Tell a Story That's Worth Sharing About the Vietnam War

For this extra credit assignment, you will need to tell a story that's worth sharing about the Vietnam War.  You are to use Google Slides and the Movenote application to tell the story. All completed stories must then be upload to the TEDEdClub Channel

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Burst of Joy
My name is Erik Olson and in June of 2016, Courtney McCall, Philip Cate, and I produced a 3:25 minute video that tells the story of "Burst of Joy," a famous Vietnam War photograph.

(to watch our 3:25 video, click here)

(for a transcript, see below)

Hello everybody, my name is Erik Olson and I’m here today with Courtney McCall and Philip Cate to tell you the story behind the Pulitzer prize-winning photograph...

...Burst of Joy. This photograph, taken during the Vietnam War, was shot by photographer Slava Veder on March 17th, 1973 at the Travis Air Force Base in California. The photograph depicts a wife and children excitedly greeting their father and husband...

...Lieutenant Colonel Robert L. Stirm. Stirm, a fighter pilot...

...was shot down in his F-105D in 1967 over the...

...Canal Des Rapides Bridge in Hanoi. He later went missing and was...

...imprisoned for 6 years and spent 281 days in solitary confinement, until 1973 when he was saved during Operation Homecoming...

...an extraction mission for 591 American prisoners of war in North Vietnam. Between February 12 and April 4, 54t military air transport missions flew to and from Hanoi and other known prisoner of war camps...

Like other prisoners, Stirm endured gunshots, illness, torture, and starvation. However, his suffering did not end with the war. Even though Stirm was able to be reunited with his family, he did not receive the homecoming he most likely wanted...

Three days before the photo was taken, Stirm received a Dear John Letter, a letter from his wife Loretta admitting that she had found another lover. None of Stirm’s family had heard from him since he went missing in 1967, so it is believed that Loretta thought her husband had died. While the pains of war were hard enough for Stirm, difficulties lay ahead for him at home. Throughout the following year after his return, he dealt with divorce and his wife’s remarriage. Stirm said in an interview that today he cannot bring himself to display this photo in his home because of the painful memories it brings him...

...As for the family today, Robert Stirm moved to the Air Force and retired as a colonel in 1977. He currently lives in Foster City, California. His oldest son Robert Jr. works as a dentist in Walnut Creek, California. Roger Sitrm became a major in the Air Force and lives outside of Seattle. The youngest daughter Cindy works as a waitress and lives near Robert in Walnut Creek. Loretta Stirm remarried in 1974 and moved to Texas with her new husband. She passed away in 2010 at the age of 74.

Stirm’s oldest daughter Lorrie, the then fifteen-year-old girl running towards her father with her arms outstretched, still holds close memories of the photo. Currently a resident of Mountain View, California, she recalled in an interview, “We didn’t know if he would ever come home. That moment all our prayers were answered, all our wishes came true.” Like critics, Lorrie can see the deeper meaning behind the photo...

...While the photograph is titled Burst of Joy, it serves as a reminder of the many families that were not reunited following the war. It also remains an important symbol for the end of America’s involvement in the war, thus making it a story worth sharing...

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Muddy Tears 

My name is Anna Pearson and in June of 2016, Cortney Yue, Christine Chang, and I produced a 3:03  minute video that tells the story of "Muddy Tears," a famous Vietnam War photograph.

(to watch our 3:03 video, click here)

(for a transcript, see below)

Hello everybody. My name is Anna Pearson and I’m here today with Cortney Yue and Christine Chang to tell you the story behind a very famous photograph taken during the Vietnam War. This photograph is most often called...

...“Muddy Tears.” This photograph was taken by a man named Horst Faas on January 1, 1966 with the women and children in the photograph having to crouch in a muddy canal as they took cover from intense Viet Cong fire. In the background of the photograph there are paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, the first major U.S. army ground formation deployed in Vietnam.

Paratroopers are specially trained soldiers who are familiar with parachute operations. Since these soldiers can be dropped from the sky, they can penetrate battlefields from behind enemy lines.

The civilians featured in the photograph were being escorted by the paratroopers through multiple firefights during the U.S. assault on a Viet Cong stronghold, twenty miles west of Saigon.

The Muddy Tears photographer also captured other moments where women and children had to hide from Viet Cong fire. For example, in this photograph taken on the same day, the vulnerability of the civilians during the Vietnam War is again showcased.

The man behind the Muddy Tears photograph, as we said already, was Horst Faas, a German photojournalist.  Faas won two Pulitzer prizes in 1965 and again in 1972 for the photographs he took during the Vietnam War.  A Pulitzer prize is an award for an achievement in American journalism, literature, or music.

Faas was born in Berlin, Germany and died in 2012 in Munich, Germany at the age of 79 years old.  He not only covered the fighting during the Vietnam War, but also recruited and taught new talent from among the Vietnamese.

Faas was known for establishing new standards for covering war with a camera, and he became one of the world’s most legendary photojournalist.

As Faas once said, “War is hell. You can't photograph a flying bullet, but you can capture genuine fear.” And that is exactly what he did with...

...this iconic photograph. Faas was able to capture the civilians’ expressions that were overwhelmed by fear and distress from the intense commotion surrounding them. Having Horst Faas risk his life to capture these once in a lifetime moments really opened the eyes to many showing the truth of what happened in Vietnam. Without these powerful pictures, people would not be able to imagine the hardships and suffering the South Vietnamese people had to go through. This picture, Muddy Tears, is one of the most iconic pictures of the Vietnam War and is sure to leave, even today, with a memorable and unforgettable image. Pictures like these create the real, vulnerable truth about the Vietnam war; and this is why “Muddy Tears” is a story worth sharing.

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Flower Child

My name is Keenan Taw and in June of 2016, Chris Yang, Colin Bailey, Blake Castleman, and I produced a 2:54 video that tells the story of "Flower Child," a famous Vietnam War photograph.

(to watch us tell our 3:25 story, click here)

(for a transcript, see below) 

Hello, everybody, my name is Keenan Taw, and I’m here today with Colin Bailey, Blake Castleman, and Chris Yang, to tell you the story behind a very famous photograph taken during the Vietnam war that is most often called by the name...

...Flower Child. The girl featured in this photo, Jan Rose Kasmir, was your average 17 year old high school girl whose strong opinions regarding the war engraved her in US history, forever. An orphan, Jan bounced around from foster home to foster home in the...

...suburbs of Maryland. At the time of the protest she was attending high school, and later she would attend the...

...New York College of Health Professionals as a pre-med major.

The photograph was taken at a march on the Pentagon on October 21, 1967 where...

...approximately 100,000 men, women, and children were confronted by 2,500 soldiers armed with rifles. Their goal? To end the war, “even if only for a day”.

Protests were rampant during the time of the Vietnam...

...war because many of the people of the United States were angry, and disagreed with the US involvement in...

...Vietnam. As Jan Rose Kasmir said in an interview in 2014...

...“I felt that the war in Vietnam was a horrible expression of American Imperialism and we had no business being there.” Jan had received the flower, a chrysanthemum, from a man who was handing them out to protesters. She appears sad in the photograph because, as she said...

..“at that moment I realized how young these boys [the soldiers] were.” She continued, “They were just as much a victim of the war machine as anyone else.”

People that were present report that the young soldiers were shaking,

...most likely in fear of being ordered to fire on the protestors. Jan said...

...“None of them made eye contact. They stonewalled me. But the photographer later told me he noticed them shaking. I think they were afraid they were going to be told to fire at us.”

Amidst the chaos Jan was striving to convince the soldiers to join her and the other protesters in their cause.

After tensions rose between the protesters and the soldiers, the crowd was forced to disperse by the use of tear gas. To provide a clear picture of the tension and chaos that was occurring, allow me to tell you about Abbie Hoffman...

...another protester that was present that day’s, method of protesting. As soldiers faced off with protesters, Abbie Hoffman held a mass exorcism, reportedly...

...“hoping to levitate the pentagon 300 feet off the ground, turn it orange and vibrate out any evil spirits.” By the end of the protest, 681 civilians had been arrested, and many had been beaten as they were forcefully moved away from the steps of the pentagon.

About thirty years later, Riboud, the photographer behind Flower Child, tracked Jan to another anti war protest in London.

This time, the gathering was against the war in Iraq. Riboud said that she was carrying a poster-size copy of, Flower child.

At the age of seventeen, one year older than me and the three other juniors who worked on this project with me. Jan Rose Kasmir found the courage to stare death in the face, and share her message with the world and that’s why this is a story worth sharing.

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Flee to Safety

My name is Caitlyn McCall and in June of 2016, Alice Li, Jaiqi Lu, and I produced a 4:55 video that tells the story of "Flee to Safety," a famous Vietnam War photograph.

(to watch us tell our story, click here)

(for a transcript, see below)

Hello everybody. My name is Caitlyn McCall. And I’m here today with Alice Li and Jackie Lu to tell you the story behind a famous photograph from the Vietnam War. This photograph is most often called...

...“Flee to Safety.” Kyoichi Sawada, a Japanese award winning photographer, shot this photograph in 1965. The photo depicts two South Vietnamese mothers caring their children through a river. While they were wading through the river, guns were fired causing them to panic.

They were forced to leave their village near Qui Nhon, the capital of the Binh Dinh Province. During the war, the village had a large American military presence.

As of today, the city is considered a first class tourist attraction with an urbanized infrastructure and a geo-economic priority. It is one of the three commercial and tourism centers of southeast Asia.

But during the war, the inhabitants were asked to leave by the US Air Force because the Viet Cong were using the villages as camps to fire at the US Marines.

Viet Cong is the name for the communist guerilla force native to Southern Vietnam that fought against the South Vietnamese and US. Each village supposedly sheltered Viet Cong guerillas. All of the South Vietnamese women and children in the area were advised to leave before the attack started. They were told to leave everything behind; their homes, their personal belongings, and friends. It was a matter of life and death. So they left.

After giving an ample amount of time for them to evacuate, the Americans started to destroy the villages. This attack was part of an operation, whose purpose was to drive the Viet Cong members out of the coastal area in South Vietnam.

Named after a dangerous South American fish, Operation Piranha was a success. Only five civilians were killed. The death toll would have been higher if the Americans did not warn the civilians.

A Vietnamese news reporter tracked down one of the children in the “Flee to Safety” photograph. The man holding the photograph is Nguyen Van Anh. He was only fourteen years old when he escaped from US bombs.

In the photograph, he is the young boy in the top left corner. His younger sister is wading in front of him. While his mother is leading the way in the bottom left corner. On the right, there is a mother holding her child. All three of the children are alive, as of April 30, 2015, when the interview took place. Sadly, both the mothers have passed.

According to the interview, “In 1989, the photographer’s wife visited the village, where the famous photo was shot. Then she gave Nguyen Van Anh, the man in the interview, an album of photos taken in Japan, Vietnam, and Cambodia between 1954 and 1970.”

In Time Magazine’s November of 1970’s article, “The Press: Death of the Daring,” Kyoichi Sawada is mentioned. “He was certainly the most daring photographer working for the United Press International in Indochina. He considered himself as a person who can do anything as long as it’s needed for a story.

The photographer was willing to risk his life to hitch helicopter rides to capture photographs in the heart of the battlefield. He even darted through a minefield to get pictures of American troops.”

Kyoichi Sawada is a Pulitzer Prize Winner for “Flee to Safety.” The Pulitzer Prize is an honor achievement in the United States that was established in 1917 by Joseph Pulitzer...

... a newspaper publisher commonly associated with yellow journalism or extreme exaggeration. Twenty out of twenty one of the categories that win the award are given a certificate and a prize of $10,000 in cash.

After winning the award, Sawada sought after the family he took a picture of and respectfully gave them half of his prize money. Alongside the Pulitzer award, this photograph also won the World Press Photo of 1965.

Sawada’s photography capabilities of expressing emotion did not stop after his image of “Flee to Safety.”In the following year, he produced yet another World Press Photo. This time, it was a picture of a Viet Cong soldier being dragged behind an American vehicle.

Unfortunately, Sawada’s story was cut short. He and his unarmed co-worker from UPI were ambushed on October 28, 1970. They were brutally beaten to death. The photographer died at the age of 34.

After his death, he received the Robert Capa Gold Medal in the Overseas Press Club. This war has been forgotten by modern conversations.

However, when this photograph appears in people’s sight, it brings underlying feelings in a form of telling a story. “Flee to Safety” is a strong photograph that represents the struggle of protecting family and the measures people will go to keep them safe. Therefore, this truly is a story worth showing.

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Respite

My name is Jane Park and in June of 2016, Ben Ly, Keyi Hu, Kyle Yen, and I produced a 3:02 video that tells the story of "Respite," a famous Vietnam War photograph.

(to watch our 3:10 video, click here)

(for a transcript, see below)

Hello, everyone, my name is Jane Park, and today I’m here with Ben Ly, Keyi Hu, and Kyle Yen to tell you the story behind “Respite,” a famous photograph taken during the Vietnam War.

This photograph is officially called “Vietnam War,” but for the sake of this presentation, we have renamed it, and we hope no one takes offense.

The photograph was taken on January 9, 1965, in the jungle 40 miles east of Saigon. It was taken at approximately 4:28 A.M. after the South Vietnamese troops, depicted in the photograph, had spent an entire night bracing themselves for an attack from the Viet Cong. Thought the anticipated attack was never carried out, the subjects are evidently exhausted and tense.

The photograph was taken by Horst Faas, a renowned combat photographer. Faas won the Pulitzer Prize for having taken the shot.

In the image, foliage and jungle extend beyond the viewer’s line of sight. Because the natives were more familiar with this type of terrain, the Viet Cong successfully set booby traps, and they were often able to make a psychological impression on enemy troops by not setting any at all, and instead frightening the soldiers who assumed that there were traps. Most of the devices that the Viet Cong used involved spikes that could severely injure and/or kill the soldier. Under the cover of foliage and small bodies of water, booby traps were incredibly difficult to find and easier to set off.

The most commonly used trap was the punji trap, a pit full of sharpened sticks.

Less primitive methods made use of grenades. A trip wire would be tied to the safety pin of a grenade and stretched across a path. Pressure on the trip wire would detonate the grenade. This type of trap could be easily hidden, as depicted in this image. In order to protect allies, the Viet Cong used indicators such as broken branches and bamboo to indicate the location of a booby trap.

As shown by this North Vietnamese propaganda photo, civilians were encouraged to assemble their own booby traps and set them nearby to discourage enemy troops.

In addition to being a nuisance, the unimaginably hot and humid climate of the Vietnamese jungles resulted in illnesses such as malaria and ringworm. Agent Orange was an herbicide dropped on the dense crops and foliage in the jungle to destroy them, and in the process, destroy the Viet Cong’s cover, but it would later prove to have deleterious effects on anyone who was exposed to it during the war.

Taking all this into consideration, we now have a better understanding of what conditions American and South Vietnamese troops were subject to, and though the people in the photograph have not been specifically identified, it’s reasonable to appreciate the courage of those who entered the Vietnam War, a war that is still a frequently debated subject. For these reasons, “Respite” is a story worth sharing.

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