The My Canh floating restaurant, located in Saigon South Vietnam floating on the Saigon river, was a popular place for locals and soldiers to stop and have a bite to eat. On June 25th, 1965 31-32 people were killed and 42 people were injured by the first, time bomb/claymore style explosive. The second charge was smaller and faced away from the restaurant to spray fleeing customers with shrapnel. The 1965 Saigon Bombing was a terrorist act by 3 Viet Cong members. On the night of June 25th, 1965 at approximately 8:15pm the first of two bombs exploded in front of the restaurant. June 25th, 1965 at 8:15pm, an event occurred that changed the streets of Saigon, Vietnam forever. Three Viet Cong terrorists had planted two bombs, one inside the floating My Canh restaurant, and the other outside of the doors of the My Canh restaurant. They strategically did this so that when the first bomb went off inside the restaurant, all of the people dining inside would run outside in panic and pandemonium, and then the second bomb would detonate. sending shrapnel in all directions. This pipe bomb/claymore style explosive caused a very bloody and messy killing. The attack killed forty-two men, women, and children, and wounded eighty-one. …show more content…
It was quite popular with Americans. That alone made it a good target and therefore a good place to stay away from, but regardless, many locals and tourists, and soldiers filled the restaurant up every evening. Among the dead were 13 Americans, 7 military and 5 civilians. The wounded included 15 U.S. service personnel and 2 civilians, said (Naval History Blog). The Mastermind of the 3 Viet Cong terrorists was an operative named Nguyen Van Sam. He was later apprehended and received consequences for his actions and preparations on June 25th,
I am reading Bomb by Steve Sheinkin. At the beginning of the book, Oppenheimer, who is the main chemical scientist in the novel, sees the effects of the Great Depression on his pupils when they cannot buy chemistry textbooks. During Oppenheimer’s time as a professor, the Nazis discovered the splitting of the uranium atom. When Albert Einstein found out that about the discovery the Nazis did, he informs President Roosevelt about how the Nazis plan to develop atomic weapons. Harry Gold who is a Communist spy, starts to work with the KGB. And starts to steal ideas and projects from the American Uranium Committee.
Another atrocity that occurred during this war was the My Lai Massacre. This was the mass murder of unarmed civilians in South Vietnam during March 16, 1968. Around November 1969, the world saw this and was outraged with the killings of innocent civilians prompting and giving the public more reasons to stop the war. Although the war was very unpopular, men and women were still fighting and dying for America. Heroes such as Captain John W, Ripley of Dong Ha, Medal of Honor recipients, and overall troops that gave the ultimate sacrifice were forgotten for a brief period.
In the early times of the Vietnam War there were two main sides, the Viet Cong who were rebels and opposed the South Vietnamese government, and the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) which was on the side of the South Vietnamese government. This was one the very first times these two opposing forces had met in battle. On January 2, 1963 the battle of Ap Bac proved to be much more than a normal battle. Many things happened there that were unclear and not resolved. There were many different stories of what happened those days at Ap Bac. This paper will portray what I believed happened at Ap Bac given the evidence at hand.
On the thirtieth of January, 1968, as the sun set over South Vietnam, nothing seemed out of place. A cease fire had been declared in observation of the Tet holiday and the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces welcomed the break. The latter half of 1967 had been filled with violent, bloody and perplexing battles for the anti-communist troops. For the last three months the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Viet Cong (VC) were launching regimental sized suicide attacks against remote U.S. outposts near the Cambodian border. The losses for both sides were mounting and morale was dipping due to the perceived stale mate. The peace was exactly what was needed, but it wouldn’t last. Shortly after midnight North Vietnam would launch the largest offensive
Introduction The Battle of Hue is one of the longest battles within the realms of the Vietnam War. The United States sent two Army battalions and three under strength US Marine Corps battalions, which together with the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) defeated ten North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the Viet Cong (VC). The battle highlighted the challenges the U.S. Marines faced in an urban battlefield. The NVA and VC forces entered the city of Hue under the cover of darkness on January 30, 1968. Under a unified front, they seized most of the city except two strategic locations: ARVN 1st Division Headquarters and the U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) compound.
Captain Earnest Medina was in charge of giving orders to the Charlie Company and in the early evening of March 15th a meeting was called. CPT Medina told the company that the next morning they would be moving into My Lai and attacking Vietcong forces there. He told them that all the civilians would be at the market or would have already been moved out by the time that the soldiers arrived to carry out their planned attack. He said all that would be left in the village would be the Vietcong of the 48th battalion and Vietcong sympathizers. It was never clear what CPT Medina had said to do in the event of coming across civilians. Medina claimed in court that he had told the GI’s not to kill women and children, to us...
Brigham, Robert K., and E. Kenneth Hoffman. "Battlefield:Vietnam | History." PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. Web. 19 Sept. 2011.
A day that was supposed to be happy turned in seconds. People were injured or killed. Family members were devastated. The Boston Marathon was supposed to be a fun and exciting day for people watching and for the runners. We shouldn’t take every moment for granted, because you never know when it might be your last day or what we might consider "normal." April 15th 2013, will always be a day remembered in history.
The Iraq war fiercely changed life in Iraq and in its neighboring countries. The war started in March 2003. The united states joined the war because of 9/11: an attack of mass destruction in New York city by a terrorist group named Al-Qaeda, which killed almost Three thousand people. The united states getting involved in the war; made it worse, and withdraw from the war on December 2011. During the war, life was difficult to survive emotionally for the soldiers, especially for those who are new. The historical fiction book Sunrise over Fallujah, by Walter Dean Myers, is set in Iraq. Robin "Birdy" Perry, a recruit from Harlem, NY, showed that war needs emotional readiness. Throughout Sunrise over Fallujah, the author uses
April 4, 1991 four Vietnamese men entered a Sacramento Good Guys electronics store and strategically held forty one people hostage. Within the extended time frame that they were holding those hostages, three of those held were shot. Furthermore, during the negotiation process, these Vietnamese men requested not only bulletproof vests in an exchange for hostages, but also obscure items. These items were “…forty 1,000 year old ginseng plants or roots….ten of the ginseng plants cooked [by the police] to make tea and serve them…$4 million and transportation to Thailand to shoot Viet Chong…forty people capacity helicopter…[and] .45 caliber pistol…” (Poland, 2011, p. 158).
There were many events that lead up the Vietnam War, it started in 1945 with the hostilities between the French and Vietminh. “Geopolitical Strategy, economics, domestic US politics, and cultural arrogance shaped the growing American involvement in Vietnam” (Anderson 1). As a matter of fact, the Vietnam War was several wars, but it was not until 1962 that America had their first combat mission, however, Americans were killed during ambushes by the Vietnamese before the first combat mission. There is much controversy over the reasons for the Vietnam War, supported by the several different books and articles written about the war. “The most famous atrocity occurred in a tiny hamlet called My Lai in March 1968” (Detzer 127). History shows that the reaction of many Americans to the attack by US soldiers on the village of My Lai during the Vietnam War was opposition, and the actions of the US soldiers during the My Lai Massacre will be forever remembered as a significant part of the Vietnam War and American History.
The political and societal ramifications of Vietnam's Tet Offensive indubitably illustrate the historical oddity of 1968. 1967 had not been a bad year for most Americans. Four years after the profound panic evoked by the assassination of John Kennedy, the general public seemed to be gaining a restored optimism, and even the regularly protested Vietnam War still possessed the semblance of success (Farber and Bailey 34-54). However, three short weeks following the eve of 68, Americans abruptly obtained a radically different outlook. The Tet Offensive, beginning on January 30, 1968, consisted of a series of military incursions during the Vietnam War, coordinated between the National Liberation Front's People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF), or "Viet Cong," and the ...
Regardless of the guiltless people, the US troops continued to investigate and demolish (American Atrocity: Remembering My Lai). House after house, family after family, the soldiers burned down buildings, beat and raped young girls and women, and murdered basically anyone in sight. Varnado Simpson, a squaddie who was sent to My Lai, indicated in December 1969: “Everyone who went into the village had in mind to kill. We lost a lot of buddies and it was a VC stronghold. We considered them either VC or helping the VC.” Though exact quantities remain hearsay, it is alleged that as many as 500 people comprising of women, children and the elderly were murdered in the My Lai Massacre (American Experience: TV 's Most-watched History Series).
Costello, Mary. "Vietnam Aftermath." Editional Research Reports 1974 1 (1974): 1. CQ Researcher Online. Web. 5 Mar. 2014.
The paranoia and fear of death never left them. The My Lai Massacre occurred in 1968, when the village of My Lai was completely destroyed, although it did not contain a single enemy troop. Over a hundred villagers were slaughtered. It became clearer to Americans how soldiers were losing control, and how there was no easy way to win this war.