Global RIP thread

[bust]

I actually thought de died a decade ago

[dean]

Hanoi Hanna dies last Friday at around age 85-87. I wonder if she was hated as much by GI's as Axis Sally or Tokyo Rose?

From the NY Times: Trinh Thi Ngo, a soft-spoken radio announcer known as Hanoi Hannah who entertained American forces during the Vietnam War while trying to persuade them that the conflict was immoral, died on Friday in Ho Chi Minh City. She was believed to be 85.

Nguyen Ngoc Thuy, a former colleague of Mrs. Ngo’s at Voice of Vietnam, the state broadcaster where she worked for decades, confirmed her death in a telephone interview on Tuesday and said she had been treated for liver ailments.

Mrs. Ngo, who broadcast in English, was a propaganda weapon for North Vietnam as it battled the United States and the South Vietnamese government.

Her work was in the tradition of Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally, whose radio broadcasts were intended to damage the morale of American troops during World War II.

Mr. Thuy said that Mrs. Ngo was both a national celebrity and a role model to her younger colleagues, including himself. “We admired her perfect voice and her legendary role†in the war effort, he said in the interview.

Mrs. Ngo was born in Hanoi, the capital, in 1931, when Vietnam was a French colony. (Her exact birth date could not be learned, nor was there information on survivors.) She learned English from private tutors in the early 1950s — partly, she later recalled, because she loved watching Hollywood films like “Gone With the Wind.â€

“I always preferred American movies to French films,†she said in an interview with The New York Times in 1994. “The French talked too much. There was more action in American movies.’’

Mrs. Ngo began broadcasting for Voice of Vietnam in 1955, a year after Vietnamese revolutionaries defeated France at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, forcing the French from Indochina.

Early in her career she used the name Thu Huong, or Autumn Fragrance, because it was easier for her non-Vietnamese listeners to pronounce, she told The Times.

“Fewer syllables,†she said.

Her broadcasts aimed at United States forces began in 1965, and she was still on the air in 1975, when North Vietnam captured Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital, and renamed it Ho Chi Minh City.

As part of her programs, each 30 minutes long, Mrs. Ngo would announce the names of American soldiers who had died in battle the previous month.

Her listeners included the Navy pilot John McCain, the future United States senator, who was a prisoner of war in Hanoi for five and a half years after his plane was shot down in October 1967.

On a visit to Hanoi in April 2000, Senator McCain said he had listened to Mrs. Ngo’s broadcasts on loudspeakers that hung from the ceiling in a cellblock illuminated by a single bulb.

“I heard her every day,†he said. “She’s a marvelous entertainer. I’m surprised she didn’t get to Hollywood.â€

Mrs. Ngo’s broadcasts included music by Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and other antiwar American folk singers, and she took a friendly approach to her listeners, Mr. Thuy said. But beneath her gentle tone, he added, was a steely confidence in the North Vietnamese cause.

Nguyen Van Vinh, a Vietnamese cameraman who filmed Mrs. Ngo’s meeting the actress and antiwar activist Jane Fonda in Hanoi in 1972, said Mrs. Ngo had “talked in a whisper to the G.I.s.â€

“Soldiers used a gun, but in Hanoi, in North Vietnam, she used her voice,†he said.

Mrs. Ngo acknowledged as much in the 1994 interview with The Times.

“My work was to make the G.I.s understand that it was not right for them to take part in this war,†she said. “I talk to them about the traditions of the Vietnamese, to resist aggression. I want them to know the truth about this war and to do a little bit to demoralize them so that they will refuse to fight.â€

She said the Americans had called her Hanoi Hannah for a simple reason: alliteration. “The Americans like nicknames,†she added.

[Flashermac]

I remember listening to her a few times, since she played good music. I recall the night she sent her condolences to the "men of the 299th Engineers," so many of whom she claimed had died in an attack on the fire base by the North Vietnamese. What actually happened was that four NVA sappers slipped through the perimeter wire and made it into D Company's area. They were spotted and ducked into the mess hall. The D Company guys then shot the shit out of their own mess hall, killing all four sappers. Their cooks came to our mess hall the next morning, trying to borrow some pots and pans so they could make breakfast for D Company. The only American "casualty" was a doufas LT who burned his own arm with his hot M79 barrel ... and then put himself in for a Purple Heart!

 

 

11 May 1969

[bust]

Someone of significance

[radioman]

Someone of significance

 

A little hasty, or a little slow?

[radioman]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37643326

[Flashermac]

Jonathan Head gets in his usual digs. Whatever happened to unbiased reporting? Oops, I forgot. This is the BBC.

[unit731]

I remember listening to her a few times,

 

Radios were verboten where I was . . . so never got to listen to her.

 

Though a few did have a radio.

As a newbie, I did bring a tiny transistor radio with me. "Don't get caught" was the advice from others. I did get a few times where I hid the radio near my ears with other items and did get a brief chance to listen to some Armed Forces Radio. But then the battery went dead. And no way to obtain a replacement battery. So I gave the radio away. The next mate got ahold of a discarded platoon radio battery. That battery was a little larger then the size of a brick. Took getting some wire to hook up the brick battery to the radio. Don't know where the bits of wire came from. I think the demolition guy had wire or wire from a Clamore mine. So one other person did get a chance to listen to the radio. I think the monsoon rains finally killed that radio.

 

Ah . . . the good old days. The fond memories of a wonderful time . . .

[Flashermac]

Usually some guy in a squad would have one, but he'd leave it at the fire base. That's where I heard her, when the NVA were all around us for over a month and we had stay put and be resupplied by air. (Too dangerous even to try to send in a convoy.)

 

One day I went over to HQ Company and saw some guys with a TV watching 'I Love Lucy' on AFVN. Somehow they'd managed to scrounge a TV and had a weather balloon up with a long wire as an antenna. A few days later I was on perimeter day guard, when I heard a single shot. I looked around and saw the balloon slowly deflating and sinking to the ground. I guess somebody got pissed off and decided to end the entertainment.

[migrant]

Usually some guy in a squad would have one, but he'd leave it at the fire base. That's where I heard her, when the NVA were all around us for over a month and we had stay put and be resupplied by air. (Too dangerous even to try to send in a convoy.)

 

One day I went over to HQ Company and saw some guys with a TV watching 'I Love Lucy' on AFVN. Somehow they'd managed to scrounge a TV and had a weather balloon up with a long wire as an antenna. A few days later I was on perimeter day guard, when I heard a single shot. I looked around and saw the balloon slowly deflating and sinking to the ground. I guess somebody got pissed off and decided to end the entertainment.

 

I could imagine doing this if "I love Lucy" was on