Vietnam Photos and “Facing It”

Vietnamese Mother and Children Flee Bombing Village A mother and her children wade through a river in Loc Thuong in the South Vietnamese province of Binh Dinh to escape U.S. bombing.  U.S. forces killed an estimated 90,000 South Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War, mainly due to extensive use of fire power, including artillery, bombings, and small weapons.  It has been reported that 1,500 civilians were killed in various massacres during the war.  1966 Pulitzer Prize, Photography, Kyoichi Sawada for United Press International Source: http://historicalphotographsoftheworld.blogspot.com

This picture won both the Pulitzer and the World Press Award for photography in 1966 for a picture showing American troop’s dragging the body of a Viet Cong soldier behind their M113 Armored Personnel Carrier for burial.   1966 Pulitzer Prize, Photography, Kyoichi Sawada for United Press International Source:https://www.worldpressphoto.org/people/kyoichi-sawada

Execution of a Viet Cong Guerrilla 1968 With North Vietnam’s Tet Offensive beginning, Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnam’s national police chief, was doing all he could to keep Viet Cong guerrillas from Saigon. As Loan executed a prisoner who was said to be a Viet Cong captain, AP photographer Eddie Adams opened the shutter. Adams won a Pulitzer Prize for a picture that, as much as any, turned public opinion against the war. Adams felt that many misinterpreted the scene, and when told in 1998 that the immigrant Loan had died of cancer at his home in Burke, Va., he said, “The guy was a hero. America should be crying. I just hate to see him go this way, without people knowing anything about him.” 1969 Pulitzer Prize, Spot News Photography, Edward Adams, Associated Press Source: http://historicalphotographsoftheworld.blogspot.com

Kent State 1970 When President Richard Nixon said he was sending troops to Cambodia, the nation’s colleges erupted in protest. At Kent State some threw rocks. The Ohio National Guard, called in to quell the turmoil, suddenly turned and fired, killing four; two were simply walking to class. This photo captured a pivotal moment: American soldiers had just killed American kids. Student photographer John Filo won the Pulitzer; the event was also memorialized in a Neil Young song and a TV movie. The girl, Mary Ann Vecchio, turned out not to be a Kent State student, but a 14-year-old runaway. She was sent back to her family in Florida. 1970 Pulitzer Prize, Photography, John Filo Source: history.com

POW Returns Home for Vietnam Retired Associated Press photographer Slava "Sal" Veder's Pulitzer moment came in 1973 at Travis Air Force Base, when he captured the joyous reunion between an American prisoner of war returning from Vietnam and his family. 1974 Pulitzer Prize, Feature Photography, Slava Veder, Associated Press Source: http://historicalphotographsoftheworld.blogspot.com

The burning monk, 1963 In June of 1963, VietnameseMahayana Buddhist monk Thích Quang Duc burned himself to death at a busy intersection in Saigon. He was attempting to show that to fight all forms of oppression on equal terms, Buddhism too, needed to have its martyrs. John F. Kennedy said in reference to a photograph of Duc on fire: “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one”. Photographer Malcolm Browne captured the scene in Saigon for the Associated Press, and the stark black and white image quickly became an iconic visual of the turbulent 1960s. source: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com

South of the DMZ 1966 Contrary to the constraints that were put upon the press in subsequent conflicts, and even to the embedded program used in the recent Iraqi war, correspondents and photographers in Vietnam could, as Walter Cronkite wrote in LIFE, “accompany troops to wherever they could hitch a ride, and there was no censorship . . . That system—or lack of one—kept the American public well informed of our soldiers’ problems, their setbacks and their heroism.” The color photographs of tormented Vietnamese villagers and wounded American conscripts that Larry Burrows took fortified the outcry against the American presence in Vietnam. Burrows was killed when the helicopter he was riding in was shot down over Laos in 1971. Source: http://digitaljournalist.org

Just Images

“Facing It” : Poet Reading Work

“Facing It” My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite. I said I wouldn't dammit: No tears. I'm stone. I'm flesh. My clouded reflection eyes me like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. I turn this way—the stone lets me go.

I turn that way—I'm inside    the Vietnam Veterans Memorial again, depending on the light    to make a difference.    I go down the 58,022 names,    half-expecting to find    my own in letters like smoke.    I touch the name Andrew Johnson;    I see the booby trap's white flash. 

Names shimmer on a woman's blouse    but when she walks away    the names stay on the wall.    Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's    wings cutting across my stare.    The sky. A plane in the sky.    A white vet's image floats    closer to me, then his pale eyes    look through mine. I'm a window.    He's lost his right arm    inside the stone. In the black mirror    a woman’s trying to erase names:    No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

Assignment Both “Facing It” and the images reflect different POVs of Vietnam and its impact. How does the title fit the poem and the speaker? How does the last line fit? Which three images evoke the strongest ethos or pathos appeals? Why? How do the images and poem connect?