And the bombs kept falling!

And the bombs kept falling!

Just visited Vietnam and Cambodia to some research on sequel to “The Kiss”. I was amazed by a lot of things but these stood out:

How young the population was in comparison to Australia’s.

How dynamic the countries were.

How beautiful the place was.

How beautiful the people were.

How resourceful they are using everything.

How crowded compared to Australia it is.

The disparity in wealth.

How little evidence was left from the war.

How little resentment there is.

How much they had suffered.

 It is so easy to forget, how can a people suffer so much and not be eternally traumatised? (See below for statistics) from genetic  and biological deformities  to people being killed and maimed on a daily basis, the war still continues for many Vietnamese today.

I cannot even pretend to understand the suffering that these people have and continue to endure. It is past comprehension and is something I will ponder on for a long, long time.

If we can remember, this is one way to help prevent this from happening again.

 

Duration:   August 5, 1964 to May 7, 1975.

Civilian deaths over two million in North and South.

 

US Forces

 Killed in Action     47,378 1

 Wiounded in action    304,704 2

 Missing in action          2,338 3

 Captured       766

 

 

Army Republic Vietnam

 Killed in Action  223,748

 Wounded in Action    1,169

 

South Korea

Killed in Action 4,407

Wounded in Action 17,060

 

Australia

 Killed in Action  469

 Wounded in Action 2,940

 

Thailand

Killed in Action  351

Wounded in Action 1,358

 

 

New Zealand

 Killed in Action 55

 Wounded in action 212

 

 North Vietnamese Army/Viet Cong

Killed in Action 1,100,000

 Wounded in Action 600,000

Captured 26,000

Bombs dropped by US forces 6,727,084 tons bombs (Three times amount in WW2)

Millions of landmines and unexploded bombs that at the current rate of clearance will take 300 years to clean up.

3,500,000 acres of Vietnam was sprayed with 19 million gallons of Defoliants, the effects will last 100 years.

What was Agent Orange?

 

Agent Orange was a herbicide developed for military use. Chemically, the product was a 50/50 mix of two herbicides, 2,4,-D (2,4, dichlorophenoxyacetic acid) and 2,4,5-T (2,4,5 trichlorophenoxyacetic acid). These herbicides were both developed as weed killers in the 1940's, and were effective against broad leaf plants and several crops.

 

Why did the military use herbicides?

 

Herbicides were developed to be deployed in enemy areas to deny cover and concealment to the enemy. In dense terrain particularly, the use of herbicides to destroy covering vegetation was to protect American and allied troops from ambush or other undetected movement of the enemy.

The US spent $352(US) Billion Dollars on the war. No one knows the cost from the other nations involved, and the Russians, Chinese and Eastern Block who supported the North Vietnamese.

 

Vietnam a history of war.

From our current vantage point, there is little doubt that Vietnam has suffered

the tragedies of the twentieth century, especially of war, more than most

countries. The normal privations of colonialism were accentuated during

World War II, when bad harvests combined with the export of rice to Japan

led to a massive famine that is reputed to have taken between 400,000

and 2,000,000 lives in the Red River Delta during the winter of 1944-45

(Long 1973: 130-133; Woodside 1976: 159). From 1946 to 1954, the war

for independence from the French took a large but unknown number of

military and civilian casualties-perhaps up to a half-million dead and one

million wounded (Harrison 1989: 124). Warfare was soon resumed at even

more deadly levels with the replacement of the French colonial army by

military forces from the United States and other countries. Between 1965

and 1975, the escalation of the war reached its peak with the presence of

more than a half-million American soldiers and massive aerial bombing

campaigns that traumatised the world (Harrison 1993).

http://www.soc.washington.edu/users/brines/vietcasualties.p

Pictures:http://www.google.com.au/imgres

http://acidcow.com/pics/10367-vietnam-war-100-pics.html

 

 

Jesus           Let the little children come to me, for such are the kingdom of God...

 

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

Dwight D. Eisenhower