Sources for Measures of the Destruction of Viet Nam During the War?

From: Vsg <vsg-bounces@mailman11.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Christina Schwenkel

Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2019 12:15 AM

To: David Del Testa <ddeltest@bucknell.edu>

Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: [Vsg] sources for measures of the destruction of Viet Nam during the war?

Hi Everyone,

For those of you interested in this topic, my book on Vinh’s destruction and reconstruction as a model socialist city with the technical assistance of East Germany, and its rapid urban decline thereafter, will be out next year. The photo record housed in the archives at the Nghệ An Provincial Museum shows that there were many partial shells of buildings, pagodas, factories, etc. remaining after bombardment. There was next to no usable infrastructure or salvageable architecture, however. One of the last remaining relics of the bombing still standing is the gate of Chùa Diệc, which I have written about here: https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ciso.12142 The government guesthouse that was salvageable (and housed foreign experts and reporters) is still standing and in use, but of course has been completely renovated.

Diane: to answer your question about destruction of infrastructure, I found statistics for Vinh/Nghệ An in the Nghệ An People’s Committee Provincial Archives and in Phạm Xuân Cần and Bùi Đình Sâm’s book, Lịch sử thành phố Vinh, 1945-1975, tập 2. There must be local histories of other cities you can look into. The (East) German engineers and journalists I interviewed who visited the DRV between 1968 and 1973 recalled that all towns/cities they traveled through had been destroyed, but Vinh really impacted them the most because of the scale of its devastation.

Christina

Christina Schwenkel

Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology

Director, Program in Southeast Asian Studies (SEATRiP)

Co-editor, Journal of Vietnamese Studies

University of California, Riverside, USA

On Aug 13, 2019, at 2:04 PM, David Del Testa <ddeltest@bucknell.edu> wrote:

So, Vinh itself was certainly razed. Only the shell of of the convent of Sacre Coeur and two other buildings survived. You can see a photograph of that shell that I took in 1995 here: https://thenghetinhsoviets.org/home/colonial-vinh-then-and-now/ Look for the purple symbol…I haven’t added the “now” pictures yet, and the remains of the convent were themselves destroyed in 1998, I believe. If you look at the “then” images along Quang Trung, there are two panoramas of new construction, which show the efforts to rebuild, from nothing.

The Gaumont-Pathé archives has a digitized film from 1972, I believe, of a visit to Vinh. Hiroshima without the radiation. Unbelievable. http://www.gaumontpathearchives.com

I remember trying to secure permission to travel to Huong Khe and then to Tan Ap in 1995…absolutely not, my host said. Too dangerous.

Philip Griffiths Jones traveled as much of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in 1989 in Great Journeys; The Ho Chi Minh Trail. He travels through Ha Tinh and reaches the Mu Gia Pass…a kind of green-frosted lunar landscape.

Of course, all vastly different now.

Best wishes, David

On Aug 12, 2019, at 19:52, David Marr <david.marr@anu.edu.au> wrote:

Hello Diane and all,

Vinh is certainly on that list. When we travelled south to Nghe An December 1974, the destruction of the city there was unforgettable. Not a single significant building was still standing.

David Marr

ANU

From: Vsg <vsg-bounces@mailman11.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Diane Fox

Sent: Friday, 9 August 2019 9:25 AM

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: [Vsg] sources for measures of the destruction of Viet Nam during the war?

Hello--

I know I've asked a version of this question before, but I still do not know how to find a reliable answer, or even whether such exists, so please forgive me for asking again.

What I would most like to know is the number of cities razed during the war. When I was in Phu Ly, I was told it was 3rd on the list of razed cities -- only the partial shell of a church remained. But I wasn't able to find out how many towns were on the list, and what others were.

And, if memory serves (I can't access my notes or books right now), Marilyn Young wrote that 9000 villages had been destroyed. Can anyone confirm or elaborate on that?

I know the figures for Agent Orange/herbicides/dioxin, but wonder if anyone can confirm the 3388,000 gallons of napalm I found through a Google search, or the amount of white phosphorus, or tear gas, or other chemicals?

Or the destruction of infrastructure--miles of railroads, roads, schools, hospitals, dikes, etc?

Thanks for your ideas, or suggestions of where to look.

Diane

Diane Fox

PhD Anthropology

retired

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From: Vsg <vsg-bounces@mailman11.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of David Biggs

Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2019 7:35 AM

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: [Vsg] sources for measures of the destruction of Viet Nam during the war?

Estimating damage from the war is a difficult task in qualitative and quantitative terms, but there are some useful sources.

One, released in 2016, is the US Air Force's Theater History of Operations (THOR) data on all U.S. fixed-wing (planes) bombing from WW1 to 1975, end of the war in Vietnam. A nice ESRI story map on it with links to the data download is here: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/story-maps/uncategorized/the-making-of-the-bombing-missions-of-the-vietnam-war-story-map/?rmedium=redirect&rsource=blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2017/09/27/vietnam-bombing-missions. My understanding is that the Dept of Defense prepared the data to assist the Vietnamese Min of Def in locating unexploded ordnance; then after sharing with a foreign govt., they decided to make it public. It might be especially useful in estimating damage in northern VN where there was much less use of ground-based or helicopter-based munitions. (I use it in my new book, Footprints of War, to estimate the tonnage and focus of bombing in central VN in different years.) This doesn't include herbicide missions, but those can be reconstructed from daily after action reports (daar's) now available at Texas Tech.

A more accurate way to estimate bomb-related damage would be to work with U.S. military air photography, but there's a catch. This photography -- millions of frames -- was shot for pre-bombing targeting, post-mission "bomb damage assessments" and regular aerial surveys for the Defense Mapping Agency. I say "might" because almost all of this photography shot over Vietnam from 1962 to 1975 is still "missing" at the US National Archives. We can't see it, just the glaring absence. Like air photography shot over German cities in 1945 at low altitude, I suspect a reason for this absence is that the U.S. doesn't want to make public images showing bomb damage of non-military targets, esp. in other countries in '70-72 like Cambodia, Laos and even China, possibly also graphic images of the dead in low-altitude images. Only guessing...

One last comment I'll add is that it's difficult to ascribe all bombing damage to the U.S. in the 1960s, especially in Vinh, since it was a target for Allied bombing from 1943 to 1945 and likely suffered from fighting in the French war to 1954. There is really extensive and detailed French military air photography from 1950-54, available at the SHD archives in Vincennes; and the American Army Air Force photography shot from 1943-45 is available at the Natl Archives in College Park.

This subject of destruction gets more complicated south of the DMZ, as you have not only US forces but ARVN, PLAF, PAVN, and other combatants - Korean, Australian, etc.

I think producing comprehensive pictures of "damage" would require detailed field studies like Christina's work in Vinh; very hard to understand these layers of conflict working from afar.

DB

On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 6:56 AM David Hunt <davidhunt08@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello: My wife and I were in Dong Hoi for a few days last month. It was kind of a shock, everything looked so new and clean. Some people we talked to said the city was leveled during the war and had to be rebuilt from scratch. Best, David

--

David Biggs

http://davidbiggs.net