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zBrown
Ice climber
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Laguna
UCI
Grad school
Left UCB with James Rector dead
Complex issue here
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Todd Eastman
climber
Bellingham, WA
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My friend and I were climbing this past weekend and this came up. We talked. He was there that day and every year since. Strong stuff that should not be forgotten...
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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hey there say, todd eastman...
oh my... thank you for sharing...
see--it was meant to be, for you and friend to climb, and talk about this...
thanks for sharing...
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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I was studying on how to get to Yosemite Valley for a season while killing time at Monterey College. Mathis had left Apathy House to go there and take up life in Camp 4, while Larry Jones and I moved out of Apathy in mid-April for other, separate digs.
He moved out to Seaside, but I moved in with two brothers from Merced who had room in their place on the couch, then I moved into brother Don's place. Both couches were still in Pacific Grove, thank God, because I hated Seaside.
All this time Jones and I were involved in a "committee" at the college run by agents of the SDS to stage a rally with bands and speakers to protest the US forces move into Cambodia with a petition. When we weren't collecting signatures we were trying to get to class. Busy-busy-busy.
A less-than-ideal situation, living with others you didn't trust that much and trying to keep from flunking out, but one I managed to escape later in the summer. Thus began my n00b season in Camp 4.
That fall Mathis and I put up our infamous route, Tricky Dick in the Castle Crags, home of some of Yosemite's worst choss.
We say never forget, but has that helped in the intervening years since the invasion?
HELL NO, IT DON'T SHOW!
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Roger Breedlove
climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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Climbing in the Valley.
I recall that non-climbing friends of mine, when I saw them, seemed to know what was going on in the news while I rarely did--no radios, no TV, no newspapers (at least I didn't read them). Growing up in the SF Bay Area and attending Vietnam war protests, I was very aware of the range of responses of the police. The SF police were incited to riot against student protestors by the president of SF State University. The previous year, the police fired buckshot into protesters in Berkeley at People's Park. Kent State just brought police violence to the Midwest. What happened at Kent State still happens with our police, in Cleveland, Chicago, Baltimore, NY City.
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SC seagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, Moab, A sailboat, or some time zone
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What happened at Kent State still happens with our police, in Cleveland, Chicago, Baltimore, NY City.
In some ways yes, other ways, not so. The National Guard was primarily young kids, basically untrained, some clueless. The police today are highly trained. I'm not sure which is scarier.
Susan
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Gunkie
Trad climber
Valles Marineris
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...where were you?
1st grade in Chicago, but we knew about this.
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Adventurer
Mountain climber
Virginia
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"Where were you"
I was in the Army and due to come home on leave the following month. After hearing about this tragedy, a buddy of mine wisely suggested that I avoid wearing my uniform in the U.S. He wasn't joking when he said that it was probably safer to walk down a street in Saigon with an Army uniform than it would be to do it in NYC. We were both 19 at the time.
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clode
Trad climber
portland, or
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Freshman at Madison High School, Portland, OR. When I watched the evening news coverage with my parents, I thought it was horrible. My right-wing, farmer-bred mother said something like "they deserved it" for being so anti-establishment. I still thought it was horrible and unjustified. My senior year was the last year of the Vietnam draft. My number never got picked, I got lucky. That probably saved my life, as I now know it.
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John Duffield
Mountain climber
New York
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He wasn't joking when he said that it was probably safer to walk down a street in Saigon with an Army uniform than it would be to do it in NYC. We were both 19 at the time.
I wonder how many people are aware there was a time like this? I got out, got spat on, became super depressed and went home and burnt all of my Army pix. But fuq it, I was happy to be alive.
But on May 4th, 1970, I still hadn't been drafted. I was in college. We went on strike. Crazy days.
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Topic Author's Reply - May 5, 2016 - 01:27pm PT
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"they deserved it"
The country in 1970 had not yet tipped against our involvement in Vietnam, back then the vast majority of Americans supported the war effort. I was a freshman in college wanting to believe it was right but knowing in my heart things were terribly wrong. It was the veterans returning and relating just how much misinformation was being fed to the public that I believe finally tipped the country, it certainly effected me.
It was maybe a year later the iconic photo below of the children appeared on the front page of every newspaper in America. A huge shouting argument broke out in my household at dinner that evening with my parents. I'm sure our home wasn't the only one being torn apart, it was a hard time. My brother was in Vietnam and I think we all wanted something to be right about it for the sake of him, those with him, those who had already lost their lives and those whose lives would never be the same.
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aspendougy
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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I was 20 yrs. old, in college, and looking forward to spending the summer in Tuolumne. I changed my draft status from student deferment to 1-A eligible, a couple of days prior to New Year's Day. There was a technicality in the law saying that I would only be draft eligible for three months, and they already said they would not draft anyone during that period.
Anthony Herbert was one of America's most decorated soldiers in the Korean War, but turned whistle-blower in Vietnam. Documents released under the "Freedom of Information Act" show that the Pentagon made PR efforts to discredit him, while privately acknowledging that most of what he said was true.
He told of a case of about ten U.S. Soldiers who took a 12 yr. old Vietnamese girl from her family "for questioning". They raped, beat and sodomized her, and returned her to her family. Shortly thereafter, she died. One man received a gentle "slap on the wrist" in a court martial hearing, and the rest went free. He also told of millions of dollars worth of U.S. equipment that was stolen, and sold to line the pockets of various people.
Soldiers, national guardsmen, police are placed in positions of power and authority; a certain minority will always abuse that. Kent State and the above incident were both examples. I can understand why it happened at Kent State, although it was a terrible crime just the same. But what the soldiers did was worse.
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aspendougy
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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I was 20 yrs. old, in college, and looking forward to spending the summer in Tuolumne. I changed my draft status from student deferment to 1-A eligible, a couple of days prior to New Year's Day. There was a technicality in the law saying that I would only be draft eligible for three months, and they already said they would not draft anyone during that period.
Anthony Herbert was one of America's most decorated soldiers in the Korean War, but turned whistle-blower in Vietnam. Documents released under the "Freedom of Information Act" show that the Pentagon made PR efforts to discredit him, while privately acknowledging that most of what he said was true.
He told of a case of about ten U.S. Soldiers who took a 12 yr. old Vietnamese girl from her family "for questioning". They raped, beat and sodomized her, and returned her to her family. Shortly thereafter, she died. One man received a gentle "slap on the wrist" in a court martial hearing, and the rest went free. He also told of millions of dollars worth of U.S. equipment that was stolen, and sold to line the pockets of various people.
Soldiers, national guardsmen, police are placed in positions of power and authority; a certain minority will always abuse that. Kent State and the above incident were both examples. I can understand why it happened at Kent State, although it was a terrible crime just the same. But what the soldiers did was worse.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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^I do not know how many, but some vets refuse to acknowledge this stuff happening.
Complex issue.
McNamara himself told some that it was a righteous and necessary war.
He changed his tune later.
"We were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why." — McNamara, writing in his 1995 memoir, In Retrospect, on the management of the Vietnam War
Yet his hair was [almost] perfect.
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SC seagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, Moab, A sailboat, or some time zone
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Bump
Susan
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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I was in the 8th grade. Couldn't believe that people supported the national guard's action. IIRC two of the kids killed were just walking to class, not protesting. (Three years later deep in the stacks at the library at the U. of Georgia I ran across a report trying to justify the shootings written by the governor of Ohio. Disgusting reading that was.)
Then Jackson State.
All this after Martin Luther King and RFK were gunned down just two years previously.
Sometimes things just suck.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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10b4me
Mountain climber
Retired
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Unfortunately we were fed the bs that if Vietnam fell to the communists, it would create a domino effect, and that eventually the US would be red. Hence the saying "better dead than red".
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Sorry to go off topic, but...Tami, you'll like this. Baldwin makes very cogent points, Buckley responds with insults.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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Kalimon
Social climber
Ridgway, CO
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ignorance combined with nationalism is nearly as prevalent today
Warbler predicts the future . . . 2017 baby!
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aspendougy
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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One of America's most decorated soldier from the Korean War was a man named Anthony Herbert, who was also in Vietnam. He told of an incident where a dozen or so American soldiers had taken away a 12 yr. old Vietnamese girl "for questioning". They raped, sodomized and beat her so badly that, shortly after being returned to her family, she died. One soldier, according to Herbert, received "a gentle slap on the wrist" in a court martial hearing. The others went free.
He was relieved of his command for being a whistle-blower, and the Military went to some efforts to discredit him. I got the sense he was telling mostly the truth, especially about this incident.
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