WHEN DID THE VIETNAM WAR START REGISTRATION
The compulsory draft, which had been initiated during World War II, meant registration for young men was mandatory at 18. When the choices were Vietnam, jail or draft-dodging by going to Canada, some young men panicked and devised ways to fail the military’s physical exam, including mutilating themselves, starving or pretending to be gay. Some Americans resorted to self-mutilation to avoid the draft. Safer asked a soldier if he had regrets about leaving people homeless, and the soldier replied, “You can’t expect to do your job and feel pity for these people.”Īnother soldier told Safer, “I think it’s sad in a way, but I don’t think there’s any other way you can get around it in this kind of a war.”Īmericans back home were stunned when the CBS report about the Cam Ne village hit the news.Īfter the broadcast, Johnson reportedly called then-CBS president, Frank Stanton, and said, “Frank, this is your President, your boys just s–t on the flag of the United States.”Ĥ. Three women were wounded in the attack, one baby was killed, and four people were taken prisoner. An officer told the newsman that he had been ordered to level the area. Reporter Morley Safer recalled the shock of witnessing Marines burn down 150 houses on the outskirts of the village of Cam Ne. “One that was not pure, one that committed the same kinds of atrocities that are always committed in war, but we had never allowed ourselves to see them.” “What Vietnam did to America via television was introduce us to a new kind of America,” said author Lawrence Wright. The official line was that Americans were winning in Vietnam, but the evening news told a different story.
WHEN DID THE VIETNAM WAR START TV
TV forever changed the way Americans viewed warĪs casualties rose, the country increasingly turned against the war. Soon after, Johnson told a grieving nation, “John Kennedy’s death commands what his life conveyed, that America must move forward.”ģ. Johnson took the oath of office aboard Air Force One later that day. Less than three weeks later, on November 22, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Kennedy immediately regretted Diem’s death and U.S. knowledge, Diem was killed by South Vietnamese generals on November 2, 1963.
The Western-educated Diem, however, wielded absolute power and rose to dictator level by the summer of 1963. In addition, South Vietnam’s Buddhist majority revolted against their president, Ngo Dinh Diem. īy the early 1960s, South Vietnam’s conventionally trained army was no match for the Vietcong’s guerrilla-style tactics. The United States and South Vietnam had Catholic presidents who were shot to death in November 1963.
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