SUTTERFIELD FINANCIAL FEATURE
The Vietnam War by Sarah Leslie Gagan The Unnecessary War “History creates its own geological layers, entombing the carnage of warfare under a bustling town. The scenery of battle—the man with a bandaged head being dragged under the arms by two others, the exploding shells forming craters, the staccato crackle of automatic fire drowning out shouts of command, the attacks and counterattacks barely visible through smoke-saturated air, and the knowledge that human life is incidental to both victory and defeat—is all submerged, along with the decayed bodies of the fallen. Now, the civilian population attends to its daily needs, so that it never occurs to the children playing hopscotch, or to the mothers haggling over the price of an orange, or to the peasants carrying improbable loads at both ends of a bamboo pole balanced on their shoulders, that with every step they are treading on the fallen who have fertilized the soil.” — Ted Morgan
French Indochina The French conquest of Indochina, which would one day become Vietnam, began in 1858. They boasted about bringing 16
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their civilization to Vietnam. The Vietnamese saw the French as the enemy, and the people struggled for independence. At the end of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson went to Paris in 1919 to help rebuild the world, advocating for the independence of colonized nations. A man named Ho Chi Minh attempted to present a petition to the president, asking that Vietnam become an independent state. The president’s secretary promised to show it to Wilson, but there is no evidence he did. Ho Chi Minh had been marked for arrest in 1911 after taking part in a demonstration against the current emperor and fled Vietnam, remaining in exile for 30 years. Soon, Minh became a communist after discovering the anti-colonial writings of Lenin. World War II began in 1940, and Germany conquered most of Western Europe, including France, paving the way for the Japanese to occupy Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh returned to Vietnam to help fight the Japanese invaders, founding a revolutionary movement named The Vietnam Independent League, also known as the Viet Minh. The new fighting force grew quickly, relying primarily on guerrilla warfare tactics and hit-and-run strategies. When two atomic
