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Published: December 29th 2015
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There are some things that I know, or at least think I know. In fact, I’m down right certain of certain historical facts. Except that some of those facts are wrong. OK, they may contain a kernel of truth, but sometimes the whole truth is ever so much more interesting.
The war in Vietnam may be one of the most thoroughly documented wars in history. There were pictures in the newspapers and in magazines, and the six o’clock news was full of images. And I remember the stories behind those images, except that some of what I remember isn’t quite true.
One of the most iconic images to come out of Vietnam is that of Thích Quảng Đức, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who set himself on fire to protest the war. Except that is not the real story.
A little background first: In the early 1960s, President Diem was the head of South Vietnam. He was a Catholic, and even though 90% of Vietnam was Buddhist, Diem put Catholics in all the important government and military position. Not content with that, he also put in place measures that discriminated against Buddhists, and some Catholic priests performed forced conversions
of whole villages.
Things came to a head when the Buddhists were prohibited from flying the Buddhist flag on Vesak Day, an important Buddhist holiday celebrating the birthday of Gautama Buddha. Earlier in the week Catholics were encouraged to fly the Vatican flag at a celebration for the Archbishop of Hue.
On June 10, 1963, the Buddhist temple in Saigon told the foreign correspondents that “something important” was going to happen at the intersection next to the Cambodian Embassy. Most of the journalists stayed away, preferring to concentrate on the war, but a couple showed up, including the reporter Davis Halberstam, a reporter for the New York Times, and the photographer Malcolm Browne from the Associated Press.
At the appointed time, Thích Quảng Đức sat down on a cushion in the middle of the intersection in the lotus position. Another monk poured a five gallon container of gasoline over his head. Thích Quảng Đức then lit a match and dropped it in his lap. He never made a sound as the flames engulfed him and he burned to death, but the crowd of about 350 monks and nuns cried out in horror.
President John F. Kennedy
said, “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one.” Malcolm Browne won a Pulitzer Prize, and the photo was printed in newspapers around the world.
Today there is a monument to Thích Quảng Đức at that intersection, and people come to light incense and leave flowers.
Another iconic image is that of the evacuation of the US Embassy in Saigon. You see the helicopter teetering on the top of a small structure on the roof as hundreds of people climb up a ladder to get into the aircraft. Except the building in the picture is not that of the US Embassy.
The photograph was taken by Hubert Van Es who was working in Saigon for United Press International. On April 29, 1975, he was working in his dark room at the UPI bureau when a colleague shouted to him that there was a helicopter on the roof of a nearby building. The building in question housed American CIA officials and their families, and the helicopter was from the CIA’s Air America. The last people to be evacuated from the American Embassy several blocks away left the next
day, April 30, 1975.
Van Es had identified the building in his picture as a CIA building. Sometime during the 1970s it came to be incorrectly identified as the American Embassy.
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Cathy Rowan
non-member comment
Complain though we do about our government, we've got it SO much better. Vietnam sure has taken a beating
Thanks for posting, Karen.