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Jane Fonda - Radio Hanoi - 1972-07-20
We devote this program to a press conference given in Hanoi Thursday evening by American actress Jane Fonda before leaving Hanoi after a two-week stay. In. this conference she gave the two reasons why she had arrived in Vietnam and told the audience about her activities during her sojourn here. She devoted much time to telling of the sights and sounds she could (?saw) in North Vietnam under the American air blitz. She strongly condemned U.S. deliberate attacks on dikes, dams and other irrigation work and population centers and lashed out strongly at Nixon's crimes and lies. Here is the recorded statement from Jane Fonda:

((Follows recorded female voice with American accent FBIS))

I wanted to come to North Vietnam for two reasons. I wanted to find out for myself, whether or not Richard Nixon has been bombing civilian targets in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Because, of course, this is being denied in the United States. And I also wanted to find out if what I was hearing on the radio in the United States was true. That the North was collapsing, that the women were sold into prostitution, that black market was rampant and that corruption was everywhere.

I arrived here on July 8th and despite the, the heavy bombing that makes it difficult for guests to travel here, I was able to visit many areas and meet many people.

I met young Minh, a 22-year old girl who's been in jail three times in the prisons of the South and tortured by the soldiers of the ARVN army. I met actresses and singers from the mobile song and dance unit who have come from the front in South Vietnam. I have spoken with teachers, with doctors, historians, artists, film makers and actresses. I've met with students, with peasants, with workers and with American pilots who are in extremely good health, I might add and will I hope be soon returned to the United States, and when they are returned, I think and they think that they will go back better citizens than when they left.

There were seven prisoners that I talked to, some of them who had never met, had never spoken to Americans before and they all expressed regret about what they had done, and they said that they had come to recognize that the war is a terrible crime that must be ended immediately.

I went to the (Dang Huang) Agricultural Co-op, to a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi, a Catholic church. I was taken to the (Truong Dinh) workers' living quarters, housing many hundreds of workers and their families, which was bombed on June 27th, killing many workers. The Bach Mai Hospital, Hanoi's largest hospital, bombed June 22D, two doctors killed. The Vietnam-Soviet Union Friendship Hospital also bombed on May 10th, and several days ago I went to Nam Dinh, the textile capital of Vietnam. I am told that the dikes were bombed at 4 o'clock in the morning before I arrived, and it was bombed twice during the same day after I left. Once in a residential area and once the hydraulic system was --is -- was bombed.

It is very clear to anyone who has been in Nam Dinh that there are no military targets there. The most populous areas of town were bombed, the textile factory was bombed, the cultural center and the schools were bombed and the hospital was bombed.

The town of (Phu Li), which doesn't even have any industry in it, practically razed to the ground, and on (?June 12th) I went to Nam Sach, the district of Nam Sach. As you know, 12 foreign journalists were almost bombed there on July 11th, and yet the Pentagon denies that this bombing took place. They went to see the damage that has been done by extensive bombing to strategic points on the major dike systems of the (Nam Dinh Dim) district, and I saw with my own eyes the following day, that the dike has been cut in two in one of the most vulnerable points, and on both sides of, of the dike there are many bomb craters. This is a district with a population of 100,000 rice growers and pig breeders. As far as the eye can see, as far as the eye can see are rice fields. There are obviously no military targets, no gun installations, no tracks, no military materiel.

Melvin Laird the other day said that bombing of the dikes may be taking place, but that it is accidental, and it only happens if there is a military target on top of the dikes. Does he really think the Vietnamese would be foolish enough to put a military installation on top of an earth dike? And does he really believe that while on the one hand the Pentagon is boasting of the accuracy of its new weapons such as the laser bomb and the smart bomb, on the other hand he can claim accidental bombing of dikes, hydraulic systems, pumping stations and dam sluices?

Whether or not the bombing is accidental or not, I don't want to argue. The point is that its results are genocidal. The danger, not only lies in store for people this year in terms of drowning and famine but for many years to come. For I'm told that it takes many years for the earth, in these earthen dams to solidify sufficiently to withstand the torrential waters that flow down from the mountain range in the monsoon season.

I believe that Richard Nixon knows well what he is doing. Diplomatic sources and Hanoi have reported that officials within the Nixon Administration have admitted that there are bombing of the dikes in North Vietnam. I believe that to the Vietnamese people it is a national question. The building of the dikes, the protecting of their land has something that is something (?that has) been going on for many thousands of years. And so by striking at these targets he is striking at the very roots of the Vietnamese nation.

He has tried to justify these bombings and the bombings of the civilian targets by saying that they are in fact military, but in fact, the Nixon Administration has no right to bomb the Democratic Republic of Vietnam for any reason whatsoever, and in doing so, it is a violation of the Geneva Accord and the 1968 bombing halt.

These criminal attempts to destroy the Northern part of Vietnam physically and morally, I think, have to be put into its total context. When Johnson failed to turn South Vietnam into a neocolony in 1960 -- uh, in ah, in 1965, when it became apparent that people were about to take power into their own hands in South Vietnam, he started bombing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. But of course this failed and he was forced to the Paris Peace Talks as you know and to sign the unconditional bombing halt.

Now even the top advisors, like Nixon's guerrilla expert Sir Robert Thompson and other officials in the White House and journalists admit that the pacification program is being dismantled and the Vietnamization program has failed. And so Nixon, who has always tried to negotiate from a position of strength, is once again attacking the Democratic Republic of Vietnam because he has failed in the South and he has even surpassed Johnson, in terms of -- of the horror and the destruction that he is raining upon this part of the country. He does this with the assumption that he can break the spirit of the people here, and then that will give him military and political leverage in South Vietnam, in Paris and in the United States.

Which brings me to the Second point of my trip to Vietnam: I think it's impossible to be in this country without realizing that bombs will never do anything but make the people of Vietnam more determined. Four thousand years of forging a land out of marshes and four thousand years of resisting invaders have prepared them well for anything that Mr. Nixon has to offer.

I have learned a lot about this two-pronged struggle that has gone on for so long in this country -- against nature and the other against foreign invaders. And during all 4,000 years, the Vietnamese people have always maintained a national identity, a fierce patriotism. They have suffered through 25 years of French colonialism, and now, after so much suffering and hardship, the land is theirs, and the people have taken power.

It seems to me that they are fighting for all their past heroes and heroines, for 4,000 years of struggle and for future generations, who they are preparing well to carry on the resistance if need be. It is ludicrous to think that these people in the northern part of Vietnam are temporarily separated from their families and friends in the South. It is ludicrous, it is ludicrous to think that these people in the northern part of Vietnam and whose passion is for their country, its trees, its land and its Party, that these people will ever compromise on the subject of freedom and independence. It is also ludicrous to think -- at least in the news that I've gathered from the South-- that the people there, the 90 percent peasants, who are rising up and reclaiming their land and their lives, will now, when total victory is so close, lay down their arms and surrender.

And this is of course what Nixon's call for a ceasefire is asking these people to do -- surrender. Nixon has obviously never read Vietnamese history, or else he reads badly. Or perhaps it -- perhaps it's that Westerners have a difficult time thinking in terms of people's war and self-determination. One thing that I have learned here and that I will never forget is that Vietnam is one country, that the United States by violating the Geneva Accords and preventing the elections in 1956, turned these temporary military regroupment zones into political and territorial questions.

How can the Vietnamese invade Vietnam? But there is an invasion taking place. It's coming from the 7th Fleet, from the aircraft carriers in the China Sea, from Guam and Thailand.

It is not by separating the military question from the political question that Nixon is going to be able to end this war. This has become very clear to me since I've been here. And it is not by dropping bombs on any part of Vietnam, but by addressing himself to the Seven Point proposal of the Political ((as heard}) Revolutionary Government, which is, after all, a most just and moral and humane proposal, which meets the needs of the Vietnamese people and certainly the interests of the American people. The United States must withdraw all its troops, air, ground and sea forces from Vietnam. It must set a date by which time all of these troops will be withdrawn. And it must cease the support of the Thieu regime, this criminal government in the southern part of Vietnam.

((Recording ends -- FBIS))

You have just listened to a recorded statement from Jane Fonda at a press conference given in Hanoi Thursday evening before she leave ((as heard)) Hanoi after a two-week stay.

Jane Fonda - Radio Hanoi - 1972-07-19
U. S. warplanes have conducted savage airstrikes on Nam Dinh, North Vietnam's third largest city. The effects bear an extermination character. American actress Jane Fonda, now in North Vietnam, on July 18 visited the bombed city. Follows her address to American servicemen involved in the Vietnam War after visiting Nam Dinh.

((Follows recorded female voice with American accent - FBIS))

I was taken to all parts of the city. I saw with my own eyes that in this city which is the textile capital of Vietnam, there are no military targets.

I saw for example, on Hang Tien Street, bombed on the 23d of June, huge bomb craters which had destroyed houses in this very populated residential section of town. There were two women who were picking through the rubble left by the bombs and they came over and spoke to me. One of the women said that she'd been at the market when the bomb fell on the top of her house. Her house has been turned into a huge bomb crater. Her husband and three children were all killed. Her oldest son was 25 years old, her next oldest son had been 22, and her youngest son was 18. Three families in this area were entirely destroyed by the bombs.

As I walked through the streets, beautiful Vietnamese girls looked at me through the doors and returned my smile. Their eyes seemed to be questioning: How is it that the Americans can do this to our city? We have done nothing to them.

I saw a secondary school where 600 students from 5th to 7th grade had been in class. The school had been hit by two bombs.

I saw the center of a Chinese residential district, bombed -- three places -- houses razed to the ground.

The number 1 hospital of the city which had had 200 beds and it treated people from all over the city, large parts of it had been completely destroyed, particularly the pediat -- pediatrics department and the supply dep -- er -- department where the medicines had been kept.

The large factory, the textile factories of Nam Dinh, in charred ruins. No one isn't allowed to go in there because there are delayed reaction bombs.

I went to the dike, the dike system of the city of Nam Dinh. Just this morning at 4 o'clock, it was bombed again, and I was told that an hour after we left the city, planes came back and rebombed Nam Dinh. The dike in many places has been cut in half and there are huge fissures running across the top of it.

Again, I am talking about these things and I am describing to you what I am seeing on the ground because I think that you must not understand that the destruction is being caused to civilian populations and residential areas, to cultural centers. I saw the pagodas bombed in Nam Dinh. The area in which there are theaters where people come to rest, the recreation centers were all destroyed in Nam Dinh.

What are your commanders telling you? How are they justifying this to you? Have you any idea what your bombs are doing when you pull the levers and push the buttons?

Some day we're going to have to answer to our children for this war. Some day we are going to have to explain to the rest of the world how it is that we caused this type of suffering and death and destruction to a people who -- who have done us no harm. Perhaps we should start to do it now before it is, too late.

Perhaps, however, the most important thing that has to be said about Vietnam is that despite all that Nixon is doing here and that Johnson has done before him, despite all the bombs, the people are more determined than ever to fight.

Take Nam Dinh for example. There are people who are still living in Nam Dinh. The factories have been dispersed and they are still working. There is still electricity. People are going about their business.

Perhaps the most important thing that can be said about Vietnam at this time is that in spite of, or perhaps because of, the bombs and the destruction that has been caused by the Nixon administration and was caused by the Johnson administration before him to Vietnam, the resistance and the determination to resist has spread to every district, to every village, to every hamlet, to every house and to every Vietnamese heart.

This is very important to understand. Every man, woman and child in this country has a determination like a bright flame, burying them, strengthening their determination to go forward, to fight for freedom and independence.

And what interests me so much is that as an American, is that this is so much like the essence of the American people. The one unifying quality I believe about the American people, the common denominator that we all share, is the love for freedom and democracy. The problem is that the definition of, of freedom and democracy has been distorted for us and we have to redefine what that means. But the Vietnamese who have been fighting for 4,000 years know very well.

And as in Nam Dinh for example, all the rubble and all of the destruction has not stopped them. It is fascinating to see. There are people still living there, there is still electricity in the city. The factories have been dispersed, but it is still working. The textiles are still being produced. Families are still producing food for a ((?certainty)). They are still going to the markets, and they are still ready to pick up a gun if necessary and defend their homes and their land.

((Recording ends -- FBIS)

That was Jane Fonda's address to American servicemen involved in the Vietnam War after visiting U.S. bombed city of Nam Dinh.

Jane Fonda - Radio Hanoi - 1972-07-30
We now bring you American actress Jane Fonda's address to American GI's in South Vietnam:

((Follows recorded female voice with American accent - FBIS))

This is Jane Fonda speaking from Hanoi. A phenomenon has been taking place in the United States called the GI movement.

In 1968 the situation in the American army was qualitatively changed. Prior to 1968, many of the soldiers -- the grunts, the ((word indistinct)), the ground troops in South Vietnam -- had believed what their officers and their generals had told them: that they were there to help the Vietnamese people, that large areas of Vietnam had been pacified, that the war was about to be won.

If you recall, at the end of 1967 General Westmoreland announced: We can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. And 2 months later the Tet offensive occurred. And the soldiers were forced to face certain facts. They realized that in order for the offensive to have taken place, it meant that the very people that they were told had been pacified were in fact part and parcel of the liberation fighters. It was these people who were helping the soldiers bring weapons into town, hidden into the laundry baskets and the -- and the bunches of flowers. It was these people who were part of the struggle.

The men were attacked for the first time on their own American bases and they had to start asking themselves questions. And they began to realize that they had been lied to. And since these young men are no longer (?John Waynes) - they're not like their fathers in the Second World War -- they began to say no: We no longer want to die for someone else's lies. We will no longer be wounded for a war that we do not understand and do not believe in.

In 1969-1970 the desertions in the American army tripled. The desertions of the U. S. soldiers almost equaled the desertions from the ARVN army, and in the United States we laughingly said it was the Vietnamization of the American army.

The new recruits sent to South Vietnam were separated from the guys who had been there for a while behind barbed wire so they wouldn't find out what had been going on. The men had to turn in their arms at night. Why? Because there were so many U. S. officers being killed. Fragging -- the word fragging entered the English language. What it meant was that the soldiers would prefer to roll a fragmentation grenade under the tent flap of their officer, if he was a gung-ho officer who was going to send them out on a suicide mission, rather than go out and shoot people that they -- that they did not feel were their enemy.

In America we do not condone the killing of American officers -- we do not condone the killing of anyone -- but we do support the soldiers who are beginning to think for themselves. I've spent 2 years working with the antiwar soldiers in the United States, in the Philippines, in Okinawa, and in Japan. I've seen the movement grow from a movement of individuals taking courageous action as individuals to thousands of soldiers taking collective action to voice their protest against the war -- marching, demonstrating in uniform and holding up their ID cards, risking to -- going to jail if necessary, jumping ship, the petition campaigns which started on the Constellation in San Diego and spread to the Coral Sea, the Ticonderoga, the Enterprise, the Han*censored*, the Kitty Hawk.

And word about the resistance within the American military has spread throughout the United States. There was a time when people in the peace movement thought that anyone in uniform, anyone who was coming over here to support the Thieu regime, must be the enemy. But we have realized that most of these young men were not fortunate enough to get draft deferments, were not privileged enough to have good lawyers or doctors ((words indistinct)). These are the sons of the American working class. They're the sons of the hardhats. They're guys who came because they thought it was the thing to do, or because it was the only way they could get an education, or because it was the only way that they could learn a skill. They believed in the army, but when they were here, when they discovered that their officers were incompetent, usually drunk, when they discovered that the Vietnamese people had a fight that they believed in, that the Vietnamese people were fighting for much the same reason that we fought in the beginning of our own country, they began to ask themselves questions.

And one of the biggest things (?they began to think) about the U.S. Government and about the U.S. military in particular is that it doesn't allow people to think for themselves. It tries to turn us into robots. And the young people of America, and particularly the soldiers, are beginning to say: We don't want to be robots anymore; we will define for ourselves who our enemy is.

Perhaps the soldiers who have been the first to recognize the nature of the war in Vietnam are those soldiers who have suffered the most in the United States -- the black soldiers, the brown soldiers, and the red and Asian soldiers.

Recently on a tour of the U.S. bases on the Pacific rim -- in Okinawa, Japan and the Philippines -- I had the chance to talk to a great many of these guys and they all expressed their recognition of the fact that this is a white man's war, a white businessman's war, that they don't feel it's their place to kill other people of color when at home they themselves are oppressed and prevented from determining their own lives.

Women in the military -- those who are so often forgotten -- have their own way of identifying with the Vietnamese struggle. I heard horrifying stories about the treatment of women in the U.S. military. So many women said to me that one of the first things that happens to them when they enter the service is that they are taken to see the company psychiatrist and they are given a little lecture which is made very clear to them that they are there to service the men. They are given birth control pills. This is a big shock to these girls who come into the service with all kinds of high ideals about what the army will do for them, and the kind of training that they will get.

This very powerful grassroots movement -- the GI movement -- is forging probably the most important link in the United States -- the link between the white middle class peace movement and the working class. These men who are coming back from Vietnam, their lives in fragments, are putting the pieces back together in a new kind of way with a new kind of understanding. And in doing so, as they go into the factories -- those who are lucky enough to get jobs - or as they stand in -- in the unemployment lines, they are beginning to change the political complexion of the American working class.

In California particularly -- at least I can talk about California because that's where I'm from -- the rank and file insurgency among the working class has augmented in the last 6 to 7 months (?steadily), and this is particularly due to speed up of mandatory overtime, peculiarly true in the major industries such as steel and auto. The young workers, particularly with the new consciousness, have become aware of the fact that they've been sold out by the national labor leadership and they're indicating that a new alliance may need to be formed between workers and students.

Like the soldiers on active duty, the thing that the young workers resent the most is the fact that -- that their lives are being destroyed that they are alienated from their work, that they're treated like robots.

I think it's important that people in Vietnam as well as other parts of the world know this -- that while America preaches prosperity, the workers of America are suffering more than ever before. The suicide rate among workers has risen more than ever before. They are beginning to realize that Nixon's economic reform is in fact falling on their back.

((Recording ends - FBIS))

You have just listened to American actress Jane Fonda's address to American GI's in South Vietnam.