I don’t think he went looking for the picture, he just happened to be in the right place at the right time. It’s a very explicit source and would have made people back home think twice about what the government was doing. The fact that it was a defenceless naked girl, burned by napalm as a result of the U.S. Bombing. The photograph was published during the war, which at the time would have been the photographer’s job which later on would have made him a well known name. I think he just wanted to shock people back home with the reality of what was going on, and this source really made people think. This source, is first hand and was taken right after the U.S. raid, so this also makes it a more reliable source and easier to believe. I think that this source would have sparked off anti war protests in the USA and shocked many civilians but also could have just been ignored by others, such as the government or the military.
In source C the author Richard Hamer seems to be biased and one sided in the war, he has written about how hard it was for the soldiers and he may be blaming the decision makers. He is writing about widespread opposition to the Vietnam War and U.S. presence. The tactics of the Vietcong were too extreme for them to deal with. They were greatly experienced and they were on their home turf, because of the one year tour of duty, it was even harder for the soldiers to gain experience. It was more difficult for the soldiers to figure out who was a communist and who wasn’t! The thing is they all looked the same! He was blaming the decision makers for their actions, and how they were about, getting the Vietnamese people on their side and trying to kill the communists; like for example ‘One does not use napalm on villages and hamlets sheltering civilians, if one is attempting to persuade these people the rightness of one’s cause. American attacks were inappropriate and turned the Vietnamese more against them, this just shows how were the Americans’ going to win the war if they couldn’t even get the civilians on their side! I don’t think this source is reliable enough to see if there was an anti war movement protest in USA, because of reasons such as the writer was very bias and against the war so he would have made it as gruesome as possible and because we don’t know how good the evidence he has got is.
Source D shows President Johnson’s policy on the war. It shows the American future, being chopped up and used to fund the war in Vietnam. The cartoon was published by a British magazine in 1967. I think the comic is taking the ‘mick’ out of the Americans and how they were about it. The reason I think why this source was written was so the British people could laugh at the Americans because they failed to prepare properly for the war, they wasted resources. So it’s probably just a cartoonist doing his job correctly. The picture shows the U. S. economy slowly but surely being destroyed by President Johnson and his plan of war. It shows a character which looks like President Johnson, who seems to be holding an axe and chopping up little chunks of the U.S. economy to feed the train. I think the train represents his ego, he feels he has to win the war and he will use every means necessary even if it means destroying/halting the future of his country. The cartoonist or writer of this picture is neutral because his country isn’t involved in the war and they want to show people in America what is happening. I think this is a very reliable source and could in some areas have led towards an anti war protest because of the money that was being wasted.
Source E shows a seminar quote read aloud and live by Robin Day who was giving a speech to the Royal United Service Institution. Although he was against the war, it didn’t affect him too much because he was British and not American. Members of the British armed forces would have been in the crowd and listening to the speech being delivered. The fact is that in them days more people had televisions, colour televisions were becoming much easier to afford. A clearer picture was available of what was going on, ‘Blood looks very red on colour T.V.’ More and more people were watching their televisions and when the news came on, it would shock them, what they would have been seeing. The fact that the picture is in colour would have made it much worse. If you were to watch the same person on the television nearly every day, you will admire them and have respect for them, so if they put their point across, you will be easily persuaded to think how they’re thinking. Television could have influenced people a lot in America. I think this is a very reliable source and would have definitely made people think about what was happening in Vietnam and made them think war was a bad idea.
Source F is different from all of the other sources. It focus’s on hard evidence, such as films and documentaries. I watched four hours at My Lai and that was photographic evidence and couldn’t be photocopied. Another clip I watched which was a big shock in America was the chief of the Saigon police, shooting a Vietcong P.O.W! This shocked people back home and made them think about the side they were helping (South Vietnamese) and thought that this wasn’t a worthy cause. The burning monk photograph disgusted and shocked people back home. It made them think twice about supporting the Vietnamese government. This source can relate back to source B which shows the napalm effects on a small village. Children were amongst the injured. Some photographs were taken purely for money; this is another reason not to believe them. Also film producers would have exploited some areas/aspects of the war to try and make it look more glamorous because in the film
business it’s all about the money so they don’t care whether or not they produce facts or fiction. All in all these sources points to an anti war movement. Some areas of this can draw your attention away such as filming, these are very misleading. I think that an anti war movement could have occurred as a result of these sources.
Conclusion
These sources are very good for analysing, but as much as they can be good, they can be poor. Some of the sources are full of information and contain cold hard facts, others are just impostors created by someone purely for money purposes. Some of the sources are incomplete and do not provide enough evidence to see whether or not they have led to an anti war movement. There are also a number of factors not included in these sources but what we now know about such as fragging and the Kent State University incident. John Lennon and Martin Luther King were very opposed to the war and held protests were by the public would have joined in and this would have got them a lot of publicity. John Lennon and Martin Luther King were very famous at the time, people thought of them as a role model and would have done as much as they could to help them. Other incidents that weren’t mentioned in these sources contributed greatly to an anti-war movement, the burning monk incident was a
massive shock back home because the monk said, he would rather die than live in a country ruled by the Nationalist government ruled by Diem. The US Embassy came under attack in the offensive; this destroyed the pride and hope of Americans there. They thought they had a safe place within the embassy, but they soon realised that the V.C. were in control.
