By Mike Hastie, Army Medic Viet Nam

With all armaments, whether they were U.S. airstrikes, artillery from Navy war ships, or artillery from U.S. firebases in Viet Nam, or U.S. ground troops, including U.S. allies, or the spraying of deadly Agent Orange, there was not one day during the Viet Nam War, where the U.S. Government did not commit an atrocity. Not one day. Whenever the truth threatens one’s core belief system, there is an urgent need to deny its reality. That is why history repeats itself.

Mike sent the text below from Then The Americans Came by Martha Hess (Rutgers University Press, 1993): Over one hundred interviews were conducted in Viet Nam by the author in 1990-91, involving atrocities committed by American forces above and below the 17th parallel.

Mrs. Phung Thi Tiem, Kham Thien Street, Hanoi:

I am the head of the Kham Thien Women’s Union. I will tell you what happened. It was 10:20 on the evening of December 26, 1972. People had returned from work, eaten dinner, and many had already gone to bed. And, then the Americans came. Many older people, women, men, and many children were killed in that bombing. They were supposed to have been evacuated, but the 24th was a Sunday and the 25th was Christmas Day. So people thought the Americans wouldn’t bomb. They returned to their homes.

That evening buildings were destroyed, everything. Many people were injured and entire families were wiped out–from the youngest to the oldest. In one family, five generations were killed together, the baby inside its pregnant mother, the son, the mother, the grandmother and the great grandmother. Mrs. Xuan, who lives next door here, lost an arm. Five people were killed there. The woman on this monument over here, with the child, was the lady of the house. She took her children with her under the staircase, to protect them, and they were all killed. In one family there were nine children, and their parents died. Now they have grown up and left the neighborhood. Only the wounded ones are still here, working in shops. Families helped the wounded, and cooperatives and the Women’s Union helped them, and continue to help them.

We spent that week digging out the shelters, looking for missing people. The smell of the dead was terrible. We collected the bodies in one place, and the wounded were taken to the hospital. People whose homes were bombed mostly went to live with relatives in the countryside.

American pilots dropped all those bombs, yet we were merciful. When an American pilot was shot down and brought through this very street, nobody touched him.

At the time, I was a factory worker. As head of the Women’s Union of Khan Thien district, I had to set an example to the community, so I stayed, and my children had been evacuated. Only the workers could stay here, to work in the factories. Nobody in my family was killed.

Many people are handicapped today. Many people lost everything in the war, and can’t support themselves. So you can tell the American government to make reparations. To be fair, the Vietnamese didn’t send troops to invade America. Never, never forget. We remember the war. We remember our losses. All the little children–nine years old, thirteen, they committed no crimes for the Americans to come and kill them. When they died in the bombings, their eyes popped out from the compression. Their bodies were mangled. Small children and old people. They lived here, and worked their whole lives here. They never sent troops to America. They never took one plant, one leaf from America. Why did the Americans come to destroy everything, to kill the people, to kill small children, to kill even pregnant women–why? Don’t the American people even know why?