[The
Children of Vietnam] WLLIAM F.
PEPPER, executive director of
the New Rochelle Com-
mission on
Human Rights, instructor in Political Science at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry,
New York, and director of that colleges’s Children’s Institute For Advanced
Study and Research,spent between five
and six weeks this spring (1966) in
Vietman as a freelance correspondent accredited by the Military Assistance
Command in that country, and by the government of Vietnam.
During that
period, in addition to travel-
ing, he
lived in Sancta Maria Orphanage in
Gia Dinh
Province and in the main "shelter
area"
in Qui Nhon, for a shorter period of time.
His main
interests were the effects of
the war on
women and children, the role of
the
American voluntary agencies there and
the work of
the military in civil action.
His visits
took him to a number of orphan-
ages—among
them: An Lac, Go-Vap, Don
Bosco, Hoi
Due Anh, Bac Ai—hospitals:
Cho-Ray,
Holy Family, Phu My, Saigon-
Cholon
(central hospital) and shelters in
Saigon,
Cholon, Qui Nhon and outer Binh
Dinh.
Mr. Pepper
interviewed, frequently, the
following
Cabinet ministers of South Viet-
nam: Dr.
Nguyen Ba Kha, Minister of
Health; Dr.
Tran Ngoc Ninh, Minister of
Education;
Mr. Tran Ngoc Lieng, Minister
of Social
Welfare; Dr. Nguyen Thuc Que,
High
Commissioner for Refugees.
In
addition, he conferred with the leaders of the
Voluntary
Agency Community and the
USAID
Coordinator for Refugee Affairs,
Mr. Edward
Marks, as well as the USAID
child
welfare specialist, Mr. Gardner Mon-
roe,
with
Mademoiselle E. La Mer of UNI-
CEF and Mr.
Pierre Baesjous of UNESCO.
As Mr.
Pepper makes clear, by far the
majority of
present refugees in South Viet-
nam have
been rendered homeless by Amer-
ican
military action, and by far the majority
of hospital
patients, especially children, are
there due
to injuries suffered from American
military
activities. The plight of these chil-
dren and
the huge burden they impose upon
physical
facilities has been almost totally ig-
nored by
the American people.
—From
remarks
before the Senate of the United
States,
August 22,1966 by the Hon.Wayne Morse
The Children
of Vietnam
FOR COUNTLESS THOUSANDS OF
CHILDREN in Viet-
nam, breathing is quickened
by terror and pain,
and tiny bodies learn more
about death every
day. These solemn, rarely
smiling little ones
have never known what it is
to live without despair.
They indeed know death, for
it walks with them by day
and accompanies their sleep
at night. It is as omnipresent
as the napalm that falls
from the skies with the frequency
and impartiality of the
monsoon rain.
The horror of what we are
doing to the children of Viet-
nam—"we," because
napalm and white phosphorus are
the weapons of America—is
staggering, whether we ex-
amine the overall figures or
look at a particular case like
that of Doan Minh Luan.
Luan, age eight, was one of
two children brought to
Britain last summer through
private philanthropy, for
extensive treatment at the
Mclndoe Burns Center. He
came off the plane with a
muslin bag over what had been
his face. His parents had
been burned alive. His chin had
"melted" into his
throat, so that he could not close his
mouth. He had no eyelids.
After the injury, he had had no
treatment at all—none
whatever—for four months.
It will take years for Luan
to be given a new face ("We
are taking special
care," a hospital official told a Canadian
reporter, "to make him
look Vietnamese"). He needs at
least 12 operations, which
surgeons will perform for
nothing; the wife of a
grocery-chain millionaire is paying
the hospital bill. Luan has
already been given eyelids, and
he can close his mouth now.
He and the nine-year-old girl
who came to Britain with
him, shy and sensitive Tran Thi
Thong, are among the very
few lucky ones.
There is no one to provide
such care for most of the
other horribly maimed
children of Vietnam; and despite
growing efforts by American
and South Vietnamese au-
thorities to conceal the
fact, it's clear that there are hun-
dreds of thousands of
terribly injured children, with no
hope for decent treatment on
even a day-to-day basis,
much less for the long
months and years of restorative
surgery needed to repair ten
searing seconds of napalm.
When we hear about these
burned children at all, they're
simply called
"civilians," and there's no real way to tell
how many of them are killed
and injured every day. By
putting together some of the
figures that are available,
however, we can get some
idea of the shocking story.
Nearly two years ago, for
instance—before the major
escalation that began in
early 1965—Hugh Campbell,
former Canadian member of
the International Control
Commission in Vietnam, said
that from 1961 through
1963,
160,000 Vietnamese civilians
died in the war. This
figure was borne out by
officials in Saigon. According to
conservative estimates,
another 55,000 died during 1964
and 100,000 in each of the
two escalated years since, or at
least 415,000 civilians have
been killed since
1961.
But just
who
are
these civilians?
In 1964, according to a
UNESCO population study,
47.5 per cent of the people
of Vietnam were under 16. To-
day, the figure is certainly
over 50 per cent. Other United
Nations statistics for
Southeast Asia generally bear out
this figure. Since the males
over 16 are away fighting—on
one side or the other—it's
clear that in the rural villages
which bear the brunt of the
napalm raids, at least 70 per
<
cent and probably more of
the residents are children.
In other words, at least a
quarter of a million of the
children of Vietnam have
been killed in the war.
I
F THERE ARE THAT MANY DEAD,
usiug the military
rule-of-thumb, there must be
three times that many
wounded—or at least a
million child casualties since
1961.
A look at just one hospital
provides grim
figures supporting these
statistics: A medical student, who
served for some time during
the summer at Da Nang
Surgical Hospital, reported
that approximately a quarter
of the 800 patients a month
were burn cases (there are
two burn wards at the hospital,
but burned patients rarely
receive surgical treatment,
because more immediate surgi-
cal emergencies crowd them
out). The student, David
McLanahan of Temple
University, also reported that
between 60 and 70 per cent
of the patients at Da Nang
were under 12 years old.
What we are doing to the
children of Vietnam may be-
come clearer if the same
percentages are applied to the
American population. They
mean that one out of every
two American families with
four children would be struck
with having at least one
child killed or maimed. There is a
good chance, too, that the
father would be dead as well.
At the very least, he is
probably far from home.
When Wisconsin Congressman
Clement Zablocki re-
turned from Vietnam early in
1966, he reported that
"some recent search and
destroy operations have resulted
in six civilian casualties
to one Viet Cong." Though Secre-
tary of Defense McNamara
challenged the figure, Zab-
locki, relying on American
sources in Saigon, stuck by
them, and sticks by them
today. What he didn't say is that
in any six "civilian
casualties," four are children.
McNamara, too, is sometimes
more candid in private.
A colleague of mine attended
a private "defense seminar"
at Harvard in mid-November,
and heard the defense
secretary admit, during a
question period, that "we sim-
ply don't have any
idea" about either the number or the
nature of civilian
casualties in Vietnam.
Perhaps because we see them
only one at a time, Amer-
icans seem not to have felt
the impact of our own news
stories about these
"civilian casualties." A UPI story in
August, 1965, for instance,
described an assault at An
Hoa:
"I got me a VC, man. I
got at least two of them
bastards." The exultant
cry followed a ten-second burst
of automatic weapon fire
yesterday, and the dull crump
of a grenade exploding
underground. The Marines
ordered a Vietnamese
corporal to go down into the
grenade-blasted hole to pull
out their victims. The vic-
tims were three children
between 11 and 14—two boys
and a girl. Their bodies
were riddled with bullets. . . .
"Oh, my God," a
young Marine exclaimed. "They're
all kids . . ." Shortly
before the Marines moved in, a
helicopter had flown over
the area warning the villagers
to stay in their homes.
In a Delta province. New
York Times correspondent
Charles Mohr encountered a
woman whose both arms had
been burned off by napalm.
Her eyelids were so badly
burned that she could not
close them, and when it was
time to sleep, her family
had to put a blanket over her
head. Two of her children
had been killed in the air strike
that burned her. Five other
children had also died.
"They're all
kids," wrote Veteran Associated Press re-
porter Peter Arnett,
describing in September a battle at
Lin Hoc. There, in a deep
earth bunker below the fury
of a fierce battle, a child
was born. Within 24 hours the
sleeping infant awakened—and
choked on smoke seeping
down into the bunker.
According to Arnett, the GI's had
begun
"systematically" to burn the houses to the ground,
and were "amazed"
as hundreds of women, children and
old men "poured from
the ground." For the baby, how-
ever, it was already too
late.
Another Times correspondent,
Neil Sheehan, described
in June the hospital at
Cantho, in the Delta region where
fighting is relatively
light. The civilians, he said,
come through the gates into
the hospital compound in
ones,
twos and threes. The serious
cases are slung in
hammocks or blankets. . . .
About 300 of the 500
casualties each month
require major surgery. The
gravely wounded, who might
be saved by rapid evacua-
tion, apparently never reach
the hospital but die along
the way.
A few months before. Dr.
Malcom Phelps, field direc-
tor of the American Medical
Association Physician Volun-
teers for Vietnam, put the monthly
figure for civilians
treated at Cantho at about
800. That means at least 400
children, every month, in
just that one hospital.
New Jersey doctor Wayne
Hall, who worked at the
Adventist Hospital in Saigon
(he went at his own expense,
as a substitute missionary
surgeon), reported that over-
crowding, even in this
three-story Saigon institution, is a
"chronic
condition." No one was ever turned down:
"When there were no
more beds and cots, they were put
on benches; when there were
no more benches, they were
put on the floor. Some were
lying on a stone slab in the
scrub room—delivery
cases." Babies born on a stone slab.
"Of course," Dr.
Hall added, "this is the extreme—but
it's a common extreme."
A T THE OTHER END OF THE
COUNTRY, in Northern I
/% Corps, David McLanahan
reported that dur-
/-—% ing last summer, the
350-bed Da Nang Surgi-
A^
.m^cal Hospital never had
fewer than 700 patients.
McLanahan, one of five
medical students in Vietnam on
an intern program sponsored
by USAID, said that Viet-
namese patients frequently
would not talk freely to him,
but that they told
Vietnamese doctors and medical stu-
dents enough about how they
got hurt so that it was
possible to estimate that at
least 80 per cent of the injuries
were inflicted by American
or South Vietnamese action.
My first patient [McLanahan
said] was a lovely 28-
year-old peasant woman who
was lying on her back
nursing a young child. The
evening before, she had been
sitting in her thatched hut
when a piece of shrapnel tore
through her back transecting
the spinal cord. She was
completely paralyzed below
the nipple line. We could
do nothing more for her than
give antibiotics and find
her a place to lie. A few
mornings later she was dead.
54 RAMPARTS
and was carried back to her
hamlet by relatives. This
was a particularly poignant
case, but typical of the
tragedy seen daily in our
emergency rodm and, most
likely, in all of the
emergency rooms in Vietnam.
Most of McLanahan's
patients, he said, were "peasants
brought in from the
countryside by military trucks. It was
rare that we got these
patients less than 16 hours after
injury. All transportation
ceases after dark. A small per-
centage of war casualties
are lucky enough to make it to
the hospital."
Cantho, Saigon, Da Nang,
Quang Ngai—it is by put-
ting together reports such
as these that the reality of
extrapolated figures becomes
not only clear but plainly
conservative. A quarter of a
million children are dead;
hundreds of thousands are
seriously wounded. There must
be tens of thousands of Doan
Minh Luans.
Manufacturer Searle
Spangler, American representative
for the Swiss humanitarian
agency Terre des Hommes,
describes what his agency
has found to be the pattern
when children are injured in
remote
villages:
"If he's badly
ill or injured, of course,
he simply won't survive. There is
no medical care available.
Adults are likely to run into the
forest, and he sometimes may
be left to die. If they do try
to get him to a hospital,
the trip is agony—overland on
bad roads, flies, dirt,
disease, and the constant threat of
interdiction by armed
forces." McLanahan says that
virtually every injury that
reaches the hospital at Da Nang
is already complicated by
serious infection—and describes
doctors forced to stop during
emergency surgical opera-
tions to kill flies with
their hands.
Torn flesh, splintered
bones, screaming agony are bad
enough. But perhaps most
heart-rending of all are the tiny
faces and bodies scorched
and seared by fire.
Napalm, and its more horrible
companion, white
phosphorus, liquidize young
flesh and carve it into gro-
tesque forms. The little
figures are afterward often
scarcely human in
appearance, and one cannot be con-
fronted with the monstrous
effects of the burning without
being totally shaken.
Perhaps it was due to a previous lack
of direct contact with war,
but I never left the tiny victims
without losing composure.
The initial urge to reach out
and soothe the hurt was
restrained by the fear that the
ash-like skin would crumble
in my fingers.
I
N QUI NHON TWO LITTLE
CHILDREN—introduced to me
quietly by the interpreter
as being probably "chil-
dren of the Viet
Cong"—told of how their hamlet
was scorched by the
"fire bombs." Their words
were soft and sadly hesitant
in coming, but their badly
burned and scarred bodies
screamed the message. I was
told later that they evinced
no interest in returning to
their home and to whatever
might be left of their family.
I visited a number of the
existing medical institutions in
South Vietnam, and there is
no question that the prob-
lems of overcrowding,
inadequate supplies and insufficient
personnel are probably
insurmountable. The Da Nang
Surgical Hospital is
probably as well off as any Viet-
namese hospital outside
Saigon—but it is for surgery
only; there is also a
Medical Hospital not so well equipped.
Even in the Surgical
Hospital, there are a number of
tests that can't be done
with the inadequate laboratory
and X-ray equipment.
Frequent power failure is a major
problem (suction pumps are
vital in surgery rooms; one
child died in Da Nang, for
instance, because during an op-
eration he vomited and—with
no suction pump to with-
draw the stomach contents
from his mouth—breathed
them into his lungs). Though
100 burn patients every
month reach Da Nang Surgical
Hospital, McLanahan
reported that while he was
there, the hospital had only
one half-pint jar of
antibiotic cream—brought in pri-
vately by a surgeon—which
was saved for "children who
had a chance of
recovery." In Sancta Maria Orphanage, I
frequently became involved
in trying, with a small amount
of soap and a jar of
Noxzema, to alleviate the festering
infections that grew around
every minor bite and cut.
In the nearby Medical
Hospital, there are frequent
shortages of antibiotics,
digitalis and other equipment.
While the Surgical Hospital
makes use of outdated blood
from military hospitals,
most Vietnamese hospitals are
chronically short of blood.
According to another medical
student, Jeffrey Mast, a
hospital at Quang Ngai (60 miles
south of Da Nang)
occasionally "solved" a shortage of
intravenous fluids by
sticking a tube into a coconut—a
common practice in outlying
areas and, reportedly, among
the Viet Cong.
The Swiss organization Terre
des Hommes, which is
attempting to provide
adequate medical care for Viet-
namese children (they were
responsible for transporting
Doan Minh Luan and Tran Thi
Thong to England, and a
few other children to other
European countries), issued a
report last spring Which
said in part that in Vietnam,
hospitals . . . show the
frightening spectacle of an im-
mense distress. To the
extent that one finds children
burned from head to foot who
are treated only with
vaseline, because of lack of
a) ointment for burns, b)
cotton, c) gauze, d)
personnel. In places with the
atmosphere of slaughter
houses for people, where flies
circulate freely on children
who have been skinned
alive, there are no
facilities for hygiene, no fans, and no
air conditioning . . .
In South Vietnam, approximately
100 hospitals provide
approximately 25,000 beds to
serve the ever growing
needs of the civilian
population. Bed occupancy by two
RAMPARTS 55
or three patients is not
uncommon (two to a bed is the
rule at Da Nang). I can
testify personally to the accuracy
of Manchester Guardian
writer Martha Gellhorn's de-
scription of the typical
conditions at Qui Nhon.
In some wards the wounded
also lie in stretchers on
the floor and outside the
operating room, and in the
recovery room the floor is
covered with them. Every-
thing smells of dirt, the
mattresses and piUows are old
and stained; there are no
sheets, of course, no hospital
pajamas or gowns, no towels,
no soap, nothing to eat
on or drink from.
S
EARLE
SPANGLER, OF TERRE DES HOMMES, SayS that
there are only about 250
Vietnamese doctors avail-
able to treat all the
civilians in South Vietnam.
My own information is that
there are even fewer;
Howard Rusk of the New York
Times gave a figure of 200
in September, and I have
been told that there are now
about 160. Obviously the
diff'erence hardly matters when
at least five times that
many children die every week. Dr.
Ba Kha, former Minister of
Health, told me that there are
about nine nurses, practical
and otherwise, and about five
midwives for every 100,000
persons. He also told me that
his ministry, charged with
administering the entire public
health program for South
Vietnam, is allocated an unbe-
lievable two per cent of the
national budget.
There are, of course,
American and "free world" med-
ical teams at work, and
USAID is increasingly supplying
the surgical hospitals (a
new X-ray machine has been
installed at Da Nang, which
AID hopes to turn into a
model training hospital),
but while their contribution is
vital and welcome, it is
like a drop in the ocean of civilian
pain and misery. To speak of
any of this as medical care
for the thousands of
children seared by napalm and phos-
phorus is ridiculous; there
is simply no time, nor are there
facilities, for the months
and possibly years of careful
restorative surgery that
such injuries require. Burn pa-
tients receive quick first
aid treatment and are turned out
to make room for other
emergency cases.
Although of course no one
can talk about it openly,
there are known to be cases
in which pain is so great, and
condition so hopeless, that
the treatment consists of a
merciful overdose. In an
alarmingly large number of other
cases,
amputations—which can be
performed relatively
quickly—take the place of
more complex or protracted
treatment so that more
patients can be reached in the fan-
tastic rush that is taking
place in every hospital. Any
visitor to a hospital, an
orphanage, a refugee camp, can
plainly see the evidence of
this reliance on amputation as
a surgical shortcut. Dr.
Hall has reported that hospitals
allow terminal cases to be
taken away by their families to
die elsewhere, so that room
can be made for more patients.
Then there are politics. A
leading doctor and adminis-
trator in the I Corps area
has found it difficult to get
supplies for his hospital
because he is suspected in Saigon
of having been sympathetic
to the Buddhist movement. In
Hue,
a 1500-bed hospital
shockingly is allowed to operate
under capacity because some
of the faculty and students
at the associated medical
school expressed similar sym-
pathies; apparently in
punishment, the school and hos-
pital receive absolutely no
medical supplies from Saigon;
only aid from the West
German government keeps it oper-
ating at all. The dean of
the medical school and some of
his students were arrested
last summer; a shipment of
microscopes donated by West
Germany was heavily
taxed by Saigon. The
harassment goes on.
At the present time, two
groups are trying to do some-
thing about the horror of
burned and maimed Vietnamese
children. They are the
Swiss-based international group,
Terre des Hommes, a
nonpolitical humanitarian organiza-
tion founded in 1960 to aid
child victims of war; and a
newly-formed American
association with nationwide
representation called the
Committee of Responsibility.
Their approaches are
somewhat different, but they are
cooperating with each other
wherever it seems helpful.
I
N THE AUTUMN OF
1965, Terre des Hommes
arranged
for about 400 hospital beds
in Europe—like the two
in England paid for by Lady
Sainsbury—and for
surgeons to donate their
services. They contacted
North Vietnam, the NLF
representative in Algiers and
the government of South
Vietnam. The first two turned
down the offer, but the
South Vietnamese government
seemed willing to cooperate.
Air fare from Saigon to
Europe is about $1500, so
Terre des Hommes asked for
help from the United States
government.
American soldiers in Vietnam
who accidentally sufl"er
serious burn injuries from
napalm are rushed aboard spe-
cial hospital
planes—equipped to give immediate first aid
treatment—and flown directly
to Brook Army Hospital
in Texas, one of the world's
leading centers for burn treat-
ment and for the extensive
plastic surgery that must follow.
Burnt Vietnamese children
must fare for themselves.
It was the use of such
special hospital aircraft that
Terre des Hommes was hoping
for, though any air trans-
portation would have been
welcome. Although American
authorities in Saigon at
first seemed enthusiastic, the de-
cision was referred to the
White House. In January 1966,
Chester L. Cooper—now in the
State Department "work-
ing," he says, "on
peace"—wrote on White House
stationery to issue a
resounding NO.
. . . the most effective way
of extending assistance
[Cooper wrote] is on the
scene in South Vietnam where
children and others can be
treated near their families
56 RAMPARTS
and in familiar
surroundings. . . . U.S. aircraft are defi-
nitely not available for
this purpose.
Terre des Hommes wrote back
to Cooper to argue the
absurdity of the American
position—there are, of course,
no "familiar
surroundings" in napalm-torn Vietnam,
thousands of the children
are displaced orphans, and in
any case there are no
medical facilities for the long and
difficult rehabilitation of
burned children. In November
of this year, asked directly
about the request. Cooper said:
A doctor in Switzerland, of
apparently good intentions
but somewhat fuzzy judgment,
wanted planes to take
these innocent Vietnamese
kids to Switzerland for treat-
ment. [Edmond Kaiser,
founder of Terre des Hommes,
is not a doctor.] . . . The
problem, basically, is that
Terre des Hommes—and the
chap involved, I want to
emphasize, is a well meaning
man—when we looked
into it—and I worry just as
much about the injured kids
as the next fellow, maybe
more so—what they want to
do,
they want to be taking these
frightened little kids
halfway across the world and
dump them there in a
strange, alien society . . .
However much better a Swiss
home or hospital might
be,
it cannot compensate for
having their own families
around them in familiar
surroundings in their own
country. Experienced social
workers and hospital work-
ers have described what
happens when you take a child
suddenly out of his
environment: culture shock and
trauma. . ..
Either Cooper is grotesquely
misinformed about med-
ical facilities and family
coherence in South Vietnam, or
he would genuinely rather
keep these horribly maimed
children in the bosom of
frequently nonexistent families,
in the "familiar
surroundings" of dirty fly-ridden hospitals
or jammed refugee camps or
burned-out villages, rather
than subject them to the
culture shock and trauma of
clean hospital beds, relief
from pain, and a chance for the
kind of surgery that will
give a Tran Thi Thong back her
eyelids and enable a Doan
Minh Luan to close his mouth.
In any case, while the
argument was going on, Terre des
Hommes turned to commercial
airlines and asked them
to donate whatever empty
space they might have on flights
from Saigon to Europe; they
refused, possibly feeling that
the experience might be
psychologically difficult for their
other passengers. Finally,
in May, Terre des Hommes
brought 32 children
(including Luan and Thong) out of
Vietnam at its own expense;
they were both sick and
wounded, and eight were burn
victims. The tiny victims
were brought out by
arrangement with Dr. Ba Kha, the
Saigon Minister of Health;
when I visited Saigon, the
doctor was extremely
cooperative and seemed eager to
implement any program that
could benefit even a few of
the people who, he
acknowledged, are suffering terribly.
I
N SEPTEMBER, Terre des
Hommes arranged for an-
other 26 children to be
flown to Europe, and one of
their representatives in South
Vietnam chose the
children. But when the
planeload arrived in Geneva,
the people waiting received
a terrible shock. It contained
no war-wounded children at
all. All 26 were polio, cardiac
and cerebral spastic
victims, chronically ill children. Dr.
Paul Lowinger of Wayne State
University's medical school
was on hand when Terre des
Hommes officials learned
what had happened, and
described them to me as "dis-
appointed and
frustrated" over the violation of the terms
of the agreement.
So far, no one has been able
to determine what hap-
pened to the burned and
other war-wounded children who
were chosen by Terre des
Hommes but somehow didn't
arrive on the plane in
Geneva. They have, seemingly, dis-
appeared—or died. I have
letters in my possession indi-
cating that physicians who
have been to Vietnam since
my return fear that wounded
and burned children are
being hidden or kept out of
sight of visiting doctors.
In the meantime. Dr. Ba Kha
had been replaced, ap-
parently for his actions in
attempting to get the burned
children out of the country,
and his successor has dem-
onstrated much less concern
for the Terre des Hommes
project. Most officials of
the Swiss organization are con-
vinced, though they cannot
of course say so publicly, that
the firing of Ba Kha and the
substitution of the children
was directly related to the
fact that in England and else-
where in Europe, the arrival
of the first group of children
had caused a tremendous stir
about the cruel eff"ect of the
bombing. The arrival of Luan
and Thong in Great Britain
stimulated a large,
spontaneous flow of gifts and contri-
butions—and not a small
amount of indignation about
their condition.
Incidentally, Canadian
reporter Jane Armstrong, who
visited the Sussex hospital
where the two children are
being treated, wrote that
"the hospital staff have been
astonished by their happy
dispositions," and notes that
"no one can say what
wiU happen to Luan," who has no
known relatives. The culture
shock and unfamiliar sur-
roundings don't seem to be
bothering the children.
In any case, Searle
Spangler, Terre des Hommes rep-
resentative in New York,
seems firmly to believe in "spy-
like hanky panky" by
the South Vietnamese government,
including the secreting of
badly injured children in order
to play down the problem. He
also said that "some of our
Vietnamese workers have been
mistreated, and we have
reason to fear for
them." On the adequacy of medical
care in Vietnam, Spangler
notes that Terre des Hommes
operates the only children's
hospital in the country—600
patients for 220 beds, with
many of the children lying on
newspapers—and that in other
hospitals, some news-
RAMPARTS 57
papers and wrapping paper
are commonly used as dress-
ings for burns, being the
only material available.
T
HE AMERICAN GROUP, the
Committee of Respon-
sibility, has only recently
been formed. Its con-
cern is specifically with
children burned by
American napalm and white
phosphorus.
Its national coordinator and
moving spirit, Helen Fru-
min, a housewife from
Scarsdale, New York, became
interested in the problem
last spring when she encountered
some Terre des Hommes
material. Later, in Lausanne, she
met Kaiser and learned more
about the problem. She be-
came convinced that
Americans have a special responsi-
bility toward the burned
children of Vietnam.
"Napalm is an American
product," Mrs. Frumin says.
"The tragedy that is
befalling children in Vietnam is all
the more our responsibility
where children burned by na-
palm are concerned; only the
United States is using this
weapon, and it is fitting
that we should provide the care
for the mutilated
children."
The Committee backs up its
position by citing such
sources as a story in
Chemical and Engineering News, last
March, about a government
contract for 100 million
pounds of Napalm B, an
"improved" product. The older
forms of napalm, the article
goes on to say, left "much to
be desired, particularly in
adhesion."
This,
of course, refers to the
ability of the hateful sub-
stance to cling to the flesh
of the hamlet dwellers on whom
it is usually dropped,
insuring a near perfect job of human
destruction after prolonged
agony. It is because American
tax dollars are behind every
phase of the process, from
manufacture to delivery and
use, that the citizens of the
Committee of Responsibility
(who include prominent
doctors throughout the
country) feel that American dol-
lars might best be spent in
relieving the sulTering they buy.
The Committee hopes at first
to bring 100 napalmed
children to America for
extensive treatment. Hospital beds
are being arranged, 300
physicians are ready to donate
their
services,
homes have been found. But
the cost for treat-
ing each child is still
between $15,000 and $20,000, not in-
cluding transportation from
Vietnam to the United States.
The fantasy of the position
that "adequate" care can be
provided within South
Vietnam and that "culture shock"
might result from displacing
a child, was pointed up in a
report prepared for the
Committee by Dr. Robert Gold-
wyn, a noted Boston plastic
surgeon. He said in part:
The children of Vietnam are
the hardest struck by
malnutrition, by infectious
disease, and by the impact
of terror and social chaos.
They begin with the dis-
advantages implicit in a
colonial society after nearly
25 years of continuing war,
economic backwardness,
inadequate food and medical
facilities. Particularly
helpless under such
conditions is the burned child . ..
A burn is especially
critical in a child because the
area of destruction relative
to total body surface is
proportionately greater than
that of an adult. And in
the present real world of
Vietnam, his nutritional status
and resistance to infection
is lower than that of an adult.
The acute phase of burn
demands immediate and
complex attention involving
physicians, nurses, dress-
ings,
intravenous foods, plasma,
often blood, anti-
biotics, and after the first
week, wound debridement
and skin grafting. Unless
evacuation is simple and im-
mediate and
\^ell-supervised, these early burns are best
treated at or near the scene
of injury.
. . . However, the child who
has survived the initial
stages of a burn would be a
highly suitable candidate
for treatment elsewhere.
Since most of the burns are the
result of napalm or white
phosphorus, they are deep,
and subsequent deformities
and contractures are usual.
These deformities, which
interfere with function and
off'er extreme psychological
obstacles for social read-
justment, can be relieved by
well-known and standard-
ized plastic surgical
procedures. These operations can
ideally be done in a country
such as the United States
where facilities are
adequate and where the environ-
ment is conducive to total
rehabilitation.
The child would not have to
lie in a bed with two or
three others; he would not
be exposed to parasitic in-
festation or sepsis or
diarrhea or epidemics which are
now prevalent in most of the
Vietnamese civilian hos-
pitals.
He would be out of a
war-torn country and could
heal his psychological
wounds as well.
. . . While one is
instinctively reluctant to think of
taking a child away from
familiar surroundings, family
and friends, for medical
treatment and rehabilitation,
these phrases are empty in
the present context; we are
talking of children whose
homes are destroyed, who
may be orphaned, whose
"familiar surroundings" are
the hell of disease, famine
and flame attendant on mod-
ern warfare.... Further, the
choice is not between care
at home and better care in
the United States, but in
realistic terms, between
token care or often, no care at
all,
and adequate care.
To Dr. Goldwyn's analysis
can be added that of Dr.
Richard Stark, past
president of the American Society of
Plastic and Reconstructive
Surgery, who agreed in a
speech on October 3 that
plastic surgical facilities in
Vietnam are "presently
inadequate."
THERE is
of course, an official
United States posi-
tion on the use of napalm in
Vietnam. The De-
partment of the Air Force
set it forth on Septem-
ber
1,1966,
in a letter to Senator
Robert Kennedy:
58 RAMPARTS
Napalm is used against
selected targets, such
as-
caves
and reinforced supply areas.
Casualties in attacks
against targets of this type
are predominantly persons
involved in Communist
military operations.
I am compelled to wonder
what military functions were
being performed by the
thousands of infants and small
children, many of whom I saw
sharing hospital beds in
Vietnam, and a few of whom
appear in photographs ac-
companying this article.
In the brutal inventory of
maimed and killed South
Vietnamese children one must
also include those who are
the helpless victims of
American defoliants and gases. The
defoliants used to deprive
the Viet Cong of brush and
trees that might afford
cover are often the common weed-
killers 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T.
Yet the pilots spraying from the
air cannot see if women and
children are hiding in the
affected foliage. These
chemicals "can be toxic if used in
excessive amounts,"
says John Edsall, M.D., Professor of
Biology at Harvard.
The U.S. has admitted it is
using "non-toxic" gas in
Vietnam. The weapon is a
"humane" one, says the govern-
ment, because it creates
only temporary nausea and diar-
rhea in adult victims. Yet a
New York Times editorial on
March 24, 1965 noted that
these gases "can be fatal to the
very young, the very old,
and those ill with heart and lung
ailments. . . . No other
country has employed such a
weapon in recent
warfare." A letter to the Times several
days later from Dr. David
Hilding of the Yale Medical
School backed up this point:
"The weakest, young and
old, will be the ones unable
to withstand the shock of this
supposedly humane weapon.
They will writhe in horrible
cramps until their babies'
strength is unequal to the stress
and they turn blue and black
and die ..." Once again, the
children of Vietnam are the
losers.
About eight per cent of
Vietnam's population live in
refugee shelters or camps;
about three quarters of the
shelter population, or over
750,000 persons, are children
under 16. In shelters like
that of Qui Nhon, which I vis-
ited, there is unimaginable
squalor and close confinement.
There were 23,000 in that
camp when I was there, and I
have been told that the
figure has since tripled.
Father So, unquestioned
leader of these thousands of
refugees in Qui Nhon and in
the rest of Binh Dinh prov-
ince,
works for 20 hours a day to
provide what relief he
can, particularly for the
orphaned children. These usually
live in a hovel-like
appendage to the main camp, fre-
quently without beds. Food and
clothing are scarce.
As So's guest, -I attended
with him a meeting with Dr.
Que,
the South Vietnamese High
Commissioner of
Ref-
ugees,
and with the USAID Regional
and Provincial
Representatives and the
Coordinator of Refugees. So
reminded the AID officials
of their promise to supply
badly needed food; the
province representative replied
that 500 pounds of bulgar
had been given to the district
chief with instructions that
it was to be delivered to So
for distribution in the
camp.
So said nothing in reply.
Later, he laughed softly and
said to me that neither he
nor the children would ever see
that bulgar. The district
chief had more lucrative con-
nections.
T
HE
SHELTER CHILD rcccives
little if any education.
Crossed strands of barbed
wire form the perim-
eter of his living world.
There are no sanitary
facilities—those in camps
near a river are lucky.
Even shelters with cement
floors have no privies for as
many as 160 families. Plague
and cholera increasingly
threaten the health of the
children (and of course the
adults, though to a lesser
degree), and I noticed an amaz-
ing amount of body infection
on the youngsters, ranging
from minor to extremely
serious in nature. Their level of
resistance is quite low, and
the filth, combined with the
absence of hygienic
knowledge, is so universal that mos-
quito and ant bites quickly
become infected. There is not
usually medical help for the
children of these camps.
Tuberculosis and typhoid are
evident, with periodic local
epidemics; about one per
cent of all Vietnamese children
will have TB before reaching
the age of 20.
Many of the shelter children
show traces of the war. I
particularly remember a tiny
girl whose arm had been
amputated just below the
elbow, and who followed me
from one end to the other.
The children also display a
reaching out, not in a happy
but in a sort of mournful
way. The shy ones frequently
huddle together against the
side of a hut and one can
always feel their eyes upon him
as he moves about. No one
ever intended for them to live
like this—but there they
are. One small child provided for
me their symbol. He sat on
the ground, afway from the
others. He was in that
position when I entered and still
there several hours later
when I left. When I approached,
he nervously fingered the
sand and looked away, only
finally to confront me as I
knelt in front of him. Soon I
left and he remained as
before—alone.
Another 10,000
children—probably more by now—live
in the 77 orphanages in
South Vietnam. I lived for a time
in Sancta Maria orphanage
(in an area officially described
as influenced by Viet Cong,
and off" limits to American
military personnel). I
arrived there during a rest hour, to
find the children in a
second floor dormitory, two to a
bed, others stretched out on
the floor. Their clothing con-
sisted of only the barest
necessities, though Sancta Maria
was better off" than
other institutions I visited.
Here, too, food was scarce
and there was a shortage or
RAMPARTS 59
a complete absence of basic
supplies such as soap, gauze,
towels and linen. I devoted
some evenings to teaching
elementary English
vocabulary, and I was impressed by
the amount of motivation
displayed by some of these
children despite the horrors
that frequently characterized
their past—and present.
Their solemnity was very real,
however, as was their
seeming general inability to play
group games.
In most orphanages, as in
the refugee shelters, there is
no schooling at all, but
despite this and the shortages of
food and other supplies
there is a growing tendency in
Vietnam for parents to turn
children over to the camps or
to abandon them. Mme. LaMer,
UNICEF representative
to the Ministry of Social
Welfare, expressed alarm over
this tendency while I was in
Vietnam; it seems to be one
more example of the rapid
deterioration of family struc-
ture because of the war.
Officials told me that infant aban-
donment has become so common
that many hospitals are
now also struggling to
provide facilities for orphan care.
F
INALLY, THERE IS the
forgotten legion of Viet-
namese children in the
cities and provincial
towns—clinging together
desperately in small
packs,
trying to survive. Usually
they have at
best threadbare clothing,
and sometimes they are naked;
they go unwashed for
months—perhaps forever; almost
none have shoes. They live
and sleep on the filthy streets,
in doorways and alcoves.
Despite the gradual process of
animalization, in their
striving to maintain a semblance
of dignity, they are
beautiful.
On a few occasions I took an
interpreter into the streets
with me and spent hours
sifting histories (often, feeling
that my presence might
inhibit the response, I stayed away
and let the Vietnamese carry
out the interview).
Some had come to the cities
with their mothers, who
turned to prostitution and
forced the children into the
streets. Others, abandoned
in hospitals or orphanages or
placed there while ill, had
merely run away. Still others
had struggled in on their
own from beleaguered hamlets
and villages. Once on the
streets, their activities range
from cab flagging, newspaper
peddling and shoe shining
to begging, selling their
sisters and soliciting for their
mothers. I saw five- and
six-year-old boys trying to sell
their sisters to GI's; in
one case the girl could not have
been more than 11 years old.
W
ITH MISERY COMES DESPAIR,
and One of its
most shocking forms was
called to my atten-
tion by Lawson Mooney, the
competent
and dedicated director of
the Catholic Re-
lief Services program in
Vietnam. Mooney said he had
noticed, between the autumn
of 1965 and the spring of
1966,
a fantastic increase in the
rate of adolescent suicide.
I began to check the
newspapers every day—and in-
deed, there was usually one,
frequently more than one
suicide reported among the
city's children. In several cases,
group suicides were
reported: a band of young people, un-
able to face the bleakness
and misery of their existence,
will congregate by agreement
with a supply of the rat poi-
son readily available in
Vietnam, divide it, take it, and die.
"Many of these
suicides," Lt. Col. Nguyen Van Luan,
Saigon Director of Police,
told Eric Pace of the New York
Times, "are young
people whose psychology has been de-
formed, somehow, by the
war." Van Luan went on to say
that in the Saigon-Cholon
area alone, 544 people at-
tempted suicide during the
first seven months of 1966—
many of them, of
course,
successfully. In that one
section
of the country—with about 18
per cent of the total popu-
lation—that is an average of
78
a month. Last year, Luan
noted, the monthly average
had been about 53, so the
increase was about 50 per
cent. "You must remember,"
Luan went on, "that
these are young people who have
never known peace. They were
more or less born under
bombs."
These are the "familiar
surroundings" away from which
American policy will not
transport the horribly burned
children of Vietnam, the
"frightened little kids" of whom
White House aide Chester
Cooper says that humani-
tarians want to take
"halfway around the world and dump
them there in a strange,
alien society." One must agree
with his further comment
that "it is a very ghastly thing."
Clearly, the destruction of
a beautiful setting is exceeded
only by the atrocity that we
daily perpetuate upon those
who carry within them the
seeds of their culture's survival.
In doing this to them we
have denied our own humanity,
and descended more deeply
than ever before as a nation,
into the depths of
barbarism.
It is a ghastly situation.
And triply compounded is the
ghastliness of napalm and
phosphorus. Surely, if ever a
group of children in the
history of man, anywhere in the
world, had a moral claim for
their childhood, here they
are.
Every sickening, frightening
scar is a silent cry to
Americans to begin to
restore that childhood for those
whom we are compelled to
call our own because of what
has been done in our name.
William F. Pepper is
Executive Director of the Commis-
sion on Human Rights in New
Rochelle, New York, a
member of the faculty at
Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry,
New York and Director of
that college's Children's Institute
for Advanced Study and
Research. On leave of absence last
spring, he spent six weeks
in South Vietnam as an
accred-
ited journalist.
60 RAMPARTS
PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG
ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION
PROHIBITED
The
Children
of
Vietnam
"One
tiny
child provided
for me their
symbol.
He was about
three
years old and he sat on the
ground
away
from the others.
He
was in that
position
when
I
entered
and still there
several
hours
later
when
I
left.
When
I
approached
he
nervously
fingered
the
sand
and
looked
away,
only
to
finally
confront
me
as
I
knelt
in
front
of
him.
Soon,
I left
and he
remained
as
before—alone."
THE
COMMITTEE
OF
RESPONSIBILITY
is an
American voluntary organiza-
tion composed
of physicians, sur-
geons,
and
interested laymen, which has as
its mission
the saving of war burned Viet-
namese
children. The members of the com-
mittee feel
a deep responsibility, as Ameri-
cans,
for the
suffering in Vietnam and see
it as an elementary
act of justice to work for
the welfare
of the children who are the in-
nocent
victims of American power. The
committee
has invited all Americans to par-
ticipate in
this work.
The
Committee of Responsibility plans
to make
facilities available for the treatment
and
rehabilitation of war burned Vietnam-
ese
children in the United States. In this ef-
fort the
committee hopes to enlist the aid of
physicians,
particularly plastic and general
surgeons,
secure hospital beds and obtain
community support
for temporary foster
home care.
In order to
make possible the transporta-
tion of war
burned Vietnamese children to
treatment
centers in the United States, the
Committee
of Responsibility will attempt to
enlist the
aid of voluntary and governmental
agencies in
Vietnam and the United States,
obtain U.S.
consent for the entry of the
Vietnamese
children into this country, and
secure
space in U.S. government aircraft.
The
committee
is
appealing
directly to the
American
people for funds and support. Re-
quests for
information and contributions
should be
sent to:
THE
COMMITTEE OF RESPONSIBILITY
Box 424,
Scarsdale, New York 10583
Helen G.
Frumin, National
Co-ordinator
68 RAMPARTS
Color
photographs on pages 45, 48 and 49 by David McLanahan.
Black
& white photography courtesy of Terre des Hommes.
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