It was a song about the day 'Uncle Ho' declared their country's independence in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square. The translator told me that the soldiers wanted to sing me a song. There were also many photographers (and perhaps journalists) gathered about, many more than I had seen all in one place in Hanoi. When we arrived at the site of the anti-aircraft installation (somewhere on the outskirts of Hanoi), there was a group of about a dozen young soldiers in uniform who greeted me. It was not unusual for Americans who visited North Vietnam to be taken to see Vietnamese military installations and when they did, they were always required to wear a helmet like the kind I was told to wear during the numerous air raids I had experienced. I was exhausted and an emotional wreck after the 2-week visit.
On the last day in Hanoi Fonda allowed herself to be part of a photo op. Ultimately the trip had a different effect. She wanted to take photos that would expose that the Nixon Administration was bombing the dikes to flood civilian areas. She accepted the invitation with the intention of treating the trip like a fact-finding "humanitarian" mission. It could be said that Fonda was educated to a fault – poised and articulate – and the actions of the Nixon Administration and their South Vietnamese cronies gave her just enough talking points and associated faux logic to be dangerous on an international foreign policy stage.Īnd Fonda got the perfect chance to be dangerous in May of 1972 when the North Vietnamese delegation at the Paris Peace Talks invited her for a two-week visit to Hanoi. It was all heady stuff for a well-bred celebrity who wanted to be known for something more than her looks. In her own blunt-force, actress-as-center-of-attention way, Fonda tried to segment the war from the warrior, something the nation at large failed to do during the Vietnam era (and for years afterwards). In recognition of her efforts VVAW made Fonda their Honorary National Coordinator. FTA toured military towns on the west coast doing skits and singing protest songs and getting veterans to tell their stories of an unjust war.Ībout the same time she began to support Vietnam Veterans Against the War, speaking at rallies and raising money. She started an "anti USO" troupe with Donald Sutherland and others called "FTA," for "Free the Army" – a play on the expression "Fuck the Army," which had come into favor at the time. I decided I needed to return to my country and join with them-active duty soldiers and Vietnam Veterans in particular-to try and end the war.įonda received some notoriety for her activism once she returned to the States, and in the late '60s she threw her celebrity heft behind causes and groups as far reaching as the Black Panthers, Native Americans, and feminists.īut the anti-Vietnam movement is where she really found her voice. I talked with them and read the books they gave me about the war. I took every chance I could to meet with U.S. It wasn't until I began to meet American servicemen who had been in Vietnam and had come to Paris as resisters that I realized I needed to learn more. I refused to believe we could be doing anything wrong there.
The French had been defeated in their own war against Vietnam a decade before our country went to war there, so when I heard, over and over, French people criticizing our country for our Vietnam War I hated it. ("Communists with a little 'c,'" as she labeled them.) The two of them were surrounded by the French cultural intelligencia. She was brought up to believe that America was good, as she said, "I grew up with a deep belief that wherever our troops fought, they were on the side of the angels." So when she first heard about President Kennedy sending advisors to Vietnam she figured it was a necessary action.įor the first eight years of the Vietnam War Fonda was living in Paris with her first husband Roger Vadim, a film director. After all, she'd been raised by actor Henry Fonda who'd served in the Navy in World War II and forged his name in Hollywood by playing the good guys in movies. By her own account, Jane Fonda's first impression of America's involvement in Vietnam was that it was a just cause.
0 kommentar(er)
