story. and every time i thought, okay, this is the last time i'm going back. is it i'm in the middle of another project or two with cambodia and it's never ending. of course, it had it's beyond deep. it's beyond. and the funniest thing was when my not that long, my daughter said she's the mother. and she said, mom, it took me forever to realize that. the other kids weren't raised thinking. that it's really scary to. be around the khmer rouge and i had no idea that my son once said, that's my pop's idea of a great summer vacation. auschwitz. the only time for more formal thanks later but incredible thanks to the panel. thanks to all you for being here. special thanks for me to the carnegie corporation in new york that makes so much of this work possible. thank you all for being here.

and. will, we want to make sure everyone can hear the proceedings. so we begin now. the fifth panel. and this one is dedicated to the sounds and images of an era. and i think most of us would agree if we can acknowledge that vietnam war was in many ways tragic and a failure in a whole host of ways, i think most of us would also acknowledge that something terribly right happened around cultural production that the music of that era continues to stay with us. we're going to talk about why

that what is it about the enduring value, quality of of cultural production during the vietnam years that has been so important and of enduring value in our society? today, our panelists consists of experts and people who have points of view on issues related to poetry, photography and music so rather than as the other in the panels, we mixed it up a bit. we're going to stay more each person a little bit longer because want to talk about those subjects. and that's why the format of the will be a little bit different. let introduce our panelists and we'll get started our first panelist is john balaban, who is professor emeritus of english at nc state. john is the award winning author of 13 books of poetry and prose, a translate later of vietnamese poetry and co-founder of the vietnamese, now preserved asian foundation. a remarkable story he'll tell us about own engagement in vietnam and how it came. mark godfrey, photojournalist for ap life and time magazine's.

mark covered the war in vietnam and cambodia and later worked for numerous international magazines on that included coverage of the first gulf war. loren on key director of the corcoran school of arts and design and professor of music at the george washington university, and in an earlier incarnation in her career, she was at the rock and roll hall of and knows a lot about the music. we're going to talk about and then my good friend marcus sullivan, vietnam vet and close friend of michael o'donnell, was himself the subject of in that time michael o'donnell in the tragic era of vietnam. mark has served in vietnam. marcus was, a musician, still is. and through that experience and can talk to us about that as well. so i'd like to begin by talking imagery. vietnam was the first war that was televised. most of us who lived through it remember seeing on television every day that was different from other wars. it was not movietone news that we were experiencing, but

something much more direct and profound. and mark, you're an image maker. you spent your time during this period capturing images. can you talk a little bit about your own work as a photographer? what drew you to this kind of work and how saw images in forming public opinion about the war? well, first of all, let me say i feel to be on these panels with all these people who are just you, such experts. this. i'm just a photographer. i'm not an expert on the vietnam war. i was there from the summer of 69 until the end of 72, and then i returned 75 and covered the fall of cambodia and, then the fall of vietnam. i'm not one of when i was young, a young newspaper photographer. and for me, the war actually started in 1968 when i got clubbed by the chicago police covering the democratic convention. and so this is interesting. let's see what was going on in the world and decide to go to

vietnam 69 and freelance. i wasn't one of the naive young photographers had a number of years newspaper experience who believed that pictures were going to. still, pictures are going to end wars, although i thought that they needed to be documented. and certainly vietnam was most documented war. this country's ever fought. a couple of reasons for that. one was just total access photographers had to vietnam. all you have to do is arrive there with a letter from your newspaper or from some agency and go to b and pow and get a credential. then you could go out and work your way, a helicopter or, you know, a truck, a jeep, or whatever it took to get some action. the photographers. and there were hundreds of photographers who covered vietnam. photographers were basically the grunts of the news media. you know, you couldn't cover it if you you could take pictures sitting in saigon, going to the going to the follies.

you had to get out of the field and cover the cover, the operations, and you had to depend upon journalists to tell you give you some sort of idea what was going on in the field, what maybe those operations were. and then you would try and figure out how to get there. and when you'd get there, you tried to get support from the local field commander or whatever. and oftentimes go into a battle zone on a medevac because going in, they were empty coming out. they were full. so getting sometimes is a little more difficult. and so that's basically how you it. my when i originally went there i was freelancing i did some work for the new york times sunday magazine, vietnamization, covering the harbin three army of south vietnam training. and in there action in the trying to get some idea of what was going on there. and then i also covered nixon's trip to thailand. but at the same time and then i came back and horse fast

approached me and asked if i wanted to join the photo staff for the ap and and i must say, i had a great admiration for. the work that the wire services did in. vietnam. i followed the work of photographers like ari hewitt and kiyoshi sawada of upi and horace foss and others with the wires seeing, their work not only published in newspapers a daily basis, but also in life magazine and some others. and so i accepted that. and for about a year and a half i was with the ap in the saigon bureau covering things during that period, as been talked about. sihanouk was overthrown by long haul in cambodia. so i merely snuck into cambodia. you see him right. and for three months covered the cambodia war which was really a wake up for me because was such an incredibly dangerous situation. the khmer rouge ruthless, you got caught by the khmer rouge. you weren't coming back. and so and the only way to cover

the war was to drive down some road and figure out where something was going on or find some unit action that was happening. there was no advisors. there was nobody telling you, well, go here, we're going to have this going to do this battle. we're going to do that. and so you go down that road, sometimes you'd run into a roadblock that wasn't friendly. and if you were quick, you got out of there. was there any direct oversight or control of of what you were able to see and do as a photographer and your bosses care? i mean, did they. there was no censorship. you were free to do what you wanted to do or what you were dumb enough to do or smart enough to do. and so you did. and hard. and that was that's why that was so well documented by all those photographers. and i have to admit, there's some great photography for you've covered that war. i mean, i think you know, i mentioned fosse and andre was sort of of course, we all remember the i images from the

war, starting with malcolm browne's picture of the monks burning himself to death in saigon early on. and then later john alston's picture, life showing the wounded in soldiers coming out of the caisson battle on top of a tank. but then, particularly the eddie adams picture of long shooting the viet cong suspect, which was a kind sticks out of mine and that after that there good picture of the napalm with the girl who had been burned by napalm. what i find interesting about, iconic pictures that oftentimes they happen at a moment which resonate with public opinion. and so during a up till 68, public opinion, i think was of mixed. in fact, i think a lot of press corps was not necessarily anti-war a lot of them were not necessarily pro-war either, but they were sort of agnostic on the war. and but coming case with a ted of 68. a lot of that changed.

and so people were suddenly shocked, been told that the war was coming down, we were winning, and suddenly this huge offensive happened. and while in some ways it was a it was a great loss them for the viet cong and that it didn't look that way. it was a propaganda victory. and of course, eddie's picture of the killing, the shooting, the street of the viet cong suspect happened right at the right moment. and so it captured people's attention. and i think that was true later in 72 with the dakota picture, the napalm girl. it just happened that that offensive to me too. so there wasn't control exerted on on how to make the pictures and where you could go but was there controlling asserted or censorship over how where it but that next picture for example was very controversial and there was much discussion about not airing it at all. well think that there was in various there newspapers that would not publish certain and there was a certain about

publishing pictures of wounded american and so forth that might identify them. and some of that's understandable. yeah. and so there was that. but the fact of the matter is that you can write a story and, things will get changed around a bit. but if you took a picture and it was published, it was published. you know, this was a period today you look at pictures and you can't be sure if they're real or not. but back then if you saw a picture, it was real. it was didn't it wasn't necessarily evocative of the reality of the situation. it was a real picture, a real moment. and so i think that's that's true. there wasn't. so i think, you know, the wire services out pictures and certain newspapers would run them certain history or say, oh, no, that's we run that. so there's that sort. but there was no censorship on the ground about. what did you think as photographers, the disconnect between the kinds of images that you were making and what the government leaders were saying about the war and how did that work for you? i don't really think about that

too much because i discovered pretty quickly it was war and, you know, they they talk about the fog war. and i think that's really true that i think photographs have a tendency to show oftentimes horror of war while on the other hand maybe there's some aspect of the situation which pictures don't really reveal. i mean pictures are they aren't necessarily truth is a good distinction. you're a still photographer, but can you say something about the role of television? well, of course, television as television became more and more in the homes, you know, people like cronkite. and so forth. but i point out one thing, one interesting thing, talking about edie adams picture of the killing of the viet cong suspect there, an nbc film crew there who filmed whole thing as well. and everybody it it was shown on tv, but nobody remembers it but

they remember it. hmm. right. an interesting period. thank. well, let's turn briefly to let's turn to music. loren. we can all, as i said earlier, that this was a period of creativity. can you say something about the movement vietnam era music and how that genre came be that? what motivated it and what a little bit of a history about that. sure. and it's it's vast, actually. and i was obviously not in vietnam, was born in 1963, and my earliest memory about vietnam is that everybody at the dinner table was yelling. my older with my parents and i remember, sir, why is everybody yelling about whatever this this thing is? and the music seemed to reflect some of that and i think for myself help me figure it. but when we were really looking at the war is represented in popular music, and by that i mean rock and roll country soul

music. it it starts pretty early in the sixties. we go well into the seventies. we think of it. i think often with rock and roll and anti-war war music, something like country joe in this fish feel like i'm fixing to die. or or crosby stills nash and young, ohio. after kent state. but in the sixties really beginning. 6566. you start to see a lot of songs about the war in soul and country music that are pro-war, the sense of country or neutral, what country and soul really is. they're describing the war as a kind of experience of everyday life. my boyfriend's gone, my husband's gone. i'm off to war. there's this sense that the war is in people's lives. the soul group, the dells. does anyone know? i'm here, you know, there's this. so popular music being used to

of make sense of this experience that's getting bigger and bigger. of course, the ballad of the green beret is a huge one hit in 1966. so it's not you know, there's scores of these songs at this point and some really great archival pride pulling them all together. but some of the ones i'm most interested in are big hits. you know, you're hearing them on and radio, you're hearing them at the in your car, you're hearing them at the auto body shop. they're they're around are very much a presence. so what we see is is pop music as a place as. it always is. i think for us to figure ourselves, figure ourselves out. you're also seeing obviously the protest music. phil ochs i ain't marching. pete seeger bring them home, you know, so it's it's really across board. and then by the later sixties you start to see the antiwar songs emerging. i think one of the most

compelling and i've been thinking about it all day today is, the bob seeger system's two plus two equals question mark, which was not really a hit. i think it did okay in detroit, but it it it it's it's the speaker of the song is going to go to war doesn't know why isn't even necessarily protesting but is saying this doesn't make sense. people are making decisions that are affecting my life what going on two plus two is not equaling logic here so i think you know these are these are little two minute songs but you know pop, rock and roll had emerged in the fifties here. it was in the sixties record companies were bigger and the baby boom had sort of taken taken forms. and you just see see vietnam kind of all over popular music in that period. as you say, there is an

alignment between the kind of war music or antiwar that was being produced with the that were happening in vietnam. and i guess the question is to what extent of the musical movement shaped the political or public movement, or was it the other way around? that's always a question, right, dan is is, you know, whether or not our art is i mean, i think it's a dialog. it's what we're experiencing. i think we like to think that the music that's speaking for us is having an effect. i don't know. but certain certainly i think for a lot of people at that time, the music really carried a lot of meaning. we were just talking a wonderful book called we got to get out of this place by, doug bradley and craig werner about. music that people listen to who were in vietnam soldiers nurses. and those songs weren't necessary about the war. but like, we got to out of this place, like nancy sinatra's

these boots are made for walkin like bobby bears, detroit, roxy, which is not about vietnam, but has that chorus of, you know, i want to go home, become vietnam song. so i think for me, what's interesting is the way an audience will take a song and use it for, what it needs and whether a marching song or a political song really see that? that's a great point. can you say something about the what we might call the exceptionalism, the vietnam moment around music? there isn't, for instance, a body of music around the korean war? and there isn't a body of music around afghanistan war or iraq. even though those were controversial. but what was it about this moment that produced this extraordinary body of material? yeah, i mean, there was a fair amount of music around iraq. i think the music landscape has changed in the sense that, you know, you've got the explosion of the internet, you've got fragmentation of audience and in a way that i think in the

sixties and early seventies, you had some more calm. now, at least some things would be more widely. and i think it has something to do with the boomer generation, that kind of popular music, right? i mean, rock and roll is not the dominant form of popular anymore. hasn't been for a long time. hip hop is now 50 years old. so it was at a moment when that form i think, had had tremendous, tremendous power. and and again, i think to me a little bit of a story that can be told more in keith's reference this earlier soul music's role in articulating the relationship between black vets. black soldiers experience in vietnam and what is happening at home is profound. i think the most important musical creation during the viet, during and about the vietnam is marvin gaye's album what's going on, which is written in part is his response to his brother frankie,

returning from vietnam to detroit and facing discrimination and lack of ability to get jobs, and kent state and jackson state, which had happened right around the time kent state. and if you listen to that album and if you've never heard it, you're in for treat. if you haven't heard it for a very long, sit and listen to that. a whole piece of music where marvin gaye was really able to deal with that kind of intersectionality of being anti-war. but equally critical of what is happening in cities here. but i think it's that mash cause and the value of that art form at that moment. that's a great answer. thank you. as you think about that body of what other what other artists come to mind is the most perhaps the most enduring interest or importance in the field of music from the period? well that's a really good look like a rock and roll hall of

fame question. that's a rock and roll hall of fame question. you know i think i think of it as more sort of individual songs. i mean, i'll go back to crosby, stills, nash and young's ohio. you know, that's written 11 days after the shootings on campus and gets recorded really quickly and released quickly, kind of almost at the speed of the internet in that way. and i think that song having that visceral, emotional presentation is is a lasting piece. and and on the countryside. merle has an incredible song. 71 or 72 written in the voice of a p.o.w. saying you know, does anyone remember that here? and as i to those songs again the stories that they tell the craft and songwriter is is really powerful and devastating. so i keep going back to soul and particularly marvin gaye. but those are some other records

that i think tell stories that maybe we wanted. we didn't want to hear, you know, that music an immediate effect. and from what can recall, it was very popular, very quickly, even though it might have been controversial. is that right, that it was the audiences expanding very quickly for that kind of music because content? yeah, absolutely. absolutely. and, you know, some songs become iconic, right? if you know the woodstock country. joe mcdonald, who was a veteran himself, is singing feel like i'm fixing to die, which becomes the kind of iconic song of that film. it's worth mentioning to the music that emerges in the late seventies and especially the early eighties. songs like bruce springsteen's born in the usa, billy joel's goodnight saigon, charlie daniels in saigon. so there's a there's a moment, and i think it overlaps with film that's happening of really of looking at the war and you're seeing you're seeing the second version of that story emerge.

we don't hear too many women's voices on the rock side, certainly on the source, frieda payne, who many people might know from a really hit called band of gold, but she a hit with a song called bring the boys home. in 7172, which it's a big hit. again, are selling records they're they're on the radio. and as the war came to an end in this country, at least active hot part of the war. by 1973 to 75, that music, of course, died. i know that by like 1974, the top hit from that year was billie don't be a hero by o'donnell. so my agents, which is the definition of insipid but it was a that's about the only anti-war movie song there was. and by that time so i guess people just lost interest the subject was over and the field moved on. well you know protest, music as such is not as popular as we get into the mid seventies.

okay. you're i'm distracted because you made me think of that terrible song. right. but do think that rock and roll like it becomes it can become a cliche that rock and roll and, you know, protest against the war become synonymous. so while the while that's people aren't doing that style of music by 7576. i do think the the the linking of the two is really important. i'm going to throw out one more thing that i should have mentioned quickly, and that's jimi hendrix. a lot of jimi hendrix songs, which mean a lot to people in vietnam. but his song machine gun, which he records an early in 1970, which an incredible musical i think of what war sounds like. and he too like marvin gaye combines a critique of what's going on in vietnam with what's going on in u.s. in fact, he

dedicates the song the beginning to the soldiers fighting in chicago, the soldiers fighting in milwaukee, and the soldiers fighting in vietnam. and then he creates sound. sounds like you're in the middle of a battlefield. yeah. thank you, marcus. you are a musician, and you also served in vietnam. ken, let's start with i want to ask you about what the experience of listening music was like for you in vietnam. and then we'll back up and talk a little bit about your former as a musician. first of all, i don't think you can overemphasize the of music, period. and it became even more important if you imagine if you will, a person like me drafted taken off the streets of wisconsin and transported literally in a very short amount time to this alien place. the soldiers in vietnam called

this place the world, and they had to get back the world as if they had been transported to another planet. and what do you do when you're in an atmosphere and a dangerous one at that? you start grabbing on to things that you a sense of hope, a sense of group think. everybody else likes this song. and so on so music was incredibly important and i think the other aspect of music in vietnam for me certainly also just like to listen to music. i just happened to be one of the soldiers who liked to play music and listened to it. so it put me in another category. i wasn't certainly in that because we saw it out in vietnam. we sought out fellow players and was lucky enough to find at

least two one in particular. i won't tell you about both, but one in particular had been good friend of chet atkins in nashville. he played with dave dudley. he played with little jimmy dickens. his name was houda. and of course, the army, in its infinite wisdom, made a cook and so he couldn't really play. but we gathered together cheap guitars and we managed to get some sound and reel to reel tape recorders and we played in max. he could play the girl from ipanema, jazz deluxe. i mean, he was a better one of the best players i've ever met. he just died recently. he played music right up to the end, but we would play and max would. he was just so fascinated with

music and when he didn't have to cook, we would play music and the music was as. i said it was something to grasp on to and give you hope that you were going to get back a normal place where this music came from. and we were sent reel to reel recordings. my wife sent me a seven and a half inch reel of. sergeant pepper's lonely hearts club. yeah. and we listened to that. and there were soldiers that said, oh, the beatles are just gone that don't like that at all. walk out and but among us was wonderful. so anyway, i think that music in another very deep way. music has always been cathartic and whether it's a song that you latch on to as a sad song or, an uplifting song or a song makes you feel like you're in a football stadium cheering everybody on. i think that those moments are

like greek tragedy. they're supposed to arouse in you some pity, fear and a cleansing happens. so marcus who were you playing for when you would do these when you would get together and play? were you playing for people on the bass or just for each other? whoever wandered into the and yeah, and we had to play over the generator that were going on all the time and lights were dimmed down and but there, there's something to be said about late night when you're in base camp and in the field, especially for infantry. and i was an infantry i was a combat engineer, but for infantry, it's silence. you don't go to the field noise, you don't go to the field and wear aftershave lotion because they can smell it for miles. so there are certain precautions you have to take. but when you're in a base camp, you're in rear area. people would just wander in and that music just happened and we

played, you know, there's something be said about late at night playing a whiter shade of pale and going to having people go to sleep by that. or one night i remember we've been playing we played indoors so tired and everybody was going to bed and this guitarist that i mentioned he sat and was playing along with just i fell asleep. he was playing along with bob dylan's. stuck in mobile again. oh mama, can this really be the end? and so powerful stuff. when you you met michael as fellow students at whitewater, university of wisconsin at whitewater, and you were both folk musicians finding way forward as musicians. yes. and i guess my question is they came and there was real synergy. they made an album and you were on your way to a very promising

career music when you went to vietnam. you played music when michael went to vietnam after, you he had trained as a helicopter pilot. so it took him longer eventually to get to vietnam, were already back. but it seems from what we know, he spent most of his time writing poetry and not writing music. yes, he even spoke of that. it was quicker and easier than to round a guitar, although michael and his cohorts came back there. there at camp after a day of flying. and it was every day flying, they would drink a lot. they would listen to the mortar rounds coming in and, you know, and that kind of thing. but i'm sure that michael if he had a guitar access to the guitar, he would play. he would play music. yeah. jim lake, who is here, was, as i mentioned, was a crew was stationed with michael. they were both helicopter pilots. and he describes how when you're

a helicopter pilot, you're mostly behind the line. so you're out in the most dangerous of environments all day long. then you fly back to more or less the safety of your base and for a shower in hot meal and then the next day to go back, go out again. and how surreal that was and how jim describes the base they were in. i think it was in khartoum single night, every single night the base was attacked, was very inaccurate missiles. but in that they're being attacked as they're playing music, it seems like a very strange way to. but i guess that's how it was i do have a reel to reel of i was teaching max a ian tyson song called red and he loved that song for some it just rang a bell, rang him and he was playing that song. and the recording i have of that, there are bursts of gunfire going off the background. so yeah music can be played even under no circumstance where there are lots people playing music. there was a lot, not a lot.

you had to had to look around. although at on base, that was where the big red one was, was stationed they had a pretty we thought existence over there and they actually organized the hootenanny it was they filled it out and somebody wrote big h and a hooch and they had strong it across and we went over and they lined this up and we passed the guitar played and so we those kind of moments too. and they actually bought instruments. the military bought instruments. first time i ever saw a rickenbacker guitar. it was brilliant. but they but i got to play it. yeah, they kept over the officer's club, so. well, let's talk about the connection, music and poetry. john when you went to vietnam as a conscientious objector, you're already a formed. can you talk a little bit about your experience as a the shaping

of your work as a poet and how vietnam informed that experience. actually, i was harvard. i was in graduate school and studying english and middle english and i remember one day i was had spent the day in washington library, was walking out and i saw a huge demonstration on the street. i didn't know what it was about, but i saw a camera team. ap there think, well, we'll get behind them. that'll be a safe place to see what's about to happen. and there was a big blue buick sedan parked out there behind lowell house and a lot of a lot of young people. at any rate, all clustered around the wasn't moving because they were blocking the road. and inside car was robert mcnamara, secretary defense and he finally got out of the car when it was clear the kids

weren't going to go away. and i remember the secret service around and armed pushed back with their hands and he just pushed himself out of the car and not only got out of the car, he got up on the hood and addressed the crowd. i remember the big crunch on the roof of the when his weight got onto it and i was looking at the cameraman and the sound man and their eyes were almost as big as mine because this was something was going to happen. and he got opening, insulted the crowd and he had been there as a guest of the newly opened kennedy institute. oh, what year was mao had to be 1970. no. 69. so he had just left 68. he was no longer secretary of defense and. he said, wave to the crowd and be quiet. he said, i have one thing to say that when i was a young student

at berkeley, oh, i was just radical issue. and the crowd like an animal, all everybody groaning, oh, and in when say stop groaning i remember there was a window and somebody nearby had an apartment there and they had play we're playing mack the knife. and when the crowd quieted, you could hear that song, mack the knife comes out of the ground. and then the crowd erupted. laughter because everybody woke up for the moment. and mcnamara that insulted them and said, but i want to tell you one thing. i was far more polite. and then, of course, all that obscenities can imagine easily enough were shouted out. he got back in his car, the crowd parted and he drove away and sent me to vietnam. i say strewn over this. or maybe a week and i wrote to my draft board and said, i wanted to turn in my student

deferment, which is in the very sweet secretary wrote me back that, oh, you needn't do that. there's no fear of your going to vietnam on a two as deferment. i said no, that's not the idea. i want to go to vietnam. and then i had a set of appointment and i had to come up with a work plan of what i would do and i had to have an interview back in pennsylvania. so i did all that and went to work for a group that was a predecessor, peace corps, called the international services, and i was, teaching english linguistics and language at a vietnamese universal day. that never happened because the place there is elections that year. and to you and ki, we're going at each other and. the elections never emerged. oh, and then came the tet, the

university bombed. i got wounded by a snip of shrapnel, which is my case lucky because it got me to go back to philadelphia, where i got patched up and then i still had. continue at alternative service. i had a two year obligation and so i came up well working for the of responsibility to save war injured children group run out run out of philadelphia but connecting really all the famous research doctors and united states helen housing here in washington albert strand biology and at harvard benjamin spock albert sabin i mean these are really distinguished doctors all of whom would arrange at institutions all across the u.s. with their fellow doctors to or injured children for free and

but the trouble was, there were doctors working at hospitals and in various practice in the us, so they needed a field. so while there apparently up in philadelphia, the director of the organization took me into his home and then i went back to vietnam as field representative. so that was my first real leg back. but when were you writing poetry? when was i writing poetry? i had started at harvard i even started publishing some. i was still an undergraduate at penn state. oh, going. but good question, because i figured going to vietnam and the end of writing poetry, you i couldn't picture the charge of the light brigade. you know into the valley of death road, the second going over and were in vietnam and. the question of what kind of poetry could survive there. well, let's talk and learn. earlier about music in vietnam,

i was out on my own, on the highways in. and one day there was a huge convoy rushing past, could hear the noise behind you and see drivers, people, little motor busses and my bicycle and motorcycles. i just got the side of the road left. this thing by. but what shocked me was, the music coming at the head of this huge caravan, unbelievably loud blasted music, clearing the road in front of all these gunships, apc and behind them, vietnamese soldiers with truckloads of their own family were following them into war zone as well. but the music that was playing was the rolling stones and it was sympathy for the devil. please allow me to introduce myself as what that music was screaming that vietnamese road that i just i just could not the

strangeness of i o and the verisimilitude of it struck me so i did that. and then for oh, i had to do that for two years. i ended up bringing children out of the country to hospitals in the us and then taking them home again when they well enough fit enough to come. but that time i learned enough vietnamese and heard enough music and poetry in the countryside. i'd be at a river crossing waiting for a ferry to take me to the other side. i had a tape recorder. i had a grant from the national endowment for the humanities and there would be a singer a whole blind guy with 12 strings. your guitar playing for farmers and, you know, panhandling at the same time. or i'd be standing on a riverbank, one of those little motor to cycle boat engines

would be drifting by and i could hear a song drifting up. a woman was singing in the boat by herself, you know. and i was right. my feet. i could hear the water splashing at my and i could hear this woman song right idea what it was. and then finally, someone which a dispassionate which really should have been mentioned all day today somewhere and somebody stock. so i well, these were people myself who were hangers on peace people who broke up my life story fact. and one of them was a friend the secretary there of the place who said there's a vietnamese guy in the office who keeps telling me that if you want to know anything about vietnam, have to learn to hear chi gal or cousin in the north. this is folk poetry. that's sung. it's never or rarely written

down. it can be written down. and if you want to know anything about the vietnamese, that's what you should pay attention to. so i took i got a tape recorder in japan on the way. my wife, who had just graduate from penn state with an undergrad degree in english, 20 years old, we both flew to vietnam and i went out in the countryside and recorded that for a year. so i have about 500 of those songs there, pretty well recorded. the fact that i didn't know how to do i did it right and. they're now at the harry ransom center for anybody to do any research with. and later on in the program, maybe i can play something for you. yeah, go. and next thing i did was i got interested the literary poetry, which is a far different thing. that's song. it's written in a calligraphic or character system that looks like chinese but in fact

represent vietnamese beach and mostly and the scholarly class couldn't read it and write to each other in it. almost ordinary vietnamese at that time couldn't read or write until the french brought with them a system of writing. like in 1640. yeah. and that became the writing system of vietnamese used today. oh. so i could read the ancient script in that transcribe form, if that makes sense and i decided to try to translate that poetry well and i got taken under the wings of two great scholars, leighton koy, a great historian in paris, also in paris, and and forget the name of his prize. i think it was an international prize for his musicology trombone. okay. and they both pushed me on, led me on and introduced me around

so that people would talk to me when i was out with my tape recorder recording the folk poetry, i always had somebody take me around, usually a monk, that people in the community would trust. even then i would learn later that they thought i was a cia agent because i was taking pictures of people and i was recording voices. you had a parallel or a parallel path at that time. you were you were becoming a scholar of vietnamese culture and language. i know. yeah. i was trying to i don't know i ever got for. well, you were. you recording and learning on the one hand and you were also writing your poetry? i tried to do both avenues, right? so both of those resulted in books and some recordings and also my aim, i guess, is the point of this telling. you this is it. listening to the discussions today, the huge in separation of americans here with vietnamese,

vietnam and the huge separation between, you know, yourself as a soldier trained and americans there in vietnam. it was immense. the place was indecipherable. so the question about poetry is that it can cross those borders, cultural separation and. that was part of my aim in those translations. would you be can you read a poem? one of your poems for us? yeah, sure. just happen to have. also on sale out in the lobby. it's called after our war, which is actually the title poem. my first book. i'd it after coming home after our war. this the dismembered all those pierced ears livers, jaws gouged lips until skin flaps and those

came squinting wobbling, jabbering back the genitals, of course, were the most bizarre in china on roads like glow worms, slugs. the living one of them back but good as the dead, of course, know. you saw him in the the tens of thousands of abandoned souls who had appeared like swamp fog in city streets, also had no use the scraps and bits because in opinion they look good without since all naturally return to their source these snags and tatters arrived with immigrant uncertainty in the united states. it was almost home. so no one can sometimes see a friend or a famous man talking with an extra pair of glued and yammering on his cheek.

and this why handshakes are often unpleasant, why it is better not to look another in the eye. why your daughter's breast thickens a hard colloidal scar after the war. such cheshire cats grinning in our trees. will the ancient tales still tell us new truths? well, the myriad world surrender new metaphor after our war how will love speak. hmm? thank, john. you're welcome. very powerful. so for a moment, with your parallel careers, as can you, you have a recording also of a vietnamese poem, right? and want to ask what we can do is what i'd like to propose is. let's hear that then. i have a question. each of you, as we conclude

piano. okay, let's do that. okay, so you want to introduce this? what this is? yeah. oh, i was recording on one island near on the mekong, near mutare. and it was the island that had been separated out from the war. the so-called coconut and i figured it would be safe for me to record at that island. but not only that, that most of the monks and their whole families had come from all the mekong delta. so i could record various dialect differences which are many throughout the mekong delta. and i could up little bits of different singing traditions if i just went to this one place. so it was a wise move on my own. my play my part. and then as i said, i would. and sometimes photograph the singers, they appear in the

book, which i think is out on the table. it is. and it in in that book and on the island. i was about to take a picture and my camera almost got slapped out of my hand by the monk who is my good friend. and no, no, not his picture. and i said, why not? and he said, he's a defector. and i thought, oh, he meant the south vietnamese army. he said, no. he defected from the viet cong and if the south vietnamese army here, they will take him away and kill. if the viet cong come here, they will shoot him just as just as well. since he's a deserter. oh, so i recorded him and it one of the most beautiful voices i recorded that whole year of traveling from the south and the mekong, way up to the city away where recorded members the last royal dynasty.

let's hear. okay, thank you. so we're going to hear this piece and then we'll talk just a bit more. some sll i yeah, i guess i'll go. no mai mai, no photos, i'm look how long look back now. who my look. okay. yeah. i. who look. wing. yeah. yea way mad i'm the new. oh, thank you what an extraordinary experience that have been for you to have been

open to this whole body of, poetry and song in a world far from your own. so thank for sharing that with us. so as we conclude the panel, i'd like to ask each of you to the really the purpose of being together today to think about what we've learned from vietnam, the experience of vietnam, the vietnam war, 50 years after withdrawal of troops. so what have we learned from the world of cultural creativity? what if you were to each of one or two things that stay with you as? important contributions of the creative side, the vietnam war? what is that? what stays with you now? maybe we'll start with who wants to start? laura. i think the the the songs of the vietnam war reflected so much diversity of opinion and voice and position in culture. if you follow those, you hear

people who are very patriotic about the war, you hear pride, you hear pain, you hear anger more and. you hear it from all voices in this country. and i think. one of the things i worry about is the censoring and the suppression of of multiple voices right now at this time. and so to me a lesson is the more the better the more diversity of sound and voice and opinion is. the only thing that is going to help us to really understand what is really going on. and so when i look back at that body of music, i hear complexity, contradiction and confusion and we better make sure that we can still hear that. that's extraordinary. thank you, marcus.

well, the music in vietnam was so diverse and whatever people picked, whatever a soldier pick, that would be the the one that set them up and and took them away. yes. like emily dickinson books then take your lands away and to get back to as they call it the world it could be leaving on a jet plane. yeah it could be something's happening here what it is the exactly clear that kind of thing. it could be. i was privileged. michael and i were privileged. we sang in town in chicago before the war, before it involved us. and we met a people that were noteworthy. one of them was phil ochs and sat down in them in the the upstairs performance area of a place called richard's, and he

sang i ain't a martini anymore forth. and he sang there but for fortune. and he also sang a song we used as a country anthem in vietnam, and that was a song that tom paxton made a big hit in it. but phil ochs wrote it is called the draft dodger rag. sorry, i'm only 18. i got a ruptured spleen. i always carry a burst. and so it goes on like that. it's it's a wonderful song to sing if you're angry. it's a wonderful song to sing. if you just wanted to go home and, rid yourself of all of this and yeah, the music, as i said it was, it was cathartic. whether it was a sad song, an uplifting song, or a a rag or some of the protest songs that, michael and i were involved with and michael and i sang at poor richard's. we sang sounds of silence, the cover of the of the garfunkel

the simon garfunkel song, which is on an album called three wednesday morning, 3 a.m. and it was all acoustic somebody set that electric guitar and that became big hit. this was way before that, and we sang a song and a guy walked up to us afterwards and asked us, is that your song? and were very flattered because, you know, it was an act song. but michael wrote some very good songs along the way, turned his attention poetry. but in the milieu of vietnam, i think we grasped at whatever we could find for hope. well, thank you. just a quick aside one of michael's sent many, many letters to marcus, which i had the privilege of as i was working on the book and. he was an avid student of new music was he listened to everything and his letters are wonderful. and one of them he listened to paul simon play and he says to marcus, this guy is going to be

big. and little did he know, right? mark yes. well, i've seen it's a good question. i'm still trying to figure out what i learned from vietnam. you learn a lot about war, about yourself mainly. i was i guess i came away impressed with the power of still photography to document something. and i think the books by david douglas duncan i protestor philip jones griffith's vietnam ink and about all the other sort things that were done and what effect they had. i also sort of learned, as i said before, photography, it doesn't really stop wars, but documents them and it and certain images, certain moments make a big difference. and, you know, you think about human as this picture. the people climbing up to the ladder, trying to get the helicopter on the building near the embassy during the final days.

it just sort tell you about the moment and they leave an impression. you they make a deep impression within you and that sort of what i learned and also learned that. pictures of dead people particularly do the job. it's pictures of living who are experiencing the horror of war. thank you. well, it's also true that for most us, what we know and remember and see from the war is what you gave us, because we see it through your eyes. that was the only way we could see it if we weren't there. so there's a lasting legacy that connects us forever. so thank you, john there's a vietnamese proverb go out one day, come back with a basket of knowledge, derive the more chang cong. and so i went one day and i spent two or three. and then the next 20 years involved in another culture that taught a great deal about of

culture, about family kindness, about bravery, and by comparison returning home, i measure this and how it behaves with itself, which right now is very troubling to me against the continued ity and the kindness that i found in vietnam. yeah, thank you. thank you all very much. well, thank you so much for joining us today. we are going to just give offer up a few concluding remarks. we end the session today. so thank gentlemen and ladies and. i'll ask the moderators to come up as well. so. you discussed discussed.

sure. sure. so i'd like to just very briefly thanks to all the panelists thanks to all of you in attendance. thanks to my newest battle buddies, dan weiss and peter osnos, dean wall, back in the entire colombian college of arts and sciences, family and friends, the technical people who made this happen, sincerest heartfelt thanks. the carnegie corporation of new york, whose generosity allows the project for media and national security to exist and who supported this amazing program today. i sat here all day trying to think, what does it mean to win a war? and again, having spent of my adult life traveling along with military, something that bob kerrey this morning that rings so true, militaries cannot wars militaries at best defeat other

military eyes. only governments can win wars by sealing the and we forget that all too often in our history because you define every problem as being, you know, a nail, then the hammer is your only tool. and it just is so painful to see the military as heartfelt and as well organized. it is sent off to do things as it was in iraq and afghanistan that it was never designed to do the phrase hearts and minds came up several times today. that was the mantra from vietnam. you heard it in iraq and in afghanistan. i remember a late night at a foreign base in iraq when officer was telling me how much he hated the phrase hearts and, minds. you can't win hearts and it's a fool's errand. it's insulting how should americans feel if the afghans or vietnamese or the iraqis tried to win our hearts and minds or, the russians trying to win our and minds. you have to respect people's

cultures far better, this officer said, should be a national that try to earn trust and respect not only these foreign population laws, but of our own population. here i only pray in the years that we can reflect on that as we reflect on all the painful lessons of wars long ago and wars. more recent. and and peter, it was my great honor to. work with both of you. thank you. thank you. me. well, thank you. and thanks those of you who are here. and to audience on c-span, i just want to bring this back a little bit to the beginning, which is how this entire event was inspired. it was inspired by book in that time, the tragic error of vietnam, which has an editor. i read the proposal i said, who the hell is this wife's? oh, he runs the metropolitan museum of art. but the truth of the is that

book i was a young reporter in vietnam. i've been dealing vietnam in various ways ever since. but that book brought into focus again something that i thought was immensely important. we owe it to the young men, and they were. mostly who went there and lost their lives in a war. that made no sense not to forget they went there not to forget, that they lost their lives but the culture, they were part of that we live in today the impact of. the war is profound. and what dan has done for future and many generations come because books can't be unlike buildings, can't be torn down. he's created an imagery in that one young man's life that really

is indelible. and i urge you all, if you haven't read it and all of us on c-span to and i'm not selling this as a publisher it's book that frames a lot of what you heard today and one person's life. and the second thing i want to say is that because is on c-span and, it will be on their website. rather than just the thing which you all sat today. it'll be there and other people come to it. and i want to encourage as many people as possible to come to because reflections on the war 50 years after the fact are immensely important in helping us understand what we where we were and where we may be headed. so thank you again for coming. working on the book in that time gave me the opportunity to learn a vast body of material and issues that i was not otherwise

familiar with. and in the course of that work, i had the opportunity to read the work of many of the people who are here today. and i cannot tell you what a privilege it is to be with today and to have a chance to do this work together. when i began this project years ago and i found marcus sullivan, he helped me to find my way into this project, i never imagined what would open up for me as a as a scholar and as someone interested in our history. so i'm enormously grateful, all of you, for being here today. we have had the opportunity today thinking about these issues and reflecting on 50 years to hear from journalists oates and historians creative, political and military leaders, soldiers and citizens and there have been many themes that have emerged throughout the day. and you can reflect on them in your own ways. but for me, there are three broad ideas that i would like to take home with me. the first is there are many, many, and we haven't figured this out, and we have continued to make mistakes since. vietnam that would have been

inconceivable to us in 1975 that we would so work must continue these kinds of events are not just ways to spend a saturday afternoon reflecting on an experience we lived through, but vital work we must do to continue to learn what it means to live in an educated citizenry and make good. so i think that's essential for us to continue to do that kind of work us and our successors. the second is that memory matters, remembrance matters. michael o'donnell it right. don't forget, because we gave everything for whatever it was that we were sent here to do. and the most important thing we can do now is remember them and honor that service and learn from that. and the third, at least for me, is that the center of every one of these issues is the quality and character of the leadership that we select to make these decisions that lyndon johnson single handedly could escalate this war. richard nixon single handedly end this war if they had the courage do so and they didn't. and lives were lost as a result

of that. so as we think about the future and when one thing we can do as an educated citizenry is ask more of our elected officials and place a higher burden on responsibility and ethical leadership. we do. because when all else is pass by, that's what they have left is to make decisions on the basis of what they might think is right and what make what may matter most, even if it costs them something. this is why we're here because quality decisions were not made. it was expedient political maneuvering that ultimately led to the debacle of vietnam. so at least for me, those three themes are worth keeping in mind as we move forward. and again, we want to thank you so much for spending your saturday with us. i would also like to thank especially the gw team that made this event possible. peter and i had the idea. we enlisted tom and then we said to the gw guys, i don't know, let's do it. make it happen. and they did. dean paul wall back generously donated the space and, all of the resources it took to bring it to life. maxine koger denise st ours.

elizabeth burns, peggy cusack and michelle dobbin met with us every week and did all of the things that are involved in producing this event, which now i've is more complicated than a big wedding to do it. what did i know? andrew and the tech team here made it happen today, so i want to thank all of them profoundly for, their good work, and to thank you again for being with us. and we'll see you in the next 50 years. this is.