More Looking Backward

[RSL]

Two kids. You saw the girl with two of her buddies in an earlier post. Now she's looking very serious. The boy with the rice sifter always looked just like this.

[rabanito]

Thanks for the pictures Russ. They remind me of people I knew and I also ask myself what became of them.

[RSL]

Thanks for letting me know, Rab. I hung on to these pictures for 55 years. Time to get them out there.

Here's another "River Freight." Can Tho, Vietnam, 1965

[RSL]

Marketplaces in Can Tho

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I am particularly struck by the guy on the bike wearing a western-style hat. Is he some kind of spy?

[RSL]

Houseboat and Bathers: Can Tho, Vietnam, 1965

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

If you ever do a book of these, I'll buy a couple. One I'll keep; the other I'll give to our son's lady friend, who is from Vietnam. She is about forty years old, so she won't know these scenes directly, but her parents, who still live in Vietnam, could be among the kids you have shown.

-Eric

[RSL]

Thanks, Eric. As things stand at the moment I don't anticipate doing a book, which is one reason I'm putting all this stuff on the web. Most, but by no means all, already are on my web, but the images there aren't of the same size or quality as the ones I've been posting here.

I spent many years sending stuff to publishers. Got a lot of the poetry published, and a bit of the photography, but I finally decided the best way to publish was to put the stuff on the web. So far this month I've had 152 actual visitors to my site, and 6,200 downloads of stuff by the visitors. (I built an app in C# years ago that gathers this info for me.) That's far better circulation than I'd be able to get from books. Years ago I decided I'd never again do photography for money, so I'm not suffering a loss of income by giving the stuff away.

I've considered making a zip file out of the Vietnam pictures once I finish posting them here, and providing a link to download the file. I'm pretty close to the end of the Asian stuff I'm going to put up, so you probably can expect a link to the collection sometime this coming week.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I will look forward to that link.

I, too, decided many years ago that trying to make a living off my passion for photography would likely kill it. I had a very satisfying 35-year career as a professor of Math and Computer Science, but the passion was always photography.

I still haven't decided what I ought to do when/if I grow up!

-Eric

[RSL]

More on boats. Can Tho, Vietnam, 1965

[RSL]

Sad. The beggar was on the street in Ben xi mai every day. The man with what looks like his grandson was sitting outside at Ba-Nhut-Tran next door to our residence. I'd guess the war kicked him off his farm. In any case, he's not happy. I've posted this one before.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Powerful images.

[Dale Villeponteaux]

re: dried squid. I remember with nostalgia the times I spent with
my Vietnamese counterpart, sitting on the edge of a canal drinking
beer and eating strips of dried, salted squid. A great combination!

Regards,
Dale

[RSL]

That's the end of the collection. There's more, but it's mostly personal or repetitive stuff. To get the whole collection, including the introduction, click here: http://www.russ-lewis.com/Download/Vietnam-1965.zip

[Alan Klein]

How you'd get them to smile so much?  Great "street" shots.

[RSL]

Generally speaking, they were happy people, Alan. It makes me sick to think about what happened to them ten years later when the communists swept southward.

Here's one final picture from eight years after my Vietnam tour, when I went back to command the radar sites we still had left in Southeast Asia. We had just pulled out of Vietnam and were fighting to hold back Pol Pot in Cambodia. This was my office at Udon Thani (What the military called Udorn, to distinguish it from Ubon). I was too busy to spend much time shooting pictures, and the pictures I shot mostly were on the base.

But on August 15th, 1973, as a result of the Case-Church Amendment which Congress passed in June, the United States ceased combat operations and abandoned the Cambodian people to the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, and one of the most horrendous genocides in recorded history. What happened after that at Udorn is covered pretty much in the preface to the collection of short stories I wrote soon after I got back to the States. You can download the Vietnam-1965 collection, along with the preface here: http://www.russ-lewis.com/Download/Vietnam-1965.zip

[Alan Klein]

I only got as far as Japan from 1965 to 1967 after standing two previous years in the states in SAC and crypto training. As the picture shows, the weather was a little cooler than VietNam, especially up north when I went skiing for the first time.  I did volunteer for Thailand for temporary duty.  The guys were saying it was great duty.  But they sent me east instead for two months to Hawaii for an A-bomb "fake" test mission where I was stationed at Hickam AB and then Barbers Point Naval Air station.  The navy had the best food of all the services. We fought with one hand tied behind our backs and lost the war at home.  In retrospect though, we should have stayed out of it.

[RSL]

This thread is about Southeast Asia during the war, Alan.

[Alan Klein]

Russ, I served in the Pacific from 1965-67 during the war although I didn't serve in VietNam.  I handled Top Secret crypto communications from Tan San Nhut Air Base through my communications group in Fuchu Air Base in Japan and thought I had something to add to the conversation.  You posted pictures from Korea and Japan as well as Vietnam. Sorry if my posts and pictures were inappropriate.