Facts
HONORING OUR HEROES
VIETNAM From Page 6
“I wanted to do whatever I could to help end the war,” he said. Marchers started heading toward downtown around 1 p.m. and planned to occupy the planned areas until 6 p.m. By 3 p.m., State Patrol troopers brought in college President James Nickerson to call off the students. Nickerson pleaded with the students to leave before police forcibly removed them, according to an account written by David Phelps in the book “Out of Chaos.” Phelps was the editor at the Reporter student newspaper in 1972. After reaching a police-imposed deadline around 5:20 p.m., law enforcement deployed fake tear gas before resorting to actual tear gas. Some demonstrators, including Carlson, dispersed, while others responded by throwing cans and rocks. Traffic resumed and the students marched back up toward campus. The Wards didn’t recall when exactly they left the scene, but they knew they weren’t near the clashes. Despite being maced, Carlson said he felt law enforcement handled the demonstration fairly well. There were reported injuries among demonstrators, but nothing approaching the 1970 incidents at Kent State, where National Guardsmen killed four student protesters, or Jackson State, where police killed two student protesters. Even with the killings on other campuses and many bomb threats on Mankato’s campus during those years, the former students said they don’t remember feeling fearful at the time. If anything, Carlson said the Kent State and Jackson State incidents made him more determined to do his part to bring the war to an end. With fewer routes to get in and out of Mankato back then, the road shutdowns did cause frustration among motorists. The Reporter’s coverage of
the demonstration included information about one motorist breaking a man’s leg by driving through the crowd. As Mary Ward looked back on the day, she wondered whether stopping traffic on the bridges was an effective way to get the message out. Another student at the time, Lucian Smith, is quoted in the Reporter as telling the demonstrators “you’re pissing off the wrong people.” A Vietnam veteran, he went on to say he didn’t favor Nixon’s policies, but opposed how the marchers were targeting their message toward people who had no control over the policies. “They have nothing to say, just like you have nothing to say, about the war policy,” he was quoted as saying in the Reporter’s May 10, 1972 edition. Once activists regrouped back on campus, they organized a silent march for May 10 as a contrast to May 9’s chaos. About 5,000 students marched through downtown in silence, “almost like a funeral march,” student organizer Scott Hagebak told the Free Press in 2012. Hagebak and fellow student organizer Mark Halverson said both demonstrations held equal meaning to them — they’ve both since passed away. Only one of the demonstrations, the May 9 shutdowns, garnered national media attention. The U.S. ended its direct involvement in Vietnam about nine months later in January 1973, eight years after it entered the war. Reflecting on what that day and era were like, Carlson described it as a time of turmoil for Mankato and the country. Yet it was satisfying to be part of it, he said, because the demonstrators were standing up for what they believed in. “I felt like it was a noble cause and needed doing,” he said. “I thought it was an immoral war.” (c)2022 The Free Press (Mankato, Minn.) Visit The Free Press (Mankato, Minn.) at www.mankatofreepress.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 2022 | 7
About the Vietnam War
BY METRO CREATIVE CONNECTION
The Vietnam War is among the most complex conflicts in world history. The war ended in 1975 when South Vietnam surrendered to North Vietnam, but the effects of the conflict continue to reverberate today, nearly half a century later. In March 1965, American President Lyndon Johnson made the decision to send U.S. combat forces into battle in Vietnam. Ultimately more than 2.5 million American troops would serve in South Vietnam alone. Since President Barack Obama signed a proclamation in 2012, Americans have commemorated the sacrifices its military personnel made during the war by celebrating Vietnam Veterans Day on March 29 (the holiday would be signed into law in 2017). One way to let Vietnam veterans know those sacrifices have not been forgotten is to learn about the war. Such knowledge can inspire a greater appreciation of the cost of the war on the service members who fought it. • Though President Johnson ordered combat troops into Vietnam in 1965, the conflict between North and South Vietnam began much earlier than that. North Vietnamese fighters began helping South Vietnamese rebels in 1954, marking a start to the conflict. • American involvement in combat began even before President Johnson sent troops to Vietnam in 1965. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. combat involvement is now recognized to have begun on January 12, 1962, which marks the launch of Operation Chopper. That operation required U.S. Army pilots to airlift more than 1,000 South Vietnamese soldiers to an area west of Saigon to capture a territory that was being held by communist fighters. • More than 58,000 American military personnel lost their lives as a result of the Vietnam War. • Since 1973, the remains of more than 1,000 Americans killed during the Vietnam War have been identified and returned to their families for burial with full military honors. • Data from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency indicates that, as of May 2022, 1,584 Americans lost in the Vietnam War remain unaccounted for. The vast majority of unaccounted military personnel were lost in Vietnam, though hundreds were lost while serving in Laos, Cambodia and China. • The number of U.S. troops in Vietnam peaked in April 1969. By that point, the U.S. government had deployed 543,000 troops to Vietnam. • The last American ground troops left Vietnam on March 29, 1973. Fighting between the North and South Vietnamese would continue for two more years, but the United Sates would not return to Vietnam.
We Honor Our Veterans 320 1st St. SW, Willmar 320.235.2000 www.jmsklaw.com
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