AN EERIE JUNGLE FILLED WITH DRAGONFLIES, SNIPER BULLETS AND GHOSTS: CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF VIETNAM AND THE VIETNAMESE THROUGH THE EYES OF AMERICAN TROOPS

• Main Author: Herrera, Matthew M
• Format: Others
• Published: ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst 2015
• Subjects: Vietnam War; Landscape; Perceptions; Emotions; Sensory; Healing Enviroment; Cultural History; Diplomatic History; Nature and Society Relations; Place and Environment; Political History; Race and Ethnicity; Social History; United States History
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/199; https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1229&context=masters_theses_2

This thesis examines the changing perceptions of Vietnam’s landscape and the Vietnamese in the eyes of American troops throughout the Vietnam War. Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Vietnamese were depicted as a people misguided by the French and in need of political mobilization by the American media and government. Following heavy investment and a rigged election in 1956, South Vietnam was painted as a beacon of democracy in Southeast Asia and an example of what American aid is capable of. As an increasing American military presence was being established in South Vietnam in the early 1960s, American troops were reminded by pocket books and other forms of American propaganda that South Vietnam was a land of dignity and respect. At first, troops were shocked by the beauty of the landscape and recalled that Vietnam did not look like a war-torn country at all. Yet as the land became increasingly devastated due to defoliant and numerous bombings, the perceptions of the Vietnamese took a turn for the worst; eventually being subhuman and deceptive. Vietnam’s landscape became perceived as a land of death where youth was expendable. However, less than a decade after the United States had pulled out of Vietnam, veterans and those affected by the war begin to return in mass numbers constituting the largest population of Americans in Vietnam. This resulted in Vietnam’s landscape, which was seen as a land trap-laden wasteland, being seen a place of healing with a beautiful people that Americans helped save.