The Children of Vietnam by William F. Pepper

[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.