the 2002 film of the same name starring Michael Caine. Vietnam has its own large café chain: Cong Caphe, with a trademark khaki-green exterior and waiters clad in Vietcong uniforms. "With our outfits we want to honour the soldiers that fought for our country in the past," says employee Duc Anh Lee. Behind the tables are tools from the war while the walls are adorned with camouflage helmets. For young Vietnamese people sipping hip coffee creations, this backdrop is part of daily life. The war is still omnipresent in Vietnam, told by its communist victors.
The Hindu
01-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Eye-openers: from Vietnam to Gaza, ways to hold power to account
On April 30, Vietnam celebrated 50 years of the reunification of the North and South after the decades-long Vietnam War ended with the government of Saigon surrendering to the North Vietnamese forces in 1975. The American entanglement in the South East Asian country began in November 1955, with the U.S. fearing a communist takeover of the South by North Vietnam. After U.S. Army troops landed in South Vietnam in 1965, it dragged on for 10 more years. By the mid and late 1960s, however, there was growing disenchantment with the war effort and the rising numbers of the dead. Stories were emanating about atrocities committed by the U.S. troops in Vietnam and anti-war protests began to grow across campuses and in cities including in the capital Washington D.C. In 1969, journalist Seymour Hersh's attention was drawn to a small news item that a certain Lieutenant William Calley had been charged with the 'murder of 102 'Oriental human beings'' in the hamlet of My Lai in Vietnam. Journalists get to work Hersh tracked Calley and other members of the 'Charlie Company' who had led the assault on March 16, 1968, and reconstructed the story of the atrocity. His book, My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and its Aftermath, is a chilling read about over-reach, and how the killing began without warning, with even women and babies not being spared. The purpose of American troops to be at My Lai that day — to stop the Vietcong troops in their tracks — wasn't served either. Hersh, like Daniel Ellsberg later with The Pentagon Papers leak, was going against the grain of what most journalists were covering on the Vietnam war. Most of them supported the 'noble cause'. The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War, by Neil Sheehan and others, first appeared as a series of articles in The New York Times in 1971, on the study, revealing in detail, 'and in the government's own words', how several U.S. administrations had blundered through a disastrous war. The study had been commissioned in 1967 by then Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara, who had created a unit in the Pentagon to 'collect as many internal documents as possible on the Vietnam War.' There were 47 volumes in all, covering all aspects of the U.S. involvement in Indochina for decades. Sheehan, a celebrated Vietnam reporter, had got wind of the study and pursued Ellsberg, a senior member of the government-funded Rand Corporation who was privy to it, to share them with him. The war finally ended in 1975, with the Pentagon Papers playing a crucial role in its closure. Bearing witness In the face of fierce opposition in the late 1960s, philosopher and writer Bertrand Russell, then in his nineties, brought together prominent cultural and political personalities to 'bear witness to unrestrained American military action' in Vietnam. In his book, Vietdamned, Clive Webb brings to light the peace activism of Russell and other luminaries of the literary world including Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Peter Weiss to end the war. They were derided for their activism but Webb sees the tribunal as a cautionary tale and writes about it as a reminder of the 'ruthlessness with which politicians and the press attempted to discredit their evidence, and the lessons to be learned about our continued need to hold to account those in power.' That's what journalist Omar El Akkad does in his recent book, One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This. He wonders aloud why the U.S. and the West have been largely immune to the unimaginable suffering of civilians in Gaza unleashed by Israel since the October 7 Hamas attack. In chapters with titles including Departure, Witness, Fear, Resistance, Language, Arrival, Akkad tries to make sense of the happenings in Gaza; why, for instance, was an 18-month-old found with a bullet wound to the forehead. The Egyptian-Canadian journalist and writer watched the Gulf War on CNN — 'Baghdad cityscapes detonating sporadically in balls of pale white light' — and was soon surprised that there was no reaction at all. 'It was just what happened to certain places, to certain people: they became balls of pale white light. What mattered was, it wasn't us.' As a journalist, Akkad has travelled to several countries in West Asia and also to Afghanistan, and his view on political malice is fierce: 'Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.' The Gaza tragedy Things came crashing down after October 2023, he writes, when Israel with the support of a vast majority of the Western world's political power centres enacted a 'campaign of active genocide' against the Palestinian people, documented for posterity. More than 50,000 people have died, thousands injured and millions displaced. Death by disease and famine stalks a population wilfully denied aid and medical help. 'Over and over, residents were ordered from their neighbourhoods into 'safe zones', and then wiped out.' Akkad is scathing when he writes that 'once far enough removed, everyone will be properly aghast that any of this was allowed to happen. But for now, it's so much safer to look away.' The antidote, of course, is to 'slip the leash' as Wilfred Burchett put it when he fled from the embedded journalists with Allied forces in Japan in 1945 and set out for Hiroshima. He then went on to record the annihilation he witnessed after the atomic bombing and despatched his piece with the words: 'I write this as a warning to the world' (Tell Me No Lies/Ed. John Pilger).
