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Subject:
Jane and Uncle Ho.
Date: May
8, 1995 18:22
19:11 Hotel Especen; Hanoi-Vietnam :: 7 APR 95
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. From the CompuServe
Military Veteran's Forum.)
[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);]
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 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.
[recording ends]
Patrick. -- Responses Sought --
He who would catch fish must not mind getting wet.
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- Vietnamese saying
From the notebook of Thuong Ly (11th century Vietnamese hero)
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