Mrs. Nguyen Thi Thiet
The bombing of Vinh Linh Province.
"The BOMBING started in Vinh Linh on February 8, 1965. In the beginning the Americans bombed the hospitals, the schools, and the military camp. At first, not many people were killed. The worst was after 1965. So many were killed, especially in 1972."
"People from Quang Tri Province had been evacuated north to Vinh Linh because they thought it was safer than the South. They were wrong. Some days, twelve, thirteen, fourteen people were killed. In an area of a kilometer or two, in a single morning the Americans would drop sixty, seventy bombs."
"Mostly, people lived underground. The people of Vinh Linh are farmers, and still went to the fields to work every day. But when the planes came they escaped to the tunnels right by the fields. The women and young people always carried guns with them, to shoot at planes."
"I was ten years old at the time of the second bombing, in 1972. School was always held in the shelter. The children couldn’t come up. I lived seven days a week underground."
"Toxic chemicals and defoliants were dropped, and a lot of napalm. Many people today still have scars from napalm bombs. There were different kinds of fragmentation bombs, some the size of a fist. Even now people get killed from small, unexploded bombs. Wounded people were looked after by their families, or by the community if they had no children. The dead were buried everywhere, without coffins. Three people died in my family."
"The Americans cannot repay this debt, because it’s too big."
Mr. Dich
On the effects of Agent Orange and toxic chemicals.
"I WANT TO KNOW if the American veterans were affected by defoliants and toxic chemicals, because during all the years we marched south, the American army used them to clear the forests. The soldiers who fought at the front, south of Quang Tri, suffered sperm damage."
"If you go to Dac Lac and Pleiku, the people there can show you exactly where the Americans dropped the stuff. You can still find containers full of toxic chemicals. These “bitter mines,” as we called them, since they leave a bitter taste, were very dangerous."
"After the war, my second child was born and died right away. My wife was strong, but the child was deformed. With the third child, the same thing, but the Swedish Hospital in Ha Noi saved him. He is only four years old but he has intestinal problems. Doctors think his intestines are shrinking. They say when he grows up they can fix it. Now they give him medication."
"The Americans came to Vietnam to conduct a war, and to kill Vietnamese people. That means they were the aggressors. The puppet soldiers were also Vietnamese but they were Americanized, meaning they listened to the Americans and took up arms against their own people. For those soldiers we have more sympathy than hatred. To this day we think of the Americans as the enemy. Our children have no fathers. The Americans killed a generation. They owe us, for the next generation."
Mrs. Phung Thi Tiem
Head of Kham Thien Women’s Union; bombing of 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."
"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."
"In one family there were nine children, and their parents died. Now they have grown up and left the neighborhood. 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."
"Don’t the American people even know why? Why did the Americans come to destroy everything, to kill the people, to kill small children, to kill even pregnant women-why?"
Mrs. Truong My Hoa
Survivor of Con Son Prison; torture in tiger cages.
"THE WAR ENDED fifteen years ago in victory for our people, but the country remains devastated. We say that victory cannot match our suffering. After all, the United States sent their troops over here with the intent to destroy all, burn all, and kill all. They destroyed the land."
"In the South, the Americans burned villages and herded the women and children into camps surrounded by barbed wire. South Vietnam became an enormous prison. Many children couldn’t go to school, people weren’t free to work their land. They killed brutally, indiscriminately. You remember the massacre at My Lai, in Quang Ngai province. There were many other villages where the people were massacred. My Lai was only the worst."
"I was imprisoned in Con Son from 1964 to 1975. I had been a student in Ho Chi Minh City-Saigon at that time. I attended meetings and went to demonstrations to demand freedom and democracy. The South Vietnamese arrested me when I was nineteen, and I was thirty by the time I was released."
"We were beaten and tortured. They had all kinds of sexual torture for the women. And we were so hungry. When I was kept in the tiger cage at Con Son, I was given only a small tin of water and a little bowl of rice each day. There was a lot of sand, and when the winds blew, the sand covered our rice bowls."
"I spent a year in the tiger cage. On top they kept limestone and a water pot. If prisoners talked to each other they poured water and limestone over us, and if we cried they beat us with sticks, and then let the limestone burn our wounds. You can see right here, my forehead is scarred. They stuck sharp pins in my head. That was excruciating torture. I still have the scars. Many women never recovered."
Mrs. Ha Thi Qui
Survivor of the My Lai Massacre.
"IN THE EARLY MORNING, just after we got up, the helicopters came and started shelling, and soldiers poured out onto the fields. I was eating breakfast. We thought it might be like the other times the Americans came into the village. They gave the children candy."
"But the third time, March 16, 1968, when they came to the hamlet they rounded up all the people. Some they took to the roadside and shot right away. The people on the guard tower were all killed. And some they brought over to this ditch, here. First they shot Mr. Cau. He was a monk. He lived in the pagoda. Then they forced everyone into the ditch and shot them."
"I was wounded in the backside. At first I felt very, very hot, and later on very cold. And they killed-you see, they fired a first time into the ditch, and many men, children and women were killed. They cried, “Mother.” They were screaming. The soldiers fired three more times and finished the cries of the people."
"I found her daughter’s body, a fifteen-year-old girl, all her clothing torn off and her legs were spread open-raped by Americans. They had no mercy, the Americans."
Mrs. Le Thi Dieu
Victim of electric torture and sexual violence.
"IN 1965 I WAS ARRESTED by the Americans and brought to Hoi An. They put electricity in my vagina, on my nipples, in my ears, in my nose, on my fingers. Blood came out of my vagina. At night they put electricity inside my body and they beat me. They jumped on me with their shoes. Now when I breathe my whole chest hurts, and when I lie on the bed my body aches."
"They tortured me for information but they got nothing. They poured water down my throat again, and I stopped breathing. They took me to a little house, like this, and one American tried to rape me. I started screaming, and he took my hair, which was very long, and he dragged me and beat me."
"He raped me, and I couldn’t do anything more. Later, the interpreter returned, and removed the cloth from my mouth. I was raped again, and I didn’t feel anything more. After that, another American came-his body was smaller than the first one’s. He tortured me with electricity until I lost consciousness."
"Now, I am sick, in the lungs, in the heart, and in the head. Sometimes my nose bleeds. When the weather changes, I look down, and I don’t go outside. Sometimes I just lie here, and I can’t breathe. Then they take me to the hospital. My fingers are very swollen and sometimes the nails fall out, from the electricity."
"In 1965 I was a beautiful woman, not like now. I am forty-five and I live alone, no parents, no brothers, no sisters, no husband. how can someone marry me? My father was killed by the Americans. My mother was killed by American bullets, shelled. My younger brother was killed."