Hanoi Jane and Joan Baez: Propaganda, Anti-War Movement, and "That" Historic Footage
By Hideki AKIYAMA
The photo is from the following Washington Post article.
※How Jane Fonda's 1972 trip to North Vietnam earned her the nickname, "Hanoi Jane"
Below is a reprint of "Indochina – Shinsuke Hashida, Joan Baez, Tonnyat Hotel (2) Joan Baez."
…Joan Baez returned from Hanoi and, within a month, was answering an interview for Rolling Stone magazine. I would like to introduce a bit of that content.
After a few days of the "adjustment period" prepared by the Hanoi side, Baez and her group encountered shocking scenes.
"The second thing we saw was the roughest for us all. That was the day Michael Allen stopped eating. We were about to have breakfast and they rushed in and told us it was time to go see a bomb site. We went with the press in a caravan of cars to Kham Tiem Street. It’s a district in downtown Hanoi where the houses are very small – mud and brick, jammed close together. As we toured the district, a North Vietnamese war crimes commissioner stands behind you and tells all the figures: the dead, the wounded, the number of raids."
※Rolling Stone
Joan Baez in Hanoi: 12 Days Under the Bombs
"The first thing I saw there was everyone carrying their bicycles, because there was no way to walk through the rubble. There was an old man who was trying to walk through the mud and brick, but he was hobbling and having a great deal of trouble moving through the wreckage. I reached over and took his hand. He looked up at me with his exquisite old man’s face, those lines, the little white wispy chin beard, and I could feel he was trembling. We held on to each other for some seconds, and both our eyes filled with tears. He mumbled some things in Vietnamese that I couldn’t understand then he looked up at me and said, ‘Danke schoen."
Joan Baez released an album titled Where Are You Now, My Son? shortly after returning to the United States. Almost the entirety of one side of the record, lasting 21 minutes, is dedicated to recordings of street sounds made in Hanoi and her readings of experiences from the bombings. The story of the elderly man is recounted in her own voice, almost exactly as it was told in the interview. The subtle difference is that instead of saying 'looked up at me,' it is phrased as 'smiled slightly without looking at me and said, "Danke schön." This suggests that her first contact with war victims in Hanoi has been transformed into a poetic experience through repeated reflection in her memory.
※Where are you now, my son？
The album begins with actual recordings of air raid sirens from Hanoi. The sounds of running footsteps overlap, along with voices speaking. Explosions echo in the distance. A man describes on-site, "The bombing has been particularly intense these past few days," followed by the sounds of digging through rubble. Then, a woman's voice cries out in Vietnamese. A man’s voice adds, "She seems to be shouting something; she's calling out, 'Where is my son?'" For a while, the recorded sound of the woman crying continues. Music overlays, and Baez’s voice recites, "When I walk through the battlefield, I am always crying. In my life, I have rarely met someone who does not fear death," followed by the story of a girl who rode her bicycle to lay flowers for the dead. This leads into the story of the woman who inspired the album's title.
To quote the original text:
An aging woman picks along the craters and the rubble
A piece of cloth, a bit of shoe, a whole lifetime of trouble
A sobbing chant comes from her throat
and splits the morning air
The single son she had last night is buried under her
They say that the war is done
Where are you now, my son?
This last phrase became the title of the album. Although we do not understand what the Vietnamese woman at the beginning is saying, nearly half a century later, an American listener who heard this recording on YouTube commented, "What is this!? I am Vietnamese American, so I understand what she’s saying; she is crying out for her deceased loved one!" It seems to be a moment for the descendants of Vietnamese immigrants in America to reflect on their ancestors' harsh history. If there is any meaning in us media guys recording images or sound, it might be for moments like this.
On the day the bombings temporarily ceased and Baez and her group left Hanoi, there remains an interview conducted by the AP News. Since this is archival material that the AP has allowed to be shared, I’ll provide a link here.
AP news footage
The man in the trench coat who primarily answers is likely Telford Taylor, the prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, which condemned Nazi crimes. In response to a reporter’s question about contradictory information regarding the bombing of hospitals, he firmly replies, "The Bach Mai Hospital has been completely destroyed." Interjecting from the side is Barry Romo, a former soldier who returned from Vietnam and is now an anti-war activist, who states, "The bombing was not a single event; it happened multiple times." The U.S. government, which had denied attacks on hospitals and other civilian facilities, was forced to acknowledge the truth due to their testimonies.
When asked by a reporter for the impressions of her visit to Hanoi, Baez candidly responds:
"The same thing that all of us saw, which is just kind of hedeousness that it take a while for me to obserb and coming out of there, feeling mixed with relief at leaving and terrible guilt of being part of what's with landing on those people's heads over there."
When a reporter asks her what she means by "hideousness," she gives a wry smile and, hesitatingly, responds:
"Murder, murder, slaughter, blood—Et cetera."
There is no sense of exhilaration in being on the side of justice; rather, the impression is one of being overwhelmed by the reality she has witnessed.
Don Kates, who served in the Vietnam War and later became an authority on disarmament issues, compares Baez’s attitude to that of Jane Fonda, who visited Hanoi a few months earlier. This is also archived by the AP News, so I’ll quote it here. This footage explains why Fonda became known as "Hanoi Jane."
AP news footage
The footage could easily be misinterpreted as Fonda sitting at an anti-aircraft gun, attempting to shoot down U.S. bombers. She has publicly apologized for this footage multiple times, stating that she quickly realized its significance and asked the cameraman not to release the photo. She claims she was placed there without her knowledge by the Vietnamese. Watching her exitement in the footage, one might indeed believe that this was the case. The Vietnamese side surely orchestrated this scene consciously.
From today's perspective, such an act seems likely to damage Fonda's reputation in America and could be seen as counterproductive for Vietnamese propaganda. However, I think this was characteristic of the political propaganda of the communist camp at that time.
Above-mentioned Don Kates, who also participated as a soldier in the bombing campaigns in North Vietnam, writes:
"Ms. Baez made no bones about her pacifist beliefs and her hatred of wars. Yet, even after suffering through some of the most intense bombing raids of the entire Vietnam War, when asked by her hosts/witnesses to make anti-US statements, she stuck to her beliefs, saying she hated all war by all sides, no matter what. We fighting men heard Baez's statements as soon as they were made. Somehow, we ignorant warriors were sophisticated enough to recognize the difference between Baez's anti-war statements and Fonda's open promotion of North Vietnamese victory—an apparently too-subtle distinction that has escaped the press even today."
Kates also notes that even among the soldiers who were fighting on the battlefield, Baez’s words and attitude made an impression: "Most of us respected Baez's view, even if we differed with it--and acknowledged her right as an American to express that view even during a war."
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Baez shared the following story:
"A Vietnamese person asked me, wouldn’t it feel great to shoot down those U.S. bombers? I replied, well, yes, if the pilot could bail out beforehand, it would feel great."
There is a sarcastic viewpoint that suggests Baez learned a lesson from the intense criticism faced by Jane Fonda upon her return, but I believe this is a contradiction that genuine pacifists must confront when faced with the war. of their home coutnry. At the very least, Baez did not respond lightly when asked, "Wouldn't it feel good to kill your fellow countrymen?" with a simple "Yeah."
Joan Baez is a Quaker. (It’s a historical irony that Nixon was also born a Quaker.) I feel that Baez’s pacifism is consistent and deeply rooted, unlike the passing trends of the time. In the AP's footage of the interview at the bombing site, the two other men exude a sense of fervor and determination about 'I’m doing the right thing' (which is indeed understandable), while Baez merely appears troubled. That’s very much in line with her character, I feel.
The climax of Baez and her group's visit to Hanoi was a mass held on Christmas Eve, organized by the Vietnam International Solidarity Movement. In fact, I heard about this mass, conducted under the relentless American bombardment, from a Japanese journalist. Few people may remember now, but it was Shinsuke Hashida, who lost his life in Iraq, from whom I heard the story.............
To be continued with Nobusuke Hashida, Joan Baez, and the Ton Nhat Hotel (Hanoi), Part 3.
P.S.
Did you notice? In the photo of Fonda at the top of this article, the person on the left is Makoto Uzaki, who was a reporter for Nippon Denpa News in Hanoi during the war. Now over 77 years old and still active, Uzaki serves as the current bureau chief in Bangkok for the same company. He and Nobusuke Hashida are of the same generation and competed fiercely in covering the Vietnam War.
I have heard directly from Mr. Uzaki about his valuable reporting experiences in Hanoi during the massive bombing as well as the circumstances surrounding the publication of Fonda's footage. However, I think you'd be better off reading what Uzaki himself has written, so I won’t elaborate further here.
As a Hanoi correspondent, Uzaki captured the historical scoop that earned Jane Fonda the nickname 'Hanoi Jane.' Shortly after Uzaki began his assignment, Hashida arrived in Hanoi and was left with a strong impression from an American woman. That woman was Joan Baez, who visited Hanoi a few months after Fonda.
＜Reference＞
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The original text of Don Kates's article can be found here:
Ms. Baez made no bones about her pacifist beliefs and her hatred of wars. Yet, even after suffering through some of the most intense bombing raids of the entire Vietnam War, when asked by her hosts/witnesses to make anti-US statements, she stuck to her beliefs, saying she hated all war by all sides, no matter what. We fighting men heard Baez's statements as soon as they were made. Somehow, we ignorant warriors were sophisticated enough to recognize the difference between Baez's anti-war statements and Fonda's open promotion of North Vietnamese victory—an apparently too-subtle distinction that has escaped the press even today.
Regarding Jane Fonda, here’s an article from Time Magazine:Time Magazine Article
Here are Fonda’s comments regarding the “anti-aircraft gun photo” quoted in the article:
"Here is my best, honest recollection of what took place. Someone (I don’t remember who) leads me toward the gun, and I sit down, still laughing, still applauding. It all has nothing to do with where I am sitting. I hardly even think about where I am sitting. The cameras flash. I get up, and as I start to walk back to the car with the translator, the implication of what has just happened hits me. Oh, my God. It’s going to look like I was trying to shoot down U.S. planes! I plead with him, 'You have to be sure those photographs are not published. Please, you can’t let them be published.' I am assured it will be taken care of. I don’t know what else to do. It is possible that the Vietnamese had it all planned. I will never know. If they did, can I really blame them? The buck stops here. If I was used, I allowed it to happen. It was my mistake, and I have paid and continue to pay a heavy price for it."