Pacification Program in Vietnam

Me: Last time we talked, you said you were going to tell me about the pacification program.

Dad: That's when they tell you when you go out to the villages, be nice to people, shake hands.

Me: Did it work?

Dad: Nope. Stupidest thing I ever heard of.

Me: Why?

Dad: For one thing, the people didn't like Charlie. But a lot of them were more afraid of the Koreans than they were of Charlie. Well, their idea was, this is a war. Are we supposed to sit down and have tea with these guys?

Me: Did you ever sit down and have tea with the villagers?

Dad: No.

Me: Did you ever talk to the villagers?

Dad: If they spoke english, but very few of them do.

Me: So you would visit villages during the day time?

Dad: Remember, at night time ... if something happens, it's going to happen at night time.

Me: So how often would you go to the villages?

Dad: You're not there very long. You just hi, how's everybody doing, stuff like that. Sometimes they send the medics out there to see to the people.

Me: Did you ever have the feeling that maybe Charlie was there?

Dad: Yeah. Especially if they had younger people there, teenagers, people in their early 20s.

Me: Were you scared, when you went to visit the villages?

Dad: Lot of times, yeah.

Me: So at nightime, you were assigned a post around the perimeter, right?

Dad: Most of the time, no, because I was an American and they wanted to make sure I didn't get hurt.

The Korean camp, they were right on an inlet. You have a river running, a water way. How they protected their camp, what they did, it was pretty smart of them, what they did was go about 20, 30 feet out to the water and they put concertino wire. They put broken cans, broken bottles, they dumped it all around the perimeter. So if Charlie tried to sneak in, maybe they'd get cut up. And the water is nasty. The tide comes in, comes out, twice a day.

Me: What body of water was this?

Dad: Inlet from the South China Sea. And it was nasty.

And at times, that's where you go out to take a shower. Or a bath.

I remember this guy at Sugen, he brought his daughters out as prostitutes. And the youngest one looked like she was 12. He sells them. That's a lot of money. The prostitutes, the pimps, the bars, they made hundreds of thousands of dollars off the soldiers.

There's nothing you can do about it.

They had a guy in our company, named James, he'd get paid on payday, within a week, he'd be broke from either dealing with the prostitutes or gambling the money away. Within a week.