College
The University of Oregon, where I was from ‘68 to about 1970. I think was like any or many college campuses during the war. There were protests that were going on. The feeling amongst, I would say, a good number of students. I don’t know that I should say majority, but certainly many students was one, which was anti-war. I have some very vivid memories being in a class called Film As Literature. I was an English major in college. And class in Film As Literature was meeting one night. And there had been, there was a radical element on campus. This group called the SDS or the Students for Democratic Society was the radical element. And at some point, during the protestations that were going on, some members of SDS were thrown in jail in Eugene. And they came storming through the lecture hall and said so-and-so and so-and-so of the SDS had been thrown in jail. We want everybody to march to the Eugene Jail now. And the professor basically said, “Well I’m suspending class. And I’m going to be marching and you all can do what you want.” Being young and nineteen years of age and impressionable, I followed the crowd.
A Taste of Home
From what I’ve read in my own “research and studies.” I would say probably ’65, ‘66 there was general support for the war, but as the war began to come home. And, has been said by people far more astute than me, when people in middle America started to see the coffins coming and the increase in reportage on the war, I think that’s when things began to turn. There are countless stories I’ve heard some, because most of my friends these days and people that I know professionally, are Vietnam Veterans. My own internist, Dr. Jean Fishman, tells a story of when he was in Vietnam, ‘66 and ‘67, which would have predated the Tet Offensive. Being told by a cousin of his, who had come back earlier, “Be careful when you come back to the world because the protestors are spitting on the GI’s.” Here’s a man who was a captain in the US army, flies home to Travis Air Force Base gets a bus to San Francisco, goes into the bathroom at the Greyhound bus station, takes off his uniform and throws it in the trash can. Puts on civvies, civilian clothes, and flies home to Los Angeles. To me, there’s something inherently sad about an officer in the US army having to do something like that. And I think that the American public today, with another Vietnam Veteran says “newer sabers rattling.” learned its lesson from that. Thank God I never was one to disrespect a person in uniform or doing any spitting or anything like that.
Television War
I’m not so sure that 1968 was the demarcation point. I think 1968 did affect people in the country because remember this was the first basically television war. The war was brought home basically to us here in the United States because the journalists, whether TV, print, radio still photographers had unfettered access. They never had it before to that extent and they’ve never had it since. ‘68 itself was if I think of the whole war, all year was certainly a pivotal year in the war. Not only did you have the Tet Offensive, where for the first time, people saw the American Embassy being overrun by the Viet Cong. You had the President of the United States, Lyndon Johnson, in his famous speech in March 1968. Telling the American public that he wouldn’t seek, and he wouldn’t run for another term as President of the United States. And I can remember distinctly saying, “All this is great. The war will be over before I graduate from high school.” And of course that wasn’t the case; technically speaking, went on for another seven years until April 30th, 1975.