Icons of Horror: Three Enduring Images from the Vietnam War

Harris, John M.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-96986-2_11

John M. Harris²

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1 Citations

Abstract

Three photographs have helped create the collective memory of the Vietnam War. “The Burning Monk” came at a time when the United States’ involvement in Vietnam was just gaining momentum, but it put the conflict on the front pages of America’s newspapers. The “Saigon Execution” photo was made at the height of America’s military involvement, and its purported effect, especially as an anti-war text, grew to almost mythic proportions. “The Terror of War” was published as U.S. troops were being withdrawn from Vietnam, but it served as a reminder of the cost of Vietnam’s ongoing civil war — and of all wars. Each image in its own way focused attention on Vietnam, and each has lived on in the history of the war and of photojournalism.

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Notes

1.
Browne heard later a South Vietnamese journalist was present, but it’s unclear whether he photographed the scene, and no photos other than Browne’s were published. Patrick Witty, “Malcolm Browne: The Story Behind the Burning Monk,” Time, 28 August 2012 (15 November 2017). http://time.com/3791176/malcolm-browne-the-story-behind-the-burning-monk/.
2.
The Associated Press (AP), “Malcolm Browne’s ‘Burning Monk’: How the photograph was taken,” 20 December 2013 (14 November 2017). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prXUs6op_6Q.
3.
Susan D. Moeller, “An Instant that Lingers.” Media Studies Journal 12 (Fall 1998): 8–9.
4.
Bonnie Brennen and Hanno Hardt, “Newswork, History, and Photographic Evidence: A Visual Analysis of a 1930s Newsroom,” in Picturing the Past (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 11–35.
5.
Hal Buell, telephone interview with John M. Harris, 12 October 2007.
6.
Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, The First Account of Vietnam at War (New York: The Viking Press, 1983), 529.
7.
Hal Buell telephone interview with John M. Harris, 25 October 2017.
8.
The Editors of Boston Publishing Company, The American Experience in Vietnam: Reflections on an Era (Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2014), 24.
9.
William Prochnau, Once Upon a Distant War: Young War Correspondents and the Early Vietnam Battles (New York: Random House, 1995), 10–11.
10.
The American Experience in Vietnam, 24.
11.
Malcolm Browne, Muddy Boots and Red Socks (New York: Random House, 1993), 13.
12.
Prochnau, 304.
13.
Browne, Muddy Boots and Red Socks, 10.
14.
Ibid.
15.
Malcolm Browne, The New Face of War (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1965), 177–180.
16.
Browne, Muddy Boots and Red Socks, 11–12.
17.
“A Buddhist Cremates Himself,” Life, 21 June 1963, 24–25.
18.
“When A Monk Became A Human Torch,” U.S. News & World Report, 24 June 1963, 8.
19.
Browne, The New Face of War, 181.
20.
New York Times, 27 June 1963, C21.
21.
Browne, Muddy Boots and Red Socks, 12.
22.
Ibid.
23.
Susan D. Moeller, Shooting War: Photography and the American Combat Experience (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1989), 355.
24.
New York Times, “Monks Take Part in Buddhist Protest,” 12 June 1963, 3.
25.
John Morris, e-mail correspondence John M. Harris, 6 October 2006.
26.
Horst Faas, “The Saigon Execution,” The Digital Journalist, 19 October 2004 (1 October 2007). http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0410/faas.html.
27.
Nick Ut, e-mail correspondence, 15 October 2007; also see Adams’ description of taking the photo in Adams, Alyssa, editor. Eddie Adams: Vietnam (Brooklyn: Umbrage Editions, 2009), 144.
28.
Quoted from an oral history of AP photography, cited in Eddie Adams, 144.
29.
Faas, “The Saigon Execution.”
30.
Eddie Adams: Vietnam, 144.
31.
David D. Perlmutter, Photojournalism and Foreign Policy: Icons of Outrage in International Crises (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998), 42.
32.
Perlmutter, 40.
33.
Peter Arnett, “To War with Eddie Adams,” Digital Journalist, October 2004 (1 October 2007). http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0410/arnett.html.
34.
Faas, “The Saigon Execution.”
35.
Buell in Eddie Adams, 23. An article in The Santa Fe New Mexican, “War Through the Lens of Eddie Adams,” 35, reported that he joined AP in 1961. Database online. Available from ProQuest Direct. But Buell was his AP colleague and longtime friend and is a more reliable source.
36.
Buell in Eddie Adams, 24.
37.
Adams took his famous photograph at about noon 31 January 1968, Saigon time. It already was early morning 1 February 1968 on the East Coast of the United States. The date of the photograph is variously reported on those dates, depending on the perspective.
38.
Faas, “The Saigon Execution.”
39.
Buell interview, 2007.
40.
Ibid.
41.
Don Oberdorfer, Tet: The Turning Point in the Vietnam War (New York: De Capo Press, 1984), 16.
42.
Buell interview, 2007.
43.
Peter Braestrup, Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983), 461.
44.
Ibid.
45.
Karnow, Vietnam: A History, 529.
46.
John Morris, e-mail correspondence, 2006.
47.
Braestrup, Big Story, 347.
48.
“By Book & Bullet,” Time, 23 February 1968, 32.
49.
“Summary Lynching,” The New York Times, 7 February 1968, 46.
50.
“The Face of War,” Time, 23 February 1968, 5.
51.
Buckley, “Portrait of an Aging Despot,” 547.
52.
Buell interview, 2007.
53.
Braestrup, Big Story, 348.
54.
Newseum. War Stories. Arlington, VA: Newseum: The Story Behind the News, 2001. Videorecording.
55.
Ibid.
56.
Oriana Fallaci, “An Interview with the Most Hated Man in Saigon,” Look, 25 June 1968, T17–T18.
57.
Ibid.
58.
The American Experience in Vietnam: Reflections on an Era, 221.
59.
Faas and Fulton, “Documentary Video: The Napalm Girl,” Content Media Group, 14 June 2012 (24 October 2017). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa9auMart0E.
60.
Nick Ut, telephone interview with John M. Harris, 26 October 2017. Faas and Fulton.
61.
Ut, interview, 2017.
62.
Faas and Fulton.
63.
Buell interview, 2017.
64.
Ut interview, 2017.
65.
Horst Faas and Tim Page, eds., Requiem (New York: Random House, 1997), 321.
66.
Ut, interview, 2017.
67.
Ibid.
68.
Faas and Fulton. Rebecca Lumb, “Reunited with the Vietnamese ‘girl in the picture,’” BBC News, 17 May 2010 (14 November 2017). http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8678478.stm.
69.
Ut interview, 2017. “Documentary Video: The Napalm Girl,” Content Media Group.
70.
Ut interview, 2017.
71.
Ibid., Buell interview, 2017.
72.
Buell interview, 2017.
73.
“The Beat of Life,” Life, 26 June 1972, 4.
74.
Don North, e-mail correspondence with John M. Harris, 25 October 2017.
75.
Lumb, “Reunited with the Vietnamese ‘girl in the picture.’”
76.
The Kim Foundation International (14 November 2017). http://www.kimfoundation.com/modules/contentpage/index.php?file=intro.htm.
77.
Buell interview, 2017.
78.
Chris Hedges, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (New York: Anchor Books, 2003), 81.

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Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, USA
John M. Harris

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University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia
Martin Kerby , Margaret Baguley & Janet McDonald , &

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Harris, J.M. (2019). Icons of Horror: Three Enduring Images from the Vietnam War. In: Kerby, M., Baguley, M., McDonald, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Artistic and Cultural Responses to War since 1914. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96986-2_11

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96986-2_11
Published: 05 December 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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