FREE FIRE ZONES?-"WE CALLED
IT INDIAN COUNTRY"
America's Vietnamsese Killing Fields
The War Crimes in Vietnam were fueled by historical
American hatred for Indians
and the contemporary view of Indians as less than human beings.
In March and April of 1971, three years after the My
Lai Massacre of civilians, a congressional committee took testimony
on war crimes committed by the US Armed Service in the Vietnam
War. A repeated theme of the veterans who told of their personal experiences
is the dehumanization they were taught as kids back home in the United
States long before they enlisted. By each man's statements this training
through language, concept and action played a primary role in their
ability to kill, maim and tortured the Vietnamese civilians and POW's
during the war.
In this excerpt from testimony you will understand the
language of dehumanization of Indians was a contributing factor which
built the acceptance and encouragement of the destruction of South
East Asians.
All persons named below are Congressmen and women except
for Captain Johnson.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT B JOHNSON Capt, U.S. Army, West Point, Class
of 1965.
DELLUMS: Cngwmn Mink.
MINK: Thank you. Captain Johnson, in the Calley trial, 6 of your
fellow officers found LT Calley guilty of
premeditated murder of 22 Vietnamese civilians. We have to assume
from all the testimony and evidence that has been put forth in the
trial that these civilians had been captured and were in effect POW's
of that unit that had
captured that village.
You made a statement that in your opinion the My Lai massacre was
the inevitable consequence of certain policies. Would you specify
what policy you make reference to with regard to the killing of POWs?
JOHNSON: 1st, the underlying rational policy, that
is, that the only good gook is a dead gook. Very similar to the only
good Indian is a dead Indian and the only good nigger is a dead nigger.
I think LT Calley took it quite seriously. 2dly, the BC, with BODY
COUNT your success. After a, General Koester got credit for the BODY
COUNT in Vietnam, 128 dead and only 4 weapons captured. General Westmoreland
sent a telegram to the commander of the My Lai massacre. So the BODY
COUNT had that input.
Next, the search and destroy policy. With me, I couldn't help but
somehow view these Vietnamese as a little less
than human when we went in and destroyed their homes. They weren't
really homes, they were just hooches. I
wouldn't have had the same zeal if we were destroying red brick homes
or split level homes in suburbia.
Next is the FREE-FIRE ZONES concept, which leads to the understood
policy that in that area they are a enemies and they should be removed.
Another policy is to force removal of the civilian populations. We
have 5 million refugees in Vietnam. whether we have gone in and forcibly
moved them out with marches and helicopters or we have arced them
to move on through saturation bombers is immaterial. They are all
means to obtain the same end, forcibly remove the civilian population.
Given those policies, it is my judgment that things like My Lai are
inevitable.
DELLUMS: Congressman Seiberling.
SEIBERLING: Captain Johnson, I am quite impressed with the precision
of your statement and the clarity with
which you thought this thing through. I just have a couple of questions
a highlight this. You say you made a written report of the incident
of the beating and the murder of the POW. Was any action ever taken
after the report was filed?
JOHNSON: Absolutely none.
SEIBERLING: Do you know of . . .
JOHNSON: The colonel didn't call me to talk about it. I received
no reply.
SEIBERLING: Do you know if he received the report?
JOHNSON: I am not sure. I assume he did. I put it SEIBERLING: You
talked about the purpose of the
FREE-FIRE ZONES. You have mentioned the fact that the FREE-FIRE ZONES
and the harassment and
interdiction fire at villagers were obviously designed to force the
villagers to leave and go to resettlement areas.
Did you ever hear anyone in a position of rank indicate expressly
that was one of the purposes?
JOHNSON: No, I did not, because a few months after I left there was
a big report in Stars and Stripes, one area very close to us, having
got 12,000 people, there was a whole operation planned where all of
them at once were forcibly moved to detention camps, not by the bombings
but by U.S. Marines and the ARVN troops forcibly removing them to
these detention camps. That happened in June, 1968.
SEIBERLING: Did you ever hear of the expression "turkey shoots"?
JOHNSON: I have heard the free-fire zone referred to by the pilots
and other people as "Indian Country."
SEIBERLING: But you are not familiar with the expression "turkey
shoots"?
JOHNSON: I am familiar with it, but where I
was operating I didn't hear anyone personally use that term. We used
the term "Indian Country."
SEIBERLING: What did "Indian Country." refer to?
JOHNSON: I guess it means different things to
different people. It is like there are savages out there, there are
gooks out there. In the same way
we slaughtered the Indian's buffalo, we would slaughter the water
buffalo in Vietnam.
SEIBERLING: Was there any indoctrination, official or semi-officially,
that incorporated the ideas that these
people are gooks or that the only good gook is a dead gook or similar
philosophies, or was this just something once you got there you picked
it up from the other people who bad been there?
JOHNSON: I just picked it up from other people. Before I went to
Vietnam, I remember one adviser who had been there before and had
been through some tough straits telling me you can't trust any of
these. That was not official policy.
I don't think you could find it anywhere that you can't trust the
gooks in writing.
SEIBERLING: Do you have any evidence that this was so widespread
that it must have been known to people at all levels of command?
JOHNSON: I don't have any specific evidence except my 6 months in
the infantry div, an American unit, and the
disdain and disgust of the Vietnamese was extremely widespread there.
(About 20 minutes later)
STATEMENT OF GREG HAYWARD Capt, U.S. Army West Point, Class of 1964.
General Ewell was promoted above several officers to the job of Field
Force commander, and he used the term not an
Indian hunt, but he used the term "killing fish in a barrel,"
and that is how he described several operations, and I personally
heard him talk about "killing fish in a barrel." We put
great emphasis on this BC. It seems ironic that General Ewell is our
military representative to the Paris Peace Talks. It is hard to understand
that he can deal in good faith across a bargaining table now when
he made his reputation as an American in Vietnam killing Vietnamese;
that he can in good faith bargain. I don't think he is that sort of
diplomat that we should have.
Dellums (House of Representatives) War
Crimes Hearings Thursday, 4-29-71, Washg'tn, DC Testimony of Kenneth
Campbell Lance-Cpl, Forward Observer, "A" Battery, 1st Bn,
1st Marine Div Philadelphia, PN
Congressman DELLUMS: I would like to ask in extension of that, are
you familiar with the term that the only good
gook is a dead gook?
CAMPBELL: I am very familiar with that.
DELLUMS: In your personal opinion and experience, did that term refer
not only to VC but to RVNese people as well?
CAMPBELL: That was the genl attitude. "The only good gook was
a dead gook," and that referred to Vietnamese, to gooks, you
know. like I said, gooks were anybody, anybody with slanted eyes,
they were not just vc and NVA. So, therefore, if the only good gook
is a dead gook, then the only good Vietnamese is a dead Vietnamese.
like if you could get away with it, you know, blow them away.
DELLUMS: Thank you.
CHISHOLM: I would like to ask you, on the basis of your testimony
it would seem that the racism which is so
inherent in the bloodstream of our nation in a very real sense was
transported abroad and became a part of the total practices and training
of our men for this war against the so-called gooks.
In other words, what I am saying is that it is not only a question
of what has happened in Vietnam, but it is also a
question of a total overall foreign policy and racial policy toward
people. and would you say that seems to be the
overall philosophy?
CAMPBELL: Well, I do not know about the overall foreign policy, but
I know in Indochina that is the idea, you
know that they are inferior to us, and that pretty well sums it up.
When you go into combat and you have got a rifle in your hands and
you believe every slant eye around you is inferior, you are not exactly
going to treat them with kid gloves.
CHISHOLM: Thank you.
DELLUMS: I would like to, on behalf of myself and the members of
the panel, commend you for your courage and thank you very much for
your testimony. We deeply appreciate you coming before us.
