How useful certain sources are as evidence to the public reaction of the USA to the Vietnam War.

Chanelle Gray

Question 4

The Vietnam War was very important, as it was the first war to be covered by the media on TV.

The question is asking us how useful certain sources are as evidence to the public reaction of the USA to the Vietnam War.

Source G is an article from a US magazine, which was published at the time. It is a primary source. But the problem is, the magazine was designed to entertain, not necessarily to tell the truth.

The first word of the source is “Television”. This is referring to the TV war theory. It also says that TV has encouraged a majority of viewers to support the war. This source includes figures in it. 64% people said TV made them feel they wanted to back up the boys and 26% felt opposed to the war.

Now if we take a look at the source closely and ask some questions about it, we’ll find out how useful this source is to find out how the public felt about then war.

The information in the source isn’t a great deal. It is 3 sentences long and most of it is about the figures and what they mean. Although they say what they mean, it doesn’t say where they got the results from and who says that. E.g., if the people were men, women, children, old people, young people, people with family fighting in the war etc.

If we ask how relevant it is to the question, it’s quite relevant because it is about the public but it isn’t good to use because of the lack of information.

Chanelle Gray

I don’t think we could trust this source because the figures could have been made up on the spot to try and get people to agree with what has been said.

The source doesn’t tell us a lot of things. I have mentioned above most of them but it also doesn’t say specific dates like the month that the magazine was published or who actually ...

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If we ask how relevant it is to the question, it’s quite relevant because it is about the public but it isn’t good to use because of the lack of information.

Chanelle Gray

I don’t think we could trust this source because the figures could have been made up on the spot to try and get people to agree with what has been said.

The source doesn’t tell us a lot of things. I have mentioned above most of them but it also doesn’t say specific dates like the month that the magazine was published or who actually voted and where the votes came from.

Source H is a results table of opinion polls of what they think the most important problem facing the country was from 1961 – 68.

The kind of things which were included in the table were prices and inflation, war, peace an international problems, racial problems, integration, and Vietnam. From 1965 – 68 most people thought that Vietnam was the most important thing that happened to the USA during that time.

There is not a lot of information in this source. Although it has year dates and what was voted, it doesn’t mention any figures. There are no percentages and there isn’t any detail in where the information came from. It doesn’t mention what people said what and what age group they were in etc.

The source was based on results from Gallup poll results but doesn’t say what that is. It also doesn’t mention how the votes were collected. If it were from a magazine, only some people would vote because not everyone reads magazines. If it were a TV vote, not many people would send in votes either.

It is quite relevant because it mentions how that Vietnam was thought of the most important problem for around 3 years. It’s also included the dates the

Chanelle Gray

Question has asked about and has said what was important then.

I think we can trust it more than the previous source, but I wouldn’t use it to find out information to write in a history book about Vietnam. There just isn’t the right amount of information involved.

Source I is a letter written by a US soldier fighting in the Vietnam War. It was written at the time.

The first word is “Christmas” which is likely to encourage the public to oppose to war when they read that a religious festival such as Christmas wasn’t celebrated. And the fact that it was also marked my tragedy also makes people feel sorry for you. The soldier really plays for sympathy as he mentions young people aged 18 to 19 being ripped to pieces. He says he’s sick to death of it.

This source doesn’t actually include a lot of information. It just says a few things about things not being celebrated and kids being ripped up and also not being able to sleep.

I don’t think it’s very relevant, as it’s not mentioning what the public think but what a soldier thinks. He is trying to play for public opposition because he only mentions the bad things about the war and makes it seem really terrible.

I think we can trust it and it would make a good source in a history textbook of some kind. As a soldier wrote it at the time, it is primary and the information is an opinion of someone who has had to go through the war. The source doesn’t tell us any figures of facts. It’s mostly made out of opinions.

Chanelle Gray

The last source is Source J. It is from an article published in Time magazine in January 1970. It describes the massacre of Vietnamese civilians in My Lai in March 1968. A US army reporter who was present at the time wrote it.

It talks about troops taking a group of Vietnamese girls, stripping one and then killing them. They were just kids.

This source is different from the rest as it was published after the time it actually happened. The US army reporter was actually there and saw what happened though. There was also a picture, which we don’t get to see.

There is quite a bit of information in this source, but as with the others, there are no figures and it doesn’t mention how many people there were in the group of kids. I think that this source would probably be one of those sources, which makes the public oppose the war. The US was supposed to be protecting the innocent, not killing them. It has speech in it about what was said and it had a picture but it isn’t actually shown in this booklet.

I think that the source, which shows how the public reacted most to the war, is source H.

I think this because the dates go with the dates the question mentions and also was a Poll that was taken. People thought that Vietnam was the biggest problem.

I don’t think the sources were very useful to the question because they miss out a lot of detail. I think that sources, which includes pictures or graphs, would be better to show how the US people felt about the war.