Vietnam War Report; Godsell- Lee Lockwood

Vietnam war report this 30 minute program presented every week at this time as a consideration of one of the many aspects of the war in Southeast Asia. Sometimes through a speech sometimes through interviews or a documentary report prepared in Vietnam itself sometimes through a report of an event in this country or elsewhere pertaining directly to the war. A wide range of opinion and reaction to the Vietnam War is presented if not every week then over the course of several recent programs for example have featured George Kennan on the one hand and Senator Edward Brooke on the other presenting their quite divergent views of our involvement. Last week interviews with several of the American Quaker pacifists who recently transported medical supplies to North Vietnam aboard the phoenix of Hiroshima this week another firsthand American reaction to North Vietnam. Freelance photographer Levy Lockwood traveled throughout North Vietnam for 28 days from mid-February to mid-March. He was the first American photographer admitted to the country on a picture taking assignment.

The trip was made possible through Fidel Castro. Amanda Lockwood has come to know and has written about in a book entitled Castro's Cuba Cuba's Fidel published by Macmillan Lockwood's pictures of North Vietnam and some of his impressions were fully documented in a cover story for wife magazine last month. To learn more of his impressions Geoffrey Godso interviewed him recently in our studios. Mr. Lockwood I think many of us have gotten to know you through the remarkable pictures that were in Life magazine about a month ago pictures from North Vietnam all the more remarkable because it is unusual for American photographers to get in there. First of all how did you get permission to go to North Vietnam. Well Mr. Godzilla I I think it really came about fortuitously. I was in Cuba working on a on my book on Cuban Castro and I

made my application to the North Vietnamese embassy in Havana. It's the only embassy that they have in this hemisphere and apparently they the Embassador to have Anna checked with the Cuban authorities as to what record they had of me what knowledge they had. And I rather think that the reply came back favorable enough to make them feel that there wasn't too much risk in granting me a visa that I wouldn't come with a chip on my shoulder or that I wouldn't distort my report. I have to say that this is speculative because I don't really know but I assume that the Cubans did support my visa and the Cubans are very very staunch allies of the North Vietnamese is a great feeling of solidarity between the two countries. So I think it made a big difference. Now I think the important thing for those of us who can't go to North Vietnam and see for ourselves is to get some accurate estimate of what people there think and say. Do you feel that we're making

any big mistakes in our general assessment of the attitude of the North Vietnamese. I'm not talking so much about the government but of the people as a whole insofar as you can judge. Well I think we're making a serious and potentially fatal if you will a miscalculation in. Having taken the decision as I assume it has been taken now that we are able to bring those people to heel by by military means that is by stepping up the bombing in the north specifically we can bring them to the conference table by demoralizing them and all of my experience in traveling to North Vietnam. It makes me believe to the quite to the contrary that what we are doing in fact is welding them into more unity and more resistance and unifying the Disunited elements to the elements that were previously disunited so that I find very little likelihood of of negotiations happening

because of a stepping up of the bombing. I think the only way the negotiations probably is to stop the bombing. When people resist vigorously they're usually persuaded that they are fighting to defend themselves against something. Yes or to God something very precious that they have. What do you think the North Vietnamese feel that they are defending themselves against what you feel they think they are protecting. Well you know they they have a revolution successful revolution in North Vietnam which is that is they have a feeling of having achieved their own independence and created their own society and made it. What have been acknowledged to be very strong material gains very positive material gains in the economy and they feel they take the position of the people as well as the leaders take the position that it is that the United States is opportunistically trying to take this away from them.

They can't see the situation the way we see it all the way. They don't. They feel that we are intruders and that we are threatening their very the most precious thing that they have as their own independence their ability to to govern themselves and to create their own society and they do feel that they are Vietnamese South and North Vietnamese as one ethnic group and one country and they wish very much to be united with their brethren in the south. What about the American bombing. Were you in any cities or in any places when there were air attacks on them or on something near them. Yes I was. I was. I witnessed several attacks and I was even under attack a couple of times. One very astonishing. The event took place in the very late at night when I was travelling on a

road going south from non-doing towards Tung WA which is about 140 miles south of Hanoi and the beginning of the panhandle the beginning of the year the vital attack area. The seventh fleet is controlling now. We were travelling through pure countryside under of fairly bright moon and we've been going along for a couple of hours and I was lulled by the jogging of the jeep and suddenly a kind of a shadow was across the road in front of the jeep and I suddenly saw and heard simultaneously a stick of six bombs being dropped very close by and a rocket and a lot of tracers cannons. And when I had I raced for shelter and when I finally pulled myself pulled pulled myself together. I looked around and I couldn't see anything in the way of a target that could conceivably.

Have been the focus of this bombing I don't know what the plane was after. In daylight I saw a good deal of bombing around time specifically around the time wrong bridge which is a vital link for transport on the main road south and this bridge has never been bombed out in spite of the fact that it's been attacked dozens and dozens of times and it's very heavily defended. I saw an American plane go down during one of the attacks as well. Well when you say it's going to be involved that is not because the bombs missed every time they the whatever it is they've apparently the bombs have missed. They've tried to attack it but not only by bombing but strafing by mining the river beneath it. Very sophisticated kinds of mines that look apparently alike to Lybia machines and programmed to go off in different ways and.

I don't really know why it hasn't been destroyed except for the fact that there's a it's. It has a lot of natural protection. The approach to it is through a valley made by ridges and stone ridges. And there was there a SAM sites there apparently and a great deal of anti aircraft to support it. I gather from what you said a little earlier that you feel that the bombing is unwise. But given that it's taking place what is your assessment of the validity. Should we say of the targets that are chosen by the Americans to bomb. Well it's difficult for me to deliver a definitive estimate of that because first of all I'm not a military expert and and secondly my tour of Vietnam to North Vietnam was limited by circumstances and by the fact that I was accompanied by the

Foreign Ministry person whenever I traveled and so on. Given those limitations however I did see a great deal of evidence of bombing much of it directed against the road and rail lines. In those cases I would say it has been affected in a limited way. That is to say the bombs have fallen on the roads and on the railroads. We've bombed out trains we bombed out every single bridge that I that I came to on the whole route south without exception small and large but the bridges are always replaced by other bridges whether makeshift or semi permanent structures. The roads are repaired continually as fast as they are bombed and the same with the railroads. To a lesser extent. And so I found that that there was a great deal of traffic moving along these roads at all times in spite of the fact that they're being bombed continually and all the traffic is slowed down immensely. There's such a quantity of it and it seems like such

an unending affair that I can't see that ultimately we are doing much good or that we can do much more than we have done in the way of trying to bomb these these supply links. But more alarming to me in my limited experience was the evidence of bombing of civilian areas. I mean purely civilian areas. By conventional weaponry that is to say in food relief for example which is a small city about 65 kilometers south of Hanoi that's that is a town which has been completely taken off the map. There is no life there anymore. There used to be I think something like 70000 people living there. Nom din is the used to be the third largest city in Hanoi and it has been almost total I'm sorry in North Vietnam and it too has been almost totally taken out. You walk through the streets of the civilian

areas far from the railroad yards or the main highway and you find blocks upon blocks upon blocks of houses just bombed apparently repeatedly not just once. And then in a more alarming to me other areas I visited which are so far from the main lines and so patently civilian areas which also have been bombed. For example there was a village in Taipan province which is in the Red River delta area southeast of Hanoi. A well off the main route in fact the village I visited I had to walk two miles to get to. It was a very small hamlet actually not even a village. And this had been bombed. According to the people had been bombed by two American planes during the day the school was destroyed and

about 45 people were killed. I walked through the village and all around it in the village is nothing but mud huts and all around it are nothing but rice fields. And I saw several other instances of this. Now you can be skeptical to a certain extent you can say well I'm there there may be pilot error involved in one of one or another of these cases or. Maybe some planes were attacked by Mazen had to jettison their bombs as our Pentagon has explained away some of the instances. But when you see enough of it the evidence begins to accrue. To make one believe that there has been selective bombing of civilian areas and this is even further supported in my mind by the evidence as I saw of the use of a.. Person no bombing. Again in areas which were not apparently military target areas it is villages outside of cities

in rural surroundings where we have used these pellet bombs and which do not have any effect on steel and concrete I think is the phrase the catch phrase that Pentagon is used. I think they are being used to demoralize the populace and that is the hope. That is I would say that in a in a selective way we are trying to bomb the populace and to make them understand that their lives are at stake and we can we can kill them all at any time and therefore they should give up. So far as you could judge what is the average man or woman this reaction to the bombing is such bitterness fury. Well. Of. Course I am limited by the fact that I don't speak Vietnamese and and also by great cultural differences that is Vietnamese doesn't his face doesn't look the same when he has an emotion similar to mine I think I've. I found this out enough times to realize that there are essential ethnic and cultural differences between the

Vietnamese whom I would meet in me. But I found a surprising lack of this anger or reproach on the part of people whom I met even when they were under bombardment. Perhaps there's a certain strain of fatalism which is inherent in oriental people which is not inherent which is not germane. To people I know in the West. It is to my experience. But I found that I was accepted for example although I was an American in extremely friendly circumstances and that people always made a big difference the essential differentiation between myself as an American and the government of my country. The latter being the one which is carrying out a war which they hate and the Americans themselves being supposedly friends of the Vietnamese and fighting a heroic struggle

to overcome the imperialistic policies of their government. What about life in the life in Hanoi. Is there more or less the normal rhythm of life. One of the things in your pictures that caught my eye and fascinated me were these little individual air raid shelters which seem to be in the sidewall. Yes they're like they're like manholes almost They're about the size and shape of manholes and they have covers like manhole covers too. Well certainly this is and this is an essential feature of the. I'm of the view of. Hanoi and other cities that you get when you and when you visit there and they are used during alerts. But the amazing thing to me is that the. The small amount of essential change

at least in my opinion that the Vietnamese have had to make in their daily lives in spite of the fact that they are under attack. They seem to have been able to make enormous adjustments was with a great deal of grace and calm and to go on living their lives quite normally just simply making allowances for the fact that if there was an alert they must go to a shelter. But if there is no alert they they simply go about their daily tasks. They have had to change their schedules of work they have had to change their schedules when stores are open the times of day and they can't congregate in large numbers and so on. But the spirit of the people the feeling that you get life in especially in the cities and even Well even more so in the countryside is one of great tranquility. And I found it myself quite difficult to make contact with this world when I first arrived because because of the calmness of the daily life.

I believe that you talk to the prime minister of North Vietnam. That's correct. Did he have anything to say that struck you it struck you as being particularly significant. Well. I think that most of what he had to say was what he had already said to others. I felt I felt that there was a great deal of sincerity in the way he said what he had to say. I feel for example that that his voicing of the North Vietnamese and. The insistence that the bombing must stop before there can be negotiations was a genuine pronunciation and you know this is the kind of perception you get from talking to a person you and you may be fooled he may not be. I don't think I was and I think that he

there was. An enormous amount of personal involvement in this idea that in other words as a spokesman for the North Vietnamese I feel he he got the point across that they feel that they have been that they are morally right themselves and that that justice is on their side and that world opinion will ultimately ultimately be on their side and as a matter of time for us the Americans to wake up to that fact and to come to terms with it and that they will not retreat from their from the position which they have taken. So I think that's the most essential thing that he had to say really which is not new in essence but I felt it much more strongly than I believed it before. Some people have said particularly after President whoas reply to Mr. Johnson's laying there that there may be as it were a theological objection or theological in possibility which prevents their accepting the principle of negotiations. If those

negotiations did not seem to be. Dealings which would lead in effect to their getting exactly what they want. Well when you say theological you don't mean religious to you that I mean you know I mean trying doctrinaire Yes yes. Ideologically speaking yes. Well I I agree with this in part I think that that they place a great deal of emphasis on moral rectitude. It is the morality of their position is uppermost and along with this idea is the is the concept which is built and I think to the Oriental mind that you cannot lose face by going against your principles by retreating from your principles for tactical reasons. And perhaps we have failed to understand this fully. You know it is my opinion and it's only my opinion really but substantiated by conversations with diplomats in Hanoi

in the both Western and communist and by some experiences that I had with North Vietnamese that when they made their the only real proposal they have made and it was refused to stop the bombing we will negotiate. When I made this proposal in January they were at a point where they really wanted to negotiate. The French ambassador and the Cuban ambassador and various other diplomatic people and Hanoi seem to agree that in fact the decision to make this move to offer something even though they feel that they don't need to offer anything being morally right in the first place represented the result of a great deal of discussion in the Council of Ministers. And in fact. Discussion in which the more moderate elements won out over the more hawkish elements. So that these moderate elements in fact went out on a

limb as it were and took a chance on losing face and being slapped in the face and that that in fact is what we did by ignoring the PO's look for us and then finally refusing it. And this was a moment also when the Chinese situation was really most inflamed most difficult time when the North Vietnamese could count at least on the Chinese and the Soviet Union was stepping up its pressure to have to help negotiations along. And I think if we if indeed we really want to negotiate and I think you know you can make a case for the fact that we might not have wanted to negotiate but if we did we missed the chance right then and there the best chance that we've had. If I remember rightly from the Life magazine article. You weren't allowed to photograph some of the American prisoners but the North Vietnamese took your camera and did. And again if I remember rightly they did produce commander scratch. That's right you know. Or a man who they said was a man. Well he has been verified as being Commander STRATTON No

question about that. Do you have any any comments on that there's been speculation and observations on it things have been written in the press. Is there anything further on that in the light of what has been said since you and the photos were published. If you'd like to say only this. Everybody I talked to in Hanoi who either had been there at the event or who knew about it was astonished at my reaction. Or at the idea that the insinuation that perhaps there had been some kind of brainwashing going on I think I indicated in my description of the event that this possibility occurred to me and drugging as another possibility. I'm not expert enough to know when I see a man who's been either brainwashed or drugged whether in fact that's the problem. The only thing that I can add is the really the shock on the part of the people I talked to who. Supposedly are in a position to know

something about the way prisoners are being treated who maintain spite of what I related that the. That the North Vietnamese have been treating our American prisoners carefully and rather well considering their status in the circumstances and in fact much better than the South Vietnamese were treating the Vietcong prisoners and that they have been doing so because they they want to abide by international laws. Again it's a moral position. They want to use them for negotiating purposes when it when as and if we get to the point of negotiation and and so I tend to disbelieve that. And he's classical brainwashing was used although the man certainly had in my opinion undergone undergone some privation perhaps a great deal of solitary confinement some psychological impetus to cooperate. And the only other thing I'd like to add to that to Mr. Godso is that the one thing I

didn't know at the time and that is that the the traditional way for Vietnamese to apologize for when he has wronged someone deeply sorry is ceremonial he appears before the that person or those people and he bows. And the North Vietnamese apparently expected this to have a great deal of positive effect upon American public opinion this man was was bowing before these people whom he had wronged. And in fact they miscalculated again for cultural reasons because of the differences in our two cultures and their lack of understanding of what our reaction might be. And you come on to strengthen though that he was in the presence of an American. Oh I'm sure he did not. I don't think he knew where he was really. But there's no question of recognition. No I was very close to him and I tried my best to catch his eye. I was trying to photograph him I was trying to watch him at the same time and I was also trying to catch his eye. And I was as close as I am to you now and most of the time and then when he left he

walked right by me. And still gave no recognition cause I don't look particularly American or not American so how they ask you not to speak to him they had not they had not asked me not to speak to him. I didn't do so for diplomatic reasons. Jeffrey Godso interviewing freelance photographer Leah Lockwood about his journey two months ago to North Vietnam. Well awkward pictures appeared as a cover story in Life magazine last month. His impressions and experiences in North Vietnam were recorded in our WGBH studios earlier this month. This has been Vietnam War report a weekly look at one of the many aspects of the war in Southeast Asia. Next week at the same time we hear the reactions of a senior class of a Massachusetts girls school. After a week of intensive study of Vietnam. The girls from the Pingree school of Hamilton Massachusetts were given a full week of lectures movies and discussions. On the final day George

watch of the Harvard Business School and son of Henry Cabot Lodge until very recently the American ambassador to Vietnam addressed them and moderated a panel discussion. Five physicians were represented on the panel that of Premier key of the men of President Johnson of the National Liberation Front and of Senator Fulbright. The girls were asked to adopt one of these positions and then to defend it as best they could. You can hear the results next week at the same time on the war report. This is Crocker snow speaking for the next few moments until time for our next program. Some songs recorded in Saigon at a joint Vietnamese American hootenanny between Betty and I get you.