This is Jane Fonda.
During my two week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I've had
the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number
of people from all walks of life--workers, peasants, students, artists
and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia
girls, members of the women's union, writers.
I visited the (Dam Xuac)
agricultural coop, where the silk worms are also raised and thread is
made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The
beautiful Temple of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and
heard songs of resistance. I also saw unforgettable ballet about the
guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy soldiers. The bees
were danced by women, and they did their job well.
In the shadow of the Temple of
Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act
of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, and this was very moving to me--the
fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays
while US imperialists are bombing their country.
I cherish the memory of the
blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of
their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam--these
women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but
who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good
fighters.
I cherish the way a farmer
evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation, offered me, an American, their
best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. The daughter
and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each others arms, cheek
against cheek. It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had
witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets-schools,
hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and the dike system.
As I left the United States two
weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the American people that he was
winding down the war, but in the rubble-strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his
words echoed with sinister (words indistinct) of a true killer. And like
the young Vietnamese woman I held in my arms clinging to me tightly--and
I pressed my cheek against hers--I thought, this is a war against
Vietnam perhaps, but the tragedy is America's.
One thing that I have learned
beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in this country is that Nixon
will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be
able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo-colony of the United
States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to
go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives
they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is
dropped only strengthens their determination to resist.
I've spoken to many peasants who
talked about the days when their parents had to sell themselves to
landlords as virtually slaves, when there were very few schools and much
illiteracy, inadequate medical care, when they were not masters of their
own lives.
But now, despite the bombs,
despite the crimes being created--being committed against them by
Richard Nixon, these people own their own land, build their own
schools--the children learning, literacy--illiteracy is being wiped out,
there is no more prostitution as there was during the time when this was
a French colony. In other words, the people have taken power into their
own hands, and they are controlling their own lives.
And after 4,000 years of
struggling against nature and foreign invaders--and the last 25 years,
prior to the revolution, of struggling against French colonialism--I
don't think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any
way, shape or form about the freedom and independence of their country,
and I think Richard Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history,
particularly their poetry, and particularly the poetry written by Ho Chi
Minh.
(1988) --
"I would like to say something,
not just to Vietnam veterans in New England, but to men who were in
Vietnam, who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of things
that I said or did," she began. "I was trying to help end the killing
and the war, but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless
about it and I'm . . . very sorry that I hurt them. And I want to
apologize to them and their families."
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and
conscientious stupidity."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
