Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => Street Showcase => Topic started by: RSL on November 16, 2020, 10:38:05 am
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I've been asked by my family to post some of my historical stuff from Asia, etc. on Facebook. I might as well post those pics on here too.
This is probably the first picture I shot with my brand new Ikoflex in 1953.
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That's definitely a keeper.
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Russ, I've seen this image before and I'm delighted to see it once more. It is memorable and undoubtedly my favourite.
Thank you for reposting.
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Thank you, Keith. I'm flattered by that, coming from someone who does the kind of excellent work you do. There probably will be some others you've seen before because at this point I've lost track of what I've posted in the past. In any case, what I post will come from Korea in 1953-54 and Thailand or Vietnam in 1964-65.
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Outstanding. Your work from that era is top notch.
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Love that Russ.
Jim
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Slightly out of focus. I was in the back of a 6 x 6 truck.
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Another fine shot.
Clearly the stick isn't needed for support, probably for defense if anyone tries to take his straw.
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Another from 1954. Downtown Taegu, Korea. I can visualize these two ladies 66 years later, getting together, maybe in the public bath, and gossiping.
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Good seeing, even back then.
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Good seeing, even back then.
Especially back then :)
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The war is over. Time to thresh. Korea 1954
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Keep 'em coming, Russ.
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Keep 'em coming, Russ.
+1
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Taegu Market, 1953
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+1. ;)
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Neutral Nations Inspection Team, 1954. One member is missing from this picture. As an additional duty I was assigned to herd these guys around. There were two from Communist countries and two from free countries. mostly Switzerland and Sweden. Every time a cargo or passenger airplane landed at K2 the NNIT was authorized to go through it and look for items prohibited by the truce agreement. I had to make sure they didn't poke into stuff they weren't entitled to poke into. This, by the way, is not street, but I thought it might be interesting in the Korea context.
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Oh what fun. I used to herd OSHA inspectors through some of our chemical plants from time to time as part of an voluntary program with them. And it was the same thing.
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Well done Russ!!!
Happy Thanks giving to all American friends.
Stay well. Stay safe.
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Thanks, Rayyan. Here are a couple kids cleaning up in a field, next to their watering hole. 1953 or 54
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A Korean family. War over. 1954.
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These folks are living in shacks along the Naktong river. I made the shot (and a bunch more) from the bridge that runs through the center of Taegu. A 20 x 20 print of this particular picture hangs in my studio. These are folks who just stood up and walked south at the end of the war, before the border closed. They couldn't take anything with them. I suspect most of them are multimillionaires now. They had guts.
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I always carried two cameras. Just ran across this one. Same family. This must have been during the summer of 1953. The war ended on July 27th, and it obviously wasn't later in the winter.
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I'm quite sure I've posted this one before. It's from 1954. I shot from the back of a 6x6 truck.
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Outstanding, Russ.
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Thanks, Rajan. Here's another look at a downtown Taegu market, shortly after the war was over.
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I've posted this heartbreaker before; maybe more than once. If you were waiting for a military bus in Taegu a kid would come up to you and beg. If you gave him anything at all you'd almost instantly be surrounded by fifty or so kids, all begging. That major looks like a really mean guy, but he's learned that he has to do what he's doing.
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A wonderful collection, Russ.
I wonder what goes through your mind when you look at them now?
Stay safe.
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There’s more to come, Rayyan; still more from immediately postwar Korea, then a few from Thailand, then more from Vietnam.
I look back on this stuff with mixed emotions. In Korea I was a 23-year-old kid, flying fighter-bombers and shooting pictures in my spare time. I can’t really get in touch any longer with my thoughts then. But I can get in touch with my thoughts ten years later when I was a radar site operations officer in Thailand and later, a radar site commander in the Vietnam delta. Finally, another eight years later, I was commander of all the radar sites we had left in Southeast Asia. I don’t have many pictures from that final tour because I was a busy bee while we were bombing in Cambodia, and after that stopped, keeping my troops more or less under control as they indulged in what the Thai call sanuk (a capacity for fun) . But what I do have is a dozen short stories I wrote shortly after I got back http://www.russ-lewis.com/asia/Shorts/S-preface.html.
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The Game. Taegu, Korea, 1954.
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How familiar were you with H C-B back then? Whether you realized it at the time or not, most of these are real Street. Bravo!
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Hi Eric, I knew nothing about HCB until one evening a couple years after I got back from Vietnam I was walking downtown in Colorado Springs (with my Canon 7) and I stopped in Henry Clausen's bookstore. Henry was a specialist in rare books and he had shelves of not-at-all-rare used books in his shop. I pulled out a copy of The World of Henri Cartier-Bresson, and suddenly I had a name for what I'd been doing. It was a revelation. I still have that book.
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It may be time to put together some kind of book, even if Blurb or similar. Your collection is bunch of moments that should be preserved as a document of an era now gone.
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I've thought about that, Larry, but I'll let my four sons worry about that after I'm gone.
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Parallel parking, Taegu, 1953
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Me and 392, K2, Taegu, Korea, 1953. (Not street. Sorry)
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It may be time to put together some kind of book, even if Blurb or similar. Your collection is bunch of moments that should be preserved as a document of an era now gone.
I agree!
And of the new two, I especially enjoy Parallel Parking.
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Thanks, Eric. Here's another Taegu market.
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The Donghwasa temple was up in the mountains above the K2 airbase. We made a jeep ride up one day.
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More gems.
The colors seem to be quite robust. What film were you using back then?
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I think these were Kodachrome, Eric. I can't check because the transparencies I made these scans from are stored away in my eldest son's attic, back in Manitou Springs. I shot a lot of Ektachrome, but by the time digital got to the point whee I could scan them they pretty much had faded beyond salvation. These hadn't, so they almost have to be Kodachrome.
Here's one that always tears me up, in both meanings of the word. I was inside a fence that protected military vehicles when we were parked downtown in Taegu. There wasn't anything I could do for him. There's still nothing I can do for him. Damn.
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Here's an example of what happened with the Ektachrome. I scanned this about ten years ago, so the transparency had been sitting for about 55 years. There were colors in this shot that have simply disappeared. Wish I'd known.
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I think these were Kodachrome, Eric. I can't check because the transparencies I made these scans from are stored away in my eldest son's attic, back in Manitou Springs. I shot a lot of Ektachrome, but by the time digital got to the point whee I could scan them they pretty much had faded beyond salvation. These hadn't, so they almost have to be Kodachrome.
Here's one that always tears me up, in both meanings of the word. I was inside a fence that protected military vehicles when we were parked downtown in Taegu. There wasn't anything I could do for him. There's still nothing I can do for him. Damn.
the cyan cast made me think Kodachrome as well. It can be tricky to remove while maintaining the other colours. Vuescan and Silverfast had pretty good profiles for balancing if memory serves.
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The answer to the color problem -- even with Kodachrome -- is to shoot in B&W. Taegu rice market. 1953.
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That mimics my own experience with K-chrome and E-chrome as well.
The images are still inspiring.
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A flashback. Japan: the Tokyo Ginza in 1953. It's only been nine years since the city was leveled.
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Shopping in the rain. Taegu, 1953.
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Kids. Taegu, 1953
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The last one is great. Kids having fun in spite of everything. The one in the middle looks like she has a "firecracker" attitude.
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The third is my favorite, Frank. The little one looks as if she's afraid. I just want to give her a hug and tell her it's all right. She's probably about 72 now, so she probably wouldn't appreciate that.
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A lady along the road. I shot this from the back of a six-by.
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And finally, from the Korea collection, another kid I feel sorry for. There's a lot more in my catalog, but most of them have to do with my buddies and stuff going on at K2.
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On to Japan. Here are three I think I've probably posted before. The first two are from Hakone national park, when I was on R&R at the Fujia hotel. The third is from a train window. All from 1954.
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And finally, from the Korea collection, another kid I feel sorry for. There's a lot more in my catalog, but most of them have to do with my buddies and stuff going on at K2.
Know the feeling.
There is never a shortage. The best we can do is make a brief difference.
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The four of kids from Taegu I think are the most moving in this whole wonderful collection. Bravo, Russ!
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Thanks, Eric. Here's one from Bangkok in 1965.
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Before LBJ started Rolling Thunder, the bombing campaign in North Vietnam, things on the base at Ubon were loose, and the NCO club would boom out wild rock music until about midnight. Since there were no windows, you couldn’t block out the noise and sleep while that was going on. A friend and I went together and rented an inexpensive bungalow downtown in Ubon. I shot this picture from the porch of that house.
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Johnny Ubol had a shop in downtown Ubon in 1964. Here's Johnny with his grandson.
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Probably my favorite picture from Ubon. I've posted it before, but it belongs in this sequence.
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The Ubon ones are really nice.
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Thanks, Eric. Here's an open-air Thai restaurant in Ubon, 1964.
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Light a few joss sticks for the spirit house.
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A trip across the border into southern Laos. 1964.
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Now there is s real Street shot.
Good seeing and timing.
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It's not all street, Eric, but an awful lot of it is.
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Morning on a Bangkok klong. 1965.
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Laundry, Thailand, 1964
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It's not all street, Eric, but an awful lot of it is.
True. And thes last two might be Wet Street. ;)
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Vegetable Vendor on Bankgok Klong, 1965
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Samblaos. Writers on Thailand write the name for a bicycle taxi (สามล้อไทย) as "samlor," but what my ears always heard was "samblao."
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Yeah, the native Thai speakers i know drop "r"s all over the floor. i confuse the heck out of them when i pronounce them ;D ;D
Was that shot in Ubon ?
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Chai, Frank. It was in Ubon in 1964. Upcountry the "R"s change to "L"s. "Farang", "foreigner" in Bangkok (originally French foreigner), comes out as "falang" in Ubon. Once when I used some of my limited upcountry Thai on a Bangkok taxi driver he said: "You speak hillbilly Thai."
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On to Can Tho, Vietnam. Here's a downtown market in 1965.
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Oops. Missed this squid vendor from Ubon, 1964
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maybe the little boy thinks the same about dried squid as most westerners ;D
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Bassac river residential living. Can Tho, Vietnam, 1965
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Vietnamese boat dwellers.
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In a world of her own. I shot this 55 years ago. I hope this beautiful kid survived the communist takeover ten years later.
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I hope so, too. That is a fine portrait.
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That was no formal portrait, Eric. I stopped my jeep when I saw the kid playing, and shot it with my Canon 7 while sitting in the jeep. It was a split-second thing. I had to clean it up a bit in Camera Raw. Mea culpa, I cropped a bit. But it's really street.
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Can Tho Roofs
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Then it's an excellent Street portrait. ;)
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The square at Ben Xi Mai, Can Tho, Vietnam, 1965.
We lived in some of the commercial buildings in this row. NCOs lived in the "vertical apartment" just to the right of the Ba-Nhut-Tran restaurant. Officers lived in the one to the right of that. We also had several units for airmen across the square. Everything was tied together with an intercom.
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In the square. A long-lens shot from the porch during the day.
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Ah, so there were vehicles for non-river navigation as well.
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Russ, many of these scenes remind me of the Goa of my childhood.
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Hi Rajan, You don't say how old you are, so I'm guessing, but that must have been pretty soon after Goa's annexation from Portugal. I know there was some fighting during the annexation. I've always stayed away from combat pictures, but in the background of these there always was a tenseness. The Vietcong used Can Tho as an R&R center, so they kept distractions to a minimum, but the threat always was there.
Here's one I'm quite sure I've posted before, but it belongs with the others.
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I don't recall seeing this one before, but it is lovely, and well worth reposting.
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Thanks, Eric.
Here's another one from evening in the square at Ben Xi Mai, Can Tho, Vietnam, 1965. I hope these kids survived the communist takeover ten years later. They'd be in their seventies now. I hope they're well and happy.
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Russ, I'm 57 and I was speaking of Goa of the 1970s.
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Thanks, Rajan. That was quite a while after the struggle to leave Portugal.
Here's a shot I call "Juvies." I hope these kids made it through the takeover by the communists.
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Can Tho Marketplace
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Interesting that the girls have happy smiles, while the boys gotta look "tough."
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C'mon, Eric. That's always the way it works. You know that. I just hope these kids survived what came ten years later. They'd have been in their early twenties when the communists rolled through.
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Across the river
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Evening on the Bassac river. A mansion left over from French days. Can Tho, Vietnam, 1965
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Paddy Control: The Eyes and Ears of the Mekong
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lovely composition for the Bassac River shot.
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Thanks, Frank. It was a beautiful scene. Vietnam is a beautiful place.
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More holdovers from French days. Can Tho, Vietnam, 1965
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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.
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Thanks for the pictures Russ. They remind me of people I knew and I also ask myself what became of them.
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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
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Marketplaces in Can Tho
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I am particularly struck by the guy on the bike wearing a western-style hat. Is he some kind of spy? ;)
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Houseboat and Bathers: Can Tho, Vietnam, 1965
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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
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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.
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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
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More on boats. Can Tho, Vietnam, 1965
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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.
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Powerful images.
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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
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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
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How you'd get them to smile so much? Great "street" shots.
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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
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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.
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This thread is about Southeast Asia during the war, Alan.
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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.