University of Southern California
DAILY • TROJAN
VOL. LXII
NO. 56
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1970
LINEUP IN THE RAIN
Students endure showers during registration
Photo by Don Wallace
‘WAR IN WASHINGTON1
Lane cites war criminals
By DEBBIE WILLIAMS
Author Mark Lane charged that the “real war criminals are those who live in Washington. D C. and have violated every judgment made at Nuremberg" when he spoke to students yesterday using information from some 300 interviews he has taken from Vietnam war veterans.
From the interviews he conducted, Lane said he learned of more than 100 massacres that the men he talked with saw or participated in.
“The President has assured us that the My Lai incident was an isolated event,” said Lane. “It is curious to establish the President as an authority on the subject. He evidentally didn't know it had happened for a year.”
“The real experts are the men who have been to Vietnam.” he continued, “and they are anxious to talk.”
Lane related the story of a war veteran who described the total massacre and destruction of a Vietnamese town. His company was sent out on a search and destroy mission—iheir job to make the area look as if it had never been inhabited.
In the course of the mission, about 25 women and children were killed, the soldier personally responsible for the murder of one woman whom he had stared at with a deep sense of guilt and sorrow moments before the M-16 went off in his hands.
The soldier watched chunks of flesh and skull fly before the bulldozer arrived to clean up, which consisted of digging up the street, pushing the bodies into a trench, burying and pouring lime over them. The bulldozer leveled the standing foundations. Mission accomplished.
The company sergeant ordered the men to “get it out of your head. It never happened.” None did, three went insane.
There will never be a trial for such actions initiated by the American government, said Lane. Contrarily, “they point the finger at a few guilty people like Michael Galley.”
Lane called the use of M-16s a war crime. He reiterated the Dec. 7 testimony at the hearing of Calley by army pathologist Major Charles Lane who said a weapon of this type causes fragmentary injury and is easily recognizable even from photographs of wounds.
Firing M-16s by Americans is a violation of international law which states that the use of a bullet that strikes a bone, tissue or organ, and fragments it, is an illegal act.
“The war criminals are Johnson. Humphrey, Nixon, McNamara, the joint chiefs of staff, Westmoreland, major industries which supply war efforts and others," Lane firmly stated.
(Continued on page 8)
Staff defends hospital care
By MORI TAWARA and SHARON HASS
Members of the Resident Intern Association of County-USC Medical Center have strongly denied the charges that patients at the hospital are dying from neglect and lack of medical care.
The charges made by Dr. David Gans, a resident at the hospital, appeared in yesterday's issue of the Los Angeles Times.
Dr. M. L. Ozohan. a resident of the hospital, said that Dr. Gans and those associated with him represent only a small percentage of the medical ward staff.
Dr. Ozohan, joined by Doctors R. Levine and J. Hollinshead. feels that though the hospital has certain problems, they are more administrative than medical.
Medically speaking, the hospital is considered by many to be one of the finest in the fields of research and acute traumatic treatment, said Ozohan.
The doctors agreed upon the fact that no patient is allowed to go untreated for any length of time, in fact the hospital has expanded its emergency facilities to include a 24-hour staff.
Even in the medical wards, said Dr. Hollinshead, the treatment is available on a round-the-clock basis.
The doctors point to certain charges that have been made in the last year against the hospital and feel they must dispute the charges by Dr. Gans. The impetus for most of the charges was a suit filed by the doctors and nurses themselves last year against the hospital in lieu of crowding.
One of the more noticeable changes has been the reduction of patients in the medical ward, many of whom have been transferred to private facilities.
The hospital claims that in November of last year the number of patients admitted per month was 566. However, this past November the amount was down to 462.
The hospital now has facilities to treat the large influx of alcohol and drug patients they receive.
The doctors claim that patients are never turned away for lack of money, a situation that many private hospitals have caused, and that though the hospital is not as aesthically pleasing as Cedars or UCLA, the service is more than comparable.
The majority of the staff of the medical ward disclaim any prior knowledge of Dr. Gans’ remarks. Many of the doctors said that Gans has little to complain about since he is not always on a 24-hour shift.
The doctors acknowledge the fact of dying patients, but for reasons that are beyond medical help. They said that X-rays, or the lack of them immediately, will not save a hemorrhaging patient.
According to Dr. Hollingshead, much of what Dr. Gans said was taken out of context. However, Hollingshead does admit that Gans represents a faction of the hospital staff.
The executive director of the hospital, David Odell, compiled a formal statement representing the administrative view.
“A number of measures have been taken during the past year to relieve overcrowding in the medical wards and to improve the quality of care in the Medical Center,” he said. “These include the establishment of 70 beds at Rancho Los Amigos Hospital for the direct transfer of drug abuse patients from the Medical Center.
“A total of 106 beds were opened at Long Beach General for alcoholics sent directly from the center. Seventeen beds were established at John Wesley Hospital to permit transfer of hepatitis patients.
“Architectural plans are underway and construction funds are budgeted for a 50-bed observation ward in the General Hospital. This will permit observation of patients up to a 24-hour period and will have a direct effect in relieving admissions to the medical wards.	(Continued on page 2)
Farm Workers’ goal—keep union alive
By ROSELLE VELLIS
The Free Cesar Chavez rally, originally planned for noon Wednesday in front of Tommy Trojan, was cancelled because of rain.
The rain, however, didn't seem to dampen Dolores Huerta's spirits. She, like the other 7.000 farm workers participating in the lettuce boycott have unceasing hope that their efforts above all will determine if their union will survive, and if Cesar Chavez will be released from prison.
Mrs. Huerta, the chief negotiator for the lettuce boycott, spoke of Chavez and the farm workers yesterday in the Student Union.
According to Mrs. Huerta, the lettuce boycott that now prevails over the Salinas Valley, from Gilroy to Santa Ria. is a result of one thing—court injunctions. The injunctions have forbidden workers to strike, to gather more than 35 people together in one place, and to boycott.
The workers feel that if they give in
to what they feel is a planned strategy by growers to keep them powerless then they will never have a union.
Every contract they have been able to obtain has been a result of their previous boycott. This is the reason Cesar Chavez has given for not calling off the boycott as he was ordered.
Chavez was arrested, served a three day sentence because his people could not put up a $2 million bail bond, and is now serving an indefinite sentence until he calls off the boycott.
Mrs. Huerta said that the farm workers have one goal, to keep their union going, to better their lives a little and to decrease the racial intolerance that exists on the part of farm growers.
Mrs. Huerta said that there has always been a need for the Farm Workers' Union.
“The people work nine to 12 hours a day and make about $1.20 per hour." she said. “They live in very bad conditions. They work on a timed schedule and if they can t keep up. they are
fired. A worker picks about six tons of grapes a day. It is backbreaking and inhuman. People should not have to work this hard. And if you go into the fields and see these people, it makes you sick.
“There are supposed to be laws against children working but you see them in the fields. There are supposed to be toilets in the fields by law. but there are none. Many of our laws are no good because they are not being administered."
In spite of her depressing description of the lives of farm workers, Mrs. Huerta said the people have positive feelings. They never get depressed because they know the only way they can go is up. she said.
Mrs. Huerta felt that if the farm workers can win in the Salinas Valley, it will also end servitude for a lot of people in Imperial Valley. Arizona. Tiexas and Colorado. In the last three places, it is against the law to even picket.
Mrs. Huerta said that in Salinas there has been a 24 hour vigil in front of the jail that houses Chavez and 300 other prisoners. She said the boycott has been a success in most of the major cities.
Mrs. Huerta said that consumer pressure has had an effect on the success of the boycott. She asked people to help by picketing and boycotting stores that don't carry the interharvested lettuce with the seal of the bla^k eagle, denoting the United Farfn Workers of America.	!
In asking for help through the boycott. Mrs. Huerta said “I know it is hard work, but how many millions and millions of steps did it tak,e until we won the grape strike?	1
“We asked for elections and they refused us. They are afraid of us because we are powerful and they (the growers) know that if we organize and become strong, we will be politically active and they don't want that. I know that the people can work miracles. It has happened before."