Williams, Robert

              Eric Walz History 300 Collection
Robert Williams – Life during the
Vietnam War
Robert Williams
October 27, 2004
Box 6 Folder 30
Oral Interview conducted by Kirk Smith
Transcript copied by David Garmon November 2005
Brigham Young University – Idaho
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KS: Where were you born?
RW: Murray, Utah.
KS: How old were you during the culmination of the Vietnam War?
RW: Approximately thirty years old.
KS: Did you have any close friends or family that were drafted?
RW: Uh, yes, I had friends that were drafted, including myself.
KS: Would you care to explain, or who, and when or why?
RW: Ya, I was drafted in 1963, at the time that the Berlin Wall was being erected and
there was a Cuban Missile Crisis. Vietnam had started at that period of time, but it was
simply more of a, just going over there and helping the South Vietnamese. It wasn’t a
full- scale military action, but anyway… Kennedy, President Kennedy instituted the draft,
at that time and I was drafted, however, between the time I was drafted and the time I
went to my physical, President Kennedy passed another law that said that if you were
married and had a child, or one on the way, the call was null and void.
KS: You said you had friends drafted as well, were there any close family members or
just friends from high school?
RW: No, they were just friends from high school, most of them were in the Navy as a
matter of fact. Some were drafted and others feared the draft, so they just simply joined
to get a better deal. They could join the Navy or be drafted into the Army. So, it was
better to join the Navy and take a chance on that.
KS: To your best understanding, what were America’s goals during the Vietnam War?
Why did we go over there?
RW: That becomes a very controversial subject. The word was that we was there to
protect, our allies from communism, that communism was going to spread from China
into North Vietnam and eventually into South Vietnam if we didn’t put a stop to it. If it
did spread to South Vietnam they could see it going to Japan and so on and it would mess
up our trade. I think probably the biggest reason we went to Vietnam was over
economics, we didn’t want to lost trade with other countries, so they decided to protect
the big dollar in the United States.
KS: Now, you said it was controversial, what are some other takes on the goals of the
Vietnam War? How do they differ?
RW: Well, they differ in the fact that the Kennedy Administration tried to sell the
American public that we was over there protecting homemade apple pie and mother and
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everything. But that didn’t last very long. People didn’t want to fight a war that hadn’t
came to us. The First World War came to us in the fact that our allies that we had
previously were under attack. The Second World War came to us because the Japanese
bombed Pearl Harbor and the Germans attacked England, which were very close allies.
So, those two wars were very acceptable. When it came to the Vietnam War, the North
Vietnam people did nothing for us. There was an awful lot of sympathy for them, and
that’s what really made it different for the government.
KS: Now, what were your feelings about these goals that you have previously stated
about the war?
RW: You know, I don’t think we had any business in Vietnam, but once the President of
the United States, basically it was Lyndon Johnson, after Kennedy was assassinated, once
he committed American troops over there, then my belief then as it is even now with Iraq,
is that once you’ve committed the troops, you must support them, which failed to happen.
The American people didn’t support the Vietnam War, a good part of the government
didn’t support the Vietnam War, and it became disaster. And it ended in a disaster with
an awful lot of American lives lost over there, so I would support the war in Vietnam I
suppose because we got involved in it, and you couldn’t let all these people die for
nothing.
KS: What is your opinion of the Vietnamese people now? Do you have any feelings
built up because of the war?
RW: You know really, I don’t think I do. That’s a statement from an outsider that was
never there. I think there are an awful lot of hard feelings with the Vietnamese, not
unlike the feelings of the Japanese from the WWII. The second World War has been
over for you know, sixty years, and people still talk about those Japs, which I’m sure a
pretty hard feel for some of these fine Japanese people who live in our society to accept
to, but I don’t have any bad feelings towards these Asian people, you know we adopted
one. A little Korean boy[,] it’s an interesting culture, so no, I have no hard feelings
towards any of those people.
KS: Ok, just a follow- up question, of the friends that you had that went to the war, and
other people that served over there, do you know any of them that have bad feelings
toward the Vietnamese people because of the war? Does that exist?
RW: Yes, that does it exist[ s]. I think there are probably stronger feelings of love than of
hatred for the people from these guys. Because you’ve got to remember, the American
forces in North Vietnam were fighting not the Vietnamese people, they were fighting the
Vietcong, which was a totally revolutionary people. They were fighting the Chinese, a
lot over there. They were fighting Russian advisors over there. It was just a bad
situation, so really the people, the average Ching, or Joe, whatever you want to call them,
wasn’t in the war. It was all these revolutionary people that came across the border to
fight.
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KS: What changes did you witness in the morale of the general public here in America
during the time of the war?
RW: The morale in the general public was terrible. There were American advisors being
sent to Vietnam under Kennedy in the early sixties, and under Johnson in the early
seventies. People did not support this war; in any way, shape, or form. The military was
treated terrible when they returned from Vietnam. I think the biggest changes came in
the breakdown of the family units, because the war placed so much stress on the young
people. In was in the 1960’ s that we all started to see, it wasn’t the beginning of drugs,
but we all started to see the real outcome of drug use. And the drug use was used by I
believe the people in the 18- 30 year range to relieve stress and worry whether they were
going to be drafted and killed in Vietnam, which was a possibility for everybody. So, the
opinion of that war was terrible. There were riots on the campuses, there were killings by
the police, which further explained to people that the police were trying to protect
themselves. There was all different kinds of organizations that were organized against
the war. There were thousands of young men fleeing to Canada to escape the war, to
escape the draft. The soldiers were spit on, there were rallies against them when their
planes would land, you know, terrible things.
KS: Along with that question, the original question was what changes did you witness.
Did you notice a change in the morale at the beginning as opposed to the end, or was it
pretty much the same throughout the whole thing?
RW: It was always discussed, I believe one of the Senators, I don’t remember who it was
now, made the statement at the time, you can spoon feed, you have to spoon feed a baby
very slowly to get used to the food, and that’s what happened to the American people.
The Johnson Administration fed us this war a little at a time, then all the sudden it
dawned on the American people halfway through that this wasn’t going to work, and then
the feelings got strong against it, and it just went on and on.
KS: Ok, how did the war change life in Idaho and more specifically, the Rexburg/ Ribgy
area? How did the war change your average routine of life, or did it?
RW: Well, I think it did, at the time of the war we moved to Idaho probably right at the
end of the war. I can guess, I have a friend from Rigby who was in the war and anytime
there is a war and a draft and people being killed and you live in a small community, you
know that brings the war home. If you live in a larger community, say San Francisco, or
Salt Lake or somewhere if you was a relative then it would certainly mean more to you,
but it just seemed like one out of a big pot when you live in a larger place. I do not know
anyone personally that was killed in the Vietnam War. But, I’m sure there was a lot from
this area and especially Utah, but I think that it would have a devastating effect,
especially in a small community.
KS: What types of things were they covering up that have recently been brought to light,
to your understanding?
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RW: Well, by the mid- 80’ s several things were brought to the list. First of all casualty
count were way underestimated, the Johnson Administration was just plain fearful to list
the casualties, that there really was over there. Secondly, there was so many veterans
coming home, from this kind of conflict, the United States had never fought this kind of
war before, they had fought Germans, they had fought Japanese, which were organized
armies and they would adhere to rumors of war. In Vietnam it didn’t adhere to anything.
If you were to go out on the streets of Los Angeles today and pick up 100 homeless guys
between the ages of 50 and 70, you’re going to find that they are probably suffering. A
lot of them are going to be Vietnam Vets not only were they damaged in the war,
physically and emotionally, but again when they got home from our people.
KS: What was it like to have a lot of the young men gone from the society? Did you
notice a lot of men gone and it was typically older people or married people or women.
Did you notice that a lot?
RW: You know, there wasn’t enough gone so you really noticed it. You knew they were
gone, but not like there was a big home in this company because these guys are gone.
What did happen along those lines though, that was I think for the good, was the
government forced companies to reinstate their employees, when they come back. I had
a relative, of I guess we did have relative[ s] in the war, my brother- in- law was in the
Navy. He was on an aircraft carrier, and when he came back he was reinstated directly
into his job. This was something before you’d never even heard of. So, that was a good
thing, you know, to really notice, I don’t think. I think jobs were easier to find.
KS: What are your most vivid moments, I know you talked about some, but at the time
of the war, what are some of your most vivid moments or memories that you have?
Whether it be here on the home front, a newsflash, or whatever it may be? Is there
something that sticks out in your mind when you think of the Vietnam War it just comes
to you?
RW: Ya, the thing that really comes to me, very strongly, the thing I remember more
than anything, two things, the bombing of Hanoi, and where they finally had to do that.
Secondly, was pictures of prisoners they were keeping, you know, in the terrible bamboo
cages. But I think the most very vivid thing I remember was when the war was over and
they had to get out and they were reduced to a small bunch of Marines at the American
Embassy in Saigon. There was thousands of American sympathizers, maybe they
weren’t sympathizers, they were probably employees actually of the U. S. Government,
that were at the embassy trying to get rides out. Because they knew they were going to
get killed afterwards. The Marines were at the gates, and the walls really just batting
people away, because they were lifting them out of there into the gulf, to the aircraft
carriers. And that was probably the most traumatic thing I can remember in the war.
Now, I’ve heard other stories and things that happened in the war, there were things that
happened in that war, that probably didn’t happen in any other war. For example, I have
a friend that was there in Vietnam, he always told us this story that when they were
captured at a more high- ranking North Vietnamese of the Viet Cong, the people would
interrogate, and of course these people were way used to it, you couldn’t torture, I guess
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private torture, I don’t know, you couldn’t get information out of them, they were just
totally tight- lipped. So, he said they would take two of them at a time and take them out
and put them in a helicopter with a bag over their head. They would take off, the
helicopter would hover about three feet off the tarmac, and then the interpreter would say
now, “ This is it, you’ve got one last chance, to give us the information we want, or we’re
pushing you out of this helicopter.” And he’d have the one guy sitting right by the door.
And, “ No, no talk.” Because they knew the Americans were humane. So then, one of the
American guys would just reach over and throw one of these 110 Vietnamese out the
door and he’d scream. And of course the helicopter was making a lot of noise. He’d just
fall on his face not the tarmac. The other guy would just start spouting everything he
knew, because he didn’t want to be the next one out the door, he thought maybe 2,000
feet, to his death. That was just, you know, you never hear stories like that about the war
or anything. You talk in the war you know, with humor. Oh, and I’ll tell you one other
thing. Life magazine had a photographer in Vietnam, and I don’t remember all the deal
was about it, but there was a picture that made the headlines for months, in all the
magazines of the Viet Cong officer holding a 9 millimeter pistol, right between this guy’s
eyes, and he’s just shoot, and it’s caught right with his camera. So, anyway…
KS: Do you think the relationship with the Kennedy’s and the American public had
anything to do with the riots that were going on about Vietnam War?
RW: Ya, I think so. If Kennedy had lived and went on as President and gone another
term, which I’m sure he would have, the war would have ended the same, but we
wouldn’t have had the turmoil in this country. Because people would not have been any
better about the war, but they would have stayed united behind Kennedy. But, Lyndon
Johnson, they hated Lyndon Johnson, he was a man that hated the people, he love[ d]
publicity, but he didn’t like to put himself in the limelight. He was a half chance
President, who would have never had a, stood for, never would have been President on
his own. He just thought, the more I can get, he committed millions of dollars to this
war, we will win. Well, he lied to the American people for so long we couldn’t win, it
was impossible to win after that. I don’t care how many people we had.
KS: What were your feelings about the draft? You talked about it previously, you were
drafted and had a family member drafted, did you feel it was necessary at the time, did
you feel that they did it correctly, and what was the procedure that they used? I mean we
can take these one at a time, but was it a fair procedure, all sorts of things. I mean the
draft in general, what were your feelings about it?
RW: Well, you know the draft as it began was, probably fair, you know if you were 19-
23 you registered with a selective service board, they give you a number and a letter that
was a, b, c, d, if you were “ a” you had a good chance to get picked in the draft. There
was a very good chance you would get called up, it was almost guaranteed. People
complained about that, that was part of this big uprising. So, then at some point, in the
early part of the war, the government changed it when they made what they called the
draft lottery. You were assigned a number and then a draft board of Idaho would have
200 people register, through the draft board and the selective service, then if they,
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through some procedure, I don’t know how they come about it, but they would draw out
20 numbers this month and 20 numbers next month. So, you’re pretty well guaranteed to
get called, it was just when you were going to get called. The people did not like that,
there was even some of these big demonstrations and people were burning their draft
cards, and that was illegal. It was a lose- lose situation.
KS: Previously you said the draft was necessary, can you expand?
RW: Well, it had to be necessary, because you had to have “ X” amount of people over
there to fight the war. I mean you can’t put on a war, if they would have said, ok, let’s
cut the draft in half, and leave half these guys home then, at least half of who was over
there was going to end up being killed. Because they can’t move supplies, you can’t
move munitions, equipment, or all that stuff without having the people. So, once it was
committed then it had to be followed up with people. Now days, in this Iraq situation,
there is a different feeling in this country. Iraq is a very jest war compared to Vietnam.
You can see that in the country because enlistments are enough to cover and they don’t
foresee in the near future where it’s going to have to change. But enlistments would not
cover, I mean no one wanted to enlist in the services for Vietnam because it was a be-killed
situation.
KS: We talked about it a little bit, but I’d like to expound on why and how returning
veterans were treated so horribly. What caused that?
RW: The press, the media, I think caused it, 67% of it. Because the stories that were
coming back here. The government had somewhat of a tight reign. By the time the
message got back home it was new to us, and the media when they couldn’t get stuff out
of the government, they started looking for other things to report. They started picking
up stories from villagers, Vietnamese people. The media played up that they were killing
innocent people. They say they weren’t heroes, they were baby killers. The media
played it up, so when these guys came home they didn’t see the good side, they saw the
bad side. It’s the same today; the news will shock people to give them what they want to
hear. You can imagine, being over there and having to kill someone and coming home
and people badgering them for the things they had to do.