A Conscientious Objector in a War Zone

[struggle4progress]

DOUGLAS HOSTETTER
JUNE 2, 2017

... The .. difficult decision .. was where to perform my civilian alternative service ... In 1966, I chose the Mennonite Central Committee in Tam Ky, South Vietnam, in the middle of the war zone ...

Working in Tam Ky, where I taught English to Vietnamese high school students while organizing literacy classes for refugee children, gave me a surprisingly intimate look at the war, one that challenged my preconceived ideas about both Americans and Vietnamese. Growing up in a small community where everyone I knew was Mennonite, I had expected that American soldiers in Vietnam would be mean, like the playground bullies occasionally found in even Mennonite communities. I was surprised to discover that the soldiers I met in Vietnam in the 1960s were nice, often kind people (in fact, despite the military’s manpower demands, applicants with antisocial history or criminal records were actually prohibited from serving). I was also surprised by how many G.I.s were black, or had Southern accents.

Later, when I grew to know some of the Vietnamese who were fighting the Americans, I was similarly surprised to learn that they also were good, often kind people. How could it be that nice young men from good homes in the United States and Vietnam were killing each other in this war? ...

I was surprised to learn that refugee parents put the education of their children as their top priority. The American war had destroyed the schools in the rural communities from which they had fled, and by the time I arrived in Tam Ky, their children had been out of school for two years. I realized that I was ill-equipped to teach refugee children how to read and write their own language, as I was just learning to speak Vietnamese myself. I was, however, able to use my connections in the local high schools, where I was teaching English as I was learning Vietnamese, to recruit high school students to volunteer to teach refugee children how to read and write their language ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/opinion/a-conscientious-objector-in-a-war-zone.html

[JayhawkSD]

1. Little known thing about the South

"I was also surprised by how many G.I.s were black, or had Southern accents."

Not sure if it still applies, probably not, but when I served (in the VietNam War era) the military was almost entirely Southerners, with some Midwestern thrown in. If you lived in the Deep South it was pretty much a given that you would serve in the military. Lack of economic opportunity was part of the reason for that, but by no means all of it. Enlisted military service was an honored tradition.

I served in the Navy, which had a somewhat higher proportion of Midwesterners. People who grew up near the sea tended not to join the Navy. (!!!) (My father was a career Air Force officer.)

East and West Coasters were present in the officer corps, but were virtually unheard of in the enlisted ranks.