There are very few motor vehicles. There are thousands of bicycles. A sort of ecologist's dream. The bicycles are left around unlocked and there seems to be very little crime. Again, I'm not offering any simple explanations, but the difference between Hanoi and Saigon is just enormous.
Q. Could you contrast Hanoi and Saigon?
A. Well, it's hard to do that because the contrast is so staggering that one doesn't know where to begin. First of all, Hanoi was largely evacuated during the bombing. I don't know how many people are there now, but I would guess it's less than half a million. Hanoi is quiet and clean. People look healthy and are simply but adequately dressed. It appears to be an extremely egalitarian society. One day we were out walking through Hanoi and the head of the Friendship Committee, who is also a professor of Fine Arts, came by on a bicycle just like everybody else. When we talked with Pham Van Dong there were no guards. We met him alone and in a very relaxed and informal atmosphere. These are admittedly superficial impressions, but I can only go by what I saw.
On the other hand I was really not prepared for what I saw in Saigon. There are three and a half million people in Saigon, a city which was built for one tenth that number. The noise, the filth, the smog are overwhelming. The city is full of Hondas bought with American money. There are little kids everywhere begging. There are lepers in the streets. At night, when it quiets down, you can hear the artillery firing into the countryside.
Saigon is no longer the pleasure spot for American soldiers it once was. In fact there are very few soldiers. One G. I. told me that the level of violence and hatred has gotten to the point where it is dangerous to walk around in uniform. I talked with some soldiers in Saigon who favored the war but said that they would never walk around Saigon because of what would happen to them. Another explanation for the scarcity of soldiers in Saigon is the fear that many of them might join the student peace demonstrations.
I talked to a whole range of people: workers, schoolteachers, a couple of members of the opposition in the Senate. Many told me that they were not themselves in favor of the NLF and had originally favored American intervention. But without exception they said that it is now imperative for the Americans to leave immediately, that they are ready to take their chances with the NLF and that they prefer working out an arrangement with the NLF to continuing to be the humiliated lackeys of the Americans they clearly now are.
The best way to sum up what Saigon looks like is that it is a caricature of the worst aspects of any American city I have ever seen. The slums, thenoise, the filth. In addition is the apparent massive destruction of a culture. You have all these people who were driven off the farms and whose main problem is how to stay alive through American money. It is getting hard to do because of the inflation. People I spoke to have two or three jobs just to pay for food.
Q. How long were you in Saigon?
A. For a week, right after I came out of Hanoi.
Q. In general did you have any trouble with passports and the U. S. government?
A. In fact you have to go through an enormous amount of bureaucratic stuff, but the American embassy was very polite and very friendly. There are two reasons for their attitude, I think. They are interested in having contact with the prisoners inside and we carried letters in and out. The other thing, I think, is maintaining that facade of reasonableness that you find with Americans all through Southeast Asia. Laos is a good example. Nothing could be quieter and more pleasant than Vientiane, full as it is with C. I. A. men and U. S. agents and so on. Of course, probably the most massive bombardment of civilians is going on now as it has been for several years in northern and southern Laos.
One of the most moving experiences of the entire trip for me was going to the refugee camp in Vientiane and talking to some of these people, demoralized and pitiful refugees, who had been driven out of their villages by the American bombing. When I spoke with them they said, "You're the Sirs who feed us, and thank you for feeding us. Sirs," and so on. But they also told us quite simply what it's like to be living under continual bombardment, what it is like to be afraid to leave your cave for even fifteen minutes because you might be destroyed. Basically they don't know why they are where they are; they only know that their entire way of life has been totally destroyed.
They are suffering and have suffered enormously. The fact that the massive bombing in Laos goes on unprotected, with C. I. A.-trained mercenaries to fight on the land, seems to me an ominous portent of the use of American bombs and Asian mercenaries to fight for what we cannot afford to win with our lives.
Q. What kinds of political conversations did you have with the North Vietnamese?
A. They were particularly interested in the progress of the Shea Bill and the Cooper-Church amendment. They were well informed on these bills and the American political scene in general. They generally spoke of the war as simply a "wrong" policy, disastrous for the United States as well as for Indochina. There seems to be total confidence that in the long run they will prevail. They repeatedly expressed sympathy with what they perceive to be the difficult struggle of the peace movement in the United States. They expressed a strong desire for friendship with Americans and continual contact after the war's end.