Vietnam: the Unheard Voices - Refugee Educators' Network

Reports from the Field
their regions. Whm local-level personnel would express horror at
the idea of traveling those “open roads," there was embarrassment
up and down the hureaucrac).. In the Ila Nang regional center a
C.S. Senator was told that the "Revolutionary Dcvclopment" cadres
in Quang Ngai werc good. In Quang Ngai he was toId they were
bad. Time was also important. kTisitors to lict Nam had little way
of knowing what happened to a place they visited after they left the
country. An example of this occurred in the neighboring provinces
of Phu Yen and Binh Dinh in Cenml Viet Nam. In the spring of
1967 a major pacification effort was carried out in Phu Yen utiliing
enough mwps to open roads, occupy villages formedv under Nl,F
control, and removc other villapes to new- locations as refugee
camps. Durins this period, visitors were shown success in Phu Yen.
By July of that ycar, pacification cfTort~, and thcir accompanying
&ops, had shifted to adjacent Binh Dinh. Soon the lamer b-me
the example nf success. What happened, thcn, in Phu Yen? T\vo
months later one of our volunteers u7as warned by refugea four
miles from the province capital of Tuy Hoa chat he should no
longer come to visit them because of the dangcr. And a few days
later the same volunteer wgs advised by American officials to leave
for Snigon bcmuse of the threar even to Tuy Hoa's security. Binh
Dinh, too, was not a model for long. By December it was receiving
similar thrca~ from returning NLF forces.
yet the fact-finding missions continued, each of them emphasizing
progress. Secretary of State Dean Rusk had a flotilla of some
sixteen helicopters for a visit to the Da Nhim Dam, a showpiece
project being built with Japanese war reparations. With such an
entourage he could take only a brief look before flying on to a
similar model site elsewhere. Rcsident Johnson, of course, could not
be cxpeaed to do much traveling on his hour-long stops bemuse of
security considerations. As a result, he visited only the mammoth
American installation at Cam Ranh Bay. Tt myas somewhat different
for Vice-president Humphrey. He made one well-publicized visit to
Lieutenant Colonel Sguyen Bc's "Revolurionary Development"
cadre center at Vung Tau When Be told the Vice-Pr&denr to his
face about thc evils of corruption in the Vicmmese government, it
made newspaper headlines everywhere. Vietnamese were pleascd
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