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Jane Fonda
Radio Hanoi |
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Citizen Jane, by Christopher P. Anderson, Published by Henry Holt and Company, New York, Copyright: 1990, ISBN 0-8050-0959-0 (Amazon.com indicates the book is out of print). It has taken a long time to find anything on Jane Fonda's radio broadcasts and I can't find the full length versions anywhere and believe me, I've tried. Here are some excerpts from Christopher Anderson's "Citizen Jane". Page 254 This is Jane Fonda speaking in Hanoi,
and I'm speaking
privately to U.S. servicemen who are stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin . .
. . Seventh Fleet in the Anglico Corps (Marine spotters for naval
gunfire in the south of Vietnam.) You are very far away, perhaps, and
removed from the country you're being ordered to shoot shells at and
bomb, and the use of these bombs, or the condoning of the use of these
bombs makes one a war criminal.
The men who are ordering you to use these weapons are war criminals according to international law, and in the past in Germany and Japan men who were guilty of these kinds of crimes were tried and executed.
In a [Jane Fonda]
broadcast to U.S. Pilots on July 21;
Nixon is continuing to risk your lives and the lives of the American prisoners of war under the bombs in a last desperate gamble to keep his office come November. How does it feel to be used as pawns? You may be shot down, you may perhaps even be killed, but for what, and for whom? The people back home are crying for you. We are afraid of what, what must be happening to you as human beings. For it isn't possible to destroy, to receive salary for pushing buttons and pulling levers that are dropping illegal bombs on innocent people without having that damage your own soul. Tonight when you are alone, ask yourselves; What are you doing? Accept no ready answers fed to you by rote from basic training on up; but as men, as human beings; Can you justify what you are doing? Do you know why you are flying these missions, collecting extra combat pay on Sunday?
The next day, Jane
Fonda hit the airwaves again:
This is Jane Fonda
in Hanoi. I'm speaking to the men in the cockpits of the Phantoms, in
the B-52s, in the F-4s; those of you who are still here fighting the
war, in the air, on the ground, the guys in the Anglico Corps, on the
Seventh Fleet ...
(Page 255)
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. . . the Constellation, the Coral Sea, the Hancock, Ticonderoga, the Kitty Hawk, the Enterprise ... All of you, in your heart of hearts, know the lies-cheating on body counts, falsified battle reports, the numbers of planes that are shot down, what your targets really are. Knowing who was doing the lying ... should you allow these same liars to decide for you who your enemy is? Should we examine the reasons given to justify the murder you are being paid to commit? If they told you the truth, you wouldn't fight, you wouldn't kill. You were not born and brought up by your mothers to be killers. So ... you have been told lies so that it would be possible for you to kill. Other suggested reading: Jane Fonda, An Intimate Biography, by Bill Davidson |
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