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Listening to Local Veteran Joseph Johnson
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by Kristina Gronquist, W A M M
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When Jane Fonda spoke this year (1/27) at the antiwar rally in Washington, D.C., her words sparked vivid memories for Vietnam veteran Joseph Johnson of St. Paul, Minnesota. Johnson served in the Navy from 1966 to 1968 aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Intrepid. He worked on deck in a flight tower as a communications specialist. In this role he assisted takeoff and returning flights of jet pilots who were on weekly bombing missions, bombing the Ho Chi Minh trail as well as the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong, even though the U.S. government officially denied these cities were under almost constant attack.
After Jane Fonda’s controversial trip in 1972 to North Vietnam (the reason she was dubbed “Hanoi Jane”), she undertook a national speaking tour, sharing photos and firsthand experiences. She informed the public about the bombing of these civilian cities. The U.S. government portrayed her as a dupe and denied the illegal bombings. To this day, Jane Fonda incurs the misplaced wrath of people who hold on to the myths and lies of the American-led war on Vietnam. But Joe was there, and he says Jane Fonda was right about the horrific bombardment of the two cities.
Johnson was raised in a conservative family of Swedish immigrants from Alexandria, Virginia. His grandfather became a master sergeant in the Army to help achieve citizenship, and his father also enlisted in the Army. At age 17, Johnson attended a military college and became a second lieutenant in the Army. To avoid his designated assignment as an Army sharpshooter, he joined the Navy. He did not support the Vietnam mission: His goal was to blend in for two years and get out alive.
Johnson was aboard one of four huge aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin that held 100 planes each. Every third day the bomber jets took off to bomb Hanoi and Haiphong, missions that Presidents Johnson and Nixon denied. As a communications specialist, Johnson was responsible for crisis management, dealing with planes that were damaged upon return, perhaps on fire, some of which would crash into the ocean and have to be retrieved. And then there were the planes and pilots that never returned at all.
Johnson got to know many of the pilots personally. The launching of the strikes often meant an eighteen-hour workday. People not familiar with the role of the Navy in wars might not understand the post-traumatic stress syndrome that many naval members suffered upon returning from Vietnam, erroneously believing that only the army or ground troops faced intense stress. Johnson’s experience aboard the U.S.S. Intrepid negates that.
In addition to the daily pressure and anxiety inherent in the bombing missions—not knowing for sure if pilots sent off on their missions would return in one piece or at all—was the constant worry in this period of nuclear confrontation with Russia. As Daniel Ellsberg exposed in the Pentagon Papers, Nixon had made a decision to consider using tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam, and targets had already been selected. These low-yield atomic bombs were aboard planes on the warships, including the U.S.S. Intrepid, and Johnson says that five planes on each ship were fully equipped, always standing still, but ready to take off at a moment’s notice. The nuclear weapons aboard the doomsday planes would be disengaged with the simple twist of a pin. The readiness of these tactical nuclear weapons and willingness to use them was not revealed to Congress, but Henry Kissinger (secretary of state under Nixon) traveled to Moscow in the early 1970s to warn and threaten the Soviets with their possible use
When Johnson came home from Vietnam, he did so with a deep sense of doom about the future of humanity. If the nuclear option was used in Vietnam, Russia would likely retaliate, which could trigger a full-scale nuclear war. Johnson knew how close the U.S. and the Soviets were to the nuclear brink. Like many returning veterans of that era, he embarked upon a unique personal journey, traveling and experimenting with various alternative lifestyles. Impressed with the work of Buckminster Fuller, he came to Minnesota in 1972 to study in an experimental college at the U of M. Based on my interview with Joe Johnson to prepare this article, I found him to be extremely knowledgeable, with a head chock-full of facts and figures relevant to U.S. foreign policy and world history. In addition, it was obvious he possessed a deep spiritual foundation, based on years of reflection translated now into a genuine desire to stop the madness of war he witnessed four decades ago.
Forty years later, what have we learned? As casualties mount in the American war on Iraq, as we begin to see the damaged young men and women returning from those battlefields (30 percent diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome), can peace activists maintain the pressure needed on the politicians and the economic systems that drive the nation to these immoral invasions and brutal occupations? Can we avoid the grim statistics and fallout that the Vietnam quagmire brought to us?
Vietnam released figures on April 3, 1995 stating that a total of one million Vietnamese combatants and four million civilians were killed in 21 years of war. An estimated 600,000 were wounded. The accuracy of these figures has generally not been challenged. Considering a Vietnamese population of about 38 million during the period of 1954– 1975, Vietnamese casualties represented 13 percent of the population at that time. During the same period, the U.S. population was 220 million. If the U.S. had incurred casualties of 13 percent of its population, this would translate into 28 million U.S. dead, or one person from every six-to-eight-person family. A total of 58,226 American soldiers died in the war or are missing in action. Thousands more came home to the U.S. psychologically and physically maimed; homelessness, drug abuse, and suicide plagued many returning Vietnam veterans, and still take their toll.
A young Jane Fonda was severely “swift-boated” (attacked as an unpatriotic liar) when she tried to expose the deadly toll of war on North Vietnamese civilians. WAMM and other peace activists are no strangers to similar accusations. For challenging the systems of war and exploitation we are accused of aiding and abetting “the enemy.” But the irony is that today the U.S. has positive relations with Communist Vietnam, including business exchanges.
The fact that people defend their land and resources and/or choose an economic/political/ cultural system that does not parallel ours does not make them enemies of the United States. Many of us learned that lesson from Vietnam, but today another tragic war is being waged, this time on the people of the Middle East, so it is a lesson that activists like Joseph Johnson of Veterans for Peace must go on teaching. |
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W A M M Action
Across the country, citizens gathered in the local and national offices of their senators and representatives in order to make sure they were paying serious attention to ending American’s War on Iraq.
The Occupation Project, initiated by Voices for Creative Nonviolence, has organized hundreds of sit-ins, at which people read statements, sing, chant, initiate discussions, perform skits, read names of U. S. troops killed in Iraq and bring to light facts and ideas ignored by mainstream media.
From all over Minnesota, to the Chicago office of Rahm Emanuel, to Nancy Pelosi’s suite in Washington, D. C., these peaceful but militant gatherings have been going on for more than a month. (http://www.vcnv.org/occupation) For related forms of political pressure, see the following Code Pink Projects: ListenHillary.org and PelosiWatch.org
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© 2007 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete April 2007 Index - click here
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