Vietnam War Deserters Who Sought Asylum in Sweden | Hacker News Reader

Vietnam War Deserters Who Sought Asylum in Sweden

lithub.com

56 pointsraleighm40 comments

All Vietnam war deserters were given a conditional amnesty by Gerald Ford shortly after he pardoned Nixon in 1974, and all deserters were ultimately pardoned by the Carter administration in 1977 so that they could return home.

This is an extremely interesting and underrepresented story.

I only know of the self-destructive story of the Japanese radical left, the United Red Army, RAF sympathizers, which is depicted in Wakamatsu Kōji's masterpiece "United Red Army". Crazy times.

What was the reason passport holding US citizens had to be “smuggled” to leave e.g Japan? Was it because US authorities would withdraw their passports as soon as they were discovered to be missing? In those days I’d expect that type of information to travel quite slowly.

Or were soldiers not even allow to keep their own passports when based abroad?

People in Japan because of the US military are on something called a SOFA visa. This visa is of course invalid if you are deserting but that is not the major issue. For soldiers entering Japan they are not brought through Japanese immigration. Which means even if they had a passport they would not have the entry stamps. Thus any attempt to leave through immigration will only raise suspicions and get you handed over to the MPs.

The explanation is in the article.

Was it? I had the same question. After reading your comment, I went back and searched and still don't see it. All I see is that they would have been in Japan illegally, which doesn't answer the question as to why Japan wouldn't let them OUT.

They'd investigate as it's very weird to try to go out of a country that you didn't enter - that suggests that maybe you've entered illegally or something else is going on. They're allies to the US - if they see something suspicious with an US person, they will report it.

I've always found this so odd. Passports are so often stamped on random pages (or not stamped at all) that I wonder how the border guards make heads or tails of them.

But I guess all that matters is that the guards in that country understand their own system.

Passports aren't mandatory in the US so it's common for someone who doesn't travel internationally not to have one. When I went to Asia in the military in the 90s, that was the case for me, but they let me in and out based on my military ID card. I doubt that would have worked if I'd tried to fly to a third country.

In 1990 only around 3% of the US population had a passport[1]. These days it's up to 42% due to a combination of stricter ID requirements (particularly at the Canadian and Mexican borders) and an increase in popularity of international travel among Americans in general.

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/01/11/the-sh...

> the Japanese radical left ... appealed to me as a classic David and Goliath struggle, with a small group of idealistic young anti-war activists

well those 'David's coordinated with N.Korea to kidnap people to North korea...

One famous example: Japanese Airlines 351 - kidnapped a plane & tried to take everyone to N. Korea (but S. Korean gov. fooled them into believing Kimpo airport as a N.Korean one...)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_351

Yes, a small cadre of extremists did this, after they were kicked out of the Japanese Communist Party for being violent nut jobs. They were by no means exemplary of the movement.

At the same time, the right-wing in Japan (who was composed of former war criminals and had deep ties to organized crime in the country), was extensively funded and provided counterintelligence on their political opponents by the CIA. This intentional subversion of Japanese democracy guaranteed that the country could be used (at great cost to the Japanese people) as a forward operating base for US imperialism in SE Asia, something which was, and continues to be, deeply unpopular, even by those who are not “radical leftists.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/09/world/cia-spent-millions-...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/04/09/national/contam...

I really dislike the characterization of Vietnam as US "Imperialism" when it was more a proxy war between US and USSR and/or futile involvement in another countries civil war. Many, many people appreciated the US fighting back against a communist takeover. Hiding behind "nationalism" was a PR move by revolutionary leadership, and not the real/main driver for it

The country devolved into civil war after the US deposed and had executed the country’s leader, who they had previously corruptly installed, but I guess found insufficiently compliant.

If it’s not “imperialism” to fix elections, then overthrow and murder the people you help elected, pushing the country into horrific violence (which you then exacerbate), I’d like to know what rises to the level of your definition of the term.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1963_South_Vietnamese_coup

The country was undergoing decolonization following WWII and got caught in the middle of two nuclear powers who couldn't openly fight each other without risking a nuclear exchange. It's a miracle that Vietnam isn't split in two like Korea.

I'm not trying to rationalize the conduct of the US, there's plenty of blood on our hands when it comes to removing/installing foreign leaders, but this was a very complex situation with many players that lasted for over 30 years following the end of WWII. It's disingenuous to reduce it to 'American imperialism'.

I don’t think “American imperialism” has to be a reduction. American imperialism is one part of a complex picture.

to be fair, you should mention what North Vietnamese government did AFTER the war: concentration camps, "New Economic Zones" that forced land from South Vietnamese, and the resulting boat people...

And in the North before any American military involvement. Hence the 1 million plus refugees from the North to South. Most of whom greatly desired to not be under communism, which was clearly the aggressor.

Even today the Vietnamese are very divided about that period of their history. It's a complex issue without clear heroes or villains.

If you spend much time in the country now you'll find it hard to argue that the current government is really prioritizing the needs of the people.

The country was in a state of civil war from the late 1940s, and North Vietnam was the sight of much intra-Vietnamese bloodshed due to revolution, land "reform" etc, without France or US involvement in the matter. In any case, your example may be undemocratic, poor judgement, etc, but that's not the same as "imperialism".

This is just shifting goalposts to justify the horror of the US war machine, whose interventions since Vietnam have followed the same disastrous pattern. And quite the minimizing elision to call this “poor judgement.”

Staging coups and killing leaders, not imperialism. Engaging in false flag attacks so you can maintain control of a foreign country, not imperialism. Covering up civilian massacres and lying about how many of your troops are dying to maintain support for the war at home, not imperialism. And so on and so on and so on.

Again, what to your mind constitutes imperialism if these actions do not?

Would you consider Soviet troops and materiel in North Vietnam as imperialism then as well?

Absolutely. The USSR was an imperialist State Capitalist regime.

Indeed. It is actually quite refreshing to see someone consistent on that point.

Yes, but only from the global perspective. For an average Vietnamese rice farmer, who doesn't give two hoots about the global proxy war, it had become a war for survival and the aggressor was clearly the US.

"it had become a war for survival and the aggressor was clearly the US."

No, this is simply not true.

South Vietnamese did not generally like the notion of the North Vietnamese Communists either.

The North was invading the South, the US was upholding a fledgling government in the South, in that context it's pretty hard to label the US as 'aggressor'. And I also agree that 'Imperialism' is a stretch because US actions in Japan, South Korea etc. aren't even remotely related to classical Imperialism. Heck, the US gave Japan a constitution, democracy, and even made sure that women had the right to vote, despite Japanese objection!

Vietnam is more nuanced than most terms can capture.

>the US was upholding a fledgling government in the South, in that context it's pretty hard to label the US as 'aggressor'.

The fledgling government was only “fledgling” because the CIA installed and then helped destabilize an unpopular, anti-democratic government.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1963_South_Vietnamese_coup

>And I also agree that 'Imperialism' is a stretch because US actions in Japan, South Korea etc. aren't even remotely related to classical Imperialism. Heck, the US gave Japan a constitution, democracy, and even made sure that women had the right to vote, despite Japanese objection!

Japan was a democracy prior to the war, with universal male suffrage beginning in the late 1920s. It devolved into fascism through a series of internal coups.

It’s great that suffrage was extended to women post war. What wasn’t so great was when the US government absolved, rehabilitated, and financed the former fascists and more or less handed the country back over to them to stop talking the rise of any legitimate, democratic left-wing rule of the country. And this was despite the fact that many leftists in Japan had fought, been imprisoned, and died trying to stop the war and atrocities by the fascists. Amazingly, this effort was led by the CIA-backed war criminal, Nobusuke Kishii under the guise of stopping the “socialist threat” to Japan (quite rich since he and his pals dragged the country into a war that caused untold devastation and destruction).

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/09/world/cia-spent-millions-...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi

In South Korea, the US backed Syngman Rhee, another fascist who killed tens of thousands of people he perceived to be his left-wing opponents. This unchecked political violence legitimized the cause of Kim Il-Sung and threw the country into a devastating civil war that has been terrible for everyone on the peninsula for the past 70 years. And in spite of all of this, the US continued to back right-wing dictators in South Korea until they were pushed out by a popular uprising in the 1980s (the true origin of South Korean democracy, not the sham the US installed).

If you want to understand the reality of US imperialism, I suggest you not blindly accept popular narratives about what the US did postwar, especially in SE Asia. There are plenty of history texts written on the subject.

Your finer points do nothing to dispel my argument, in fact, they further make my point.

I'm not blindly accepting anything; the 'popular narrative' is in fact something like 'US involvement in Vietnam is Imperialism'.

US involvement in Vietnam was not an act of Imperialism by any historical standard and it was ballpark consistent with actions in WW1, WW2, and Korea.

The US did a reasonable job of helping to rebuild Japan, a nation that had marauded the region, murdered millions and attacked America (does an Imperial power help their enemies rebuild, institute democracy and leave them better off?), and this included some things like 'getting women the right to vote'. It's ridiculous to think that the occupying Americans would 'right all the historical wrongs' of a very foreign nation levelled to the ground. 'Wrongs' which by the way you've characterized politically (i.e. 'left-wing' vs. 'right-wing') and therefore difficult to consider in a moral context anyhow.

Ironically, were the American occupiers to have intervened further, armchair historians would find yet another excuse to lament it as yet another form of 'Imperialism' or 'cultural imposition of western values' etc..

And your comments about South Korea ... yes, backing an authoritarian leader in the aftermath of devastating war in the mid-20th century is a rational and practical choice. It's not to say that all American choices are perfect, but actual unfolding of history for most S. Koreans went reasonably well by any standard.

Thanks to American involvement in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan they are all lively, healthy, fruitful, democratic nations today.

Were the Americans to have not walked away from their victory over the VC and North Vietnamese forces, and left a contingent of forces remaining South Vietnam and continue the threat of total annihilation of Northern forces ... South Vietnam would be like South Korea - a beacon of civility and progress to the region.

Sadly, the Americans withdrew, and so I got to grow up with Vietnamese refugee friends in my neighbourhood, who incidentally, all became Dentists. Literally all of them.

your example of 1963 South Vietnamese Coup shows U.S. RECOGNIZED ITS MISTAKE of supporting Diệm.

> (buddhist priests killed by Diệm's army and police)/ In response, the US government was concerned about the possibility "for the Dim/Nhu government to succeed and for us [the United States] to continue to support them."

You just cherry-picked a phrase from my statement and missed an average Vietnamese rice farmer part.

I am not talking about the Vietnamese living in Saigon under American protection. I am talking about the villagers who faced the brunt of American bombs and napalm. To them, the argument that Americans are here to protect democracy was pretty much nonsense.

Don't forget that prior to American involvement, Vietnam was a French colony. We can debate the whole day whether the Americans were imperialists or not, but the French practiced textbook definition of imperialism in Vietnam. The Americans entered Vietnam at a time of heightened anti-colonialism. Whether American actions were good or bad is another matter, but to most Vietnamese, it was again a foreign entity fighting war on their soil. The fact that North Vietnamese were communists doesn't help much because ultimately they were Vietnamese fighting for their own land.

> Many, many people appreciated the US fighting back against a communist takeover.

Actually, the communists won a free election, and US-supported extremists ignored it.

Edit: OK, I misremembered. The 1956 election didn't happen, because South Vietnam refused to participate. And I've read that they refused because they feared that they'd lose.

Maybe because those "extremists" saw what the communists were doing to their own people before this "free election"

No, they were pretty clearly fascists, from what I've read.

A key issue here is how difficult it is to apply evidence from what actually happened to what might have happened. I mean, sure, the North Vietnamese did lots of horrible stuff, both during the war, and after they won. But the issue is that "the North Vietnamese" wasn't some static thing. There was selection, based on what went down. And for sure, some horrible stuff went down.

Who's to say what would have happened if Ho Chi Minh had become president of Vietnam in 1956.

In the same vein, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was just a proxy war between two super powers and not an example of imperialism? Many, many people appreciated the USSR fighting back against the theocratic takeover by Talibans.

The war in Vietnam was a direct continuation of the French attempt to hold on to their former colony. It turned into a proxy war, but I think the imperialism label sticks quite well here.

I'm very impressed with your skill of justification using:

> "Yes, a small cadre of extremists did this"

Also where's the source for "they were kicked out of the Japanese Communist Party"?

Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Communist_Party#Post-...

> Then after the Korean War broke out, the party staged some acts of terrorism or sabotage, which resulted in a loss of popular confidence.

the plane kidnapping wasn't the only one - it's one of many

To be fair Japanese-US military cooperation has served both sides well. If the US continues to decline Japan will have to find a way to get along with China.

> Japan will have to find a way to get along with China

It'll be very difficult to "get along with China"... China (PRC) is the New Thug Nation

Look at China building "island bases" on South China Sea (ironic name, because the area is bordering Vietnam/Malaysia/Philippines)

China's trying to claim what isn't 100% its own out of greed, even though the bordering countries are protesting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luTPMHC7zHY

I would argue the opposite. US backing of Japan has allowed them to maintain an insular chauvinism relative to their neighbors that has put them in weak diplomatic and economic position when faced with China. If they had instead become more tightly coupled with their neighbors like Korea and Taiwan, they’d be in a much better position to check the power of a rising China (think Germany within the context of the EU).

Of course this isn’t entirely Japan’s fault, as the US funded and backed right-wing nationalists in just about all of these countries, so they could play them off each other as was useful to their interests.

The period before Japanese-US military cooperation saw Japan controlling most of China, so kind of hard to believe it's served them well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com