Hanoi: Jane Fonda pictured July 7, 1972 sitting in the gunner's seat of an enemy Anti-Aircraft gun pretending to take aim at American planes. She was quoted as saying, "I wish I had one of those blue eyed murderers in my sight." Jane Fonda's anti-American- ism is slowly being accepted by the American Public.
Hotel Especen; Hanoi-Vietnam :: 7 APR 95, 1911 hours:
The following public domain information is a transcript from the US Congress House Committee on Internal Security, Travel to Hostile Areas, HR 16742, 19-25 September, 1972, page 7671.
[Radio Hanoi attributes talk on DRV visit to Jane Fonda; from Hanoi in English to American servicemen involved in the Indochina War, 1 PM GMT, 22 August 1972
Text: Here's Jane
Fonda telling her impressions at the end of her visit to the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam;
(follows recorded female voice with American accent);]
I visited the (Dam Xuac) agricultural coop, where the silk worms are also
raised and thread is
made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful
Temple of Literature was
where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw
unforgettable ballet about
the guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy soldiers. The
bees were danced by women,
and they did their job well.
In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and
actresses perform the
second act of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, and this was very
moving to me--the fact that
artists here are translating and performing American plays while US
imperialists are bombing their
country.
I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their
factory, encouraging one of their
sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam--these women,
who are so gentle and
poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are
bombing their city, become
such good fighters.
I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation,
offered me, an American, their
best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. The daughter and
I, in fact, shared the shelter
wrapped in each others arms, cheek against cheek. It was on the road back
from Nam Dinh, where I
had witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets-schools,
hospitals, pagodas, the factories,
houses, and the dike system.
As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the
American people that he was
winding down the war, but in the rubble-strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his
words echoed with sinister
(words indistinct) of a true killer. And like the young Vietnamese woman I
held in my arms clinging to
me tightly--and I pressed my cheek against hers--I thought, this is a war
against Vietnam perhaps, but
the tragedy is America's.
One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in
this country is that Nixon
will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be able
to turn Vietnam, north and
south, into a neo-colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by
attacking in any way. One has
only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the
lives they led before the revolution
to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their
determination to resist.
I've spoken to many peasants who talked about the days when their parents
had to sell themselves to
landlords as virtually slaves, when there were very few schools and much
illiteracy, inadequate medical
care, when they were not masters of their own lives.
But now, despite the bombs, despite the crimes being created--being
committed against them by Richard
Nixon, these people own their own land, build their own schools--the
children learning, literacy--illiteracy
is being wiped out, there is no more prostitution as there was during the
time when this was a French
colony. In other words, the people have taken power into their own hands,
and they are controlling their
own lives.
And after 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign
invaders--and the last 25 years, prior to
the revolution, of struggling against French colonialism--I don't think
that the people of Vietnam are
about to compromise in any way, shape or form about the freedom and
independence of their country,
and I think Richard Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history,
particularly their poetry, and
particularly the poetry written by Ho Chi Minh.
This is Jane Fonda. During my two week visit in the Democratic Republic of
Vietnam, I've had the
opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number of
people from all walks of
life--workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians,
journalists, film actresses, soldiers,
militia girls, members of the women's union, writers.
"I would like to say something, not just to Vietnam veterans in New England, but to men who were in Vietnam, who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of things that I said or did," she began. "I was trying to help end the killing and the war, but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless about it and I'm . . . very sorry that I hurt them. And I want to apologize to them and their families."
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