Jane, I wonder if you can tell me, first of all, how you came to be in Vietnam and what you were doing there.

I went to Vietnam as a director of the American Friends Service Committee's project, ah, in South Vietnam in Quang Ngai and I was working at a rehabilitation center, where we were primarily trying to train Vietnamese how to make artificial limbs and fit them for civilians that had been injured during the war. And then the other part of the program was that I worked in prisons, making medical visits to prisoners, that were being held by what was then the South Vietnamese government.

How did that come about? How come you're actually going into prisons and you're seeing prisoners? This seems an unusual thing to...

Well, I was there, ah, with the American Friends Service Committee and because of the Quaker's long interest in prisons, having been imprisoned themselves, ah, many times during their history, I think as early as 1966 they had asked for permission to make these medical visits into the prisons. Um, they brought in food supplements for children. There were a lot of infants in there – children with their mothers. Um, and then we did kind of a sick call.

Since I was there, though, as late as 1973, I didn't just go into the prison; I had an opportunity to work at the provincial hospital, and there was a prison ward on the grounds of the hospital, and many of the prisoners that had been the most severely tortured were brought to the prison ward at the hospital. They would be brought usually from the interrogation center, um, over to the prison ward at the hospital.

How did you know that ah, when were you first aware that torture was going on?

Well, when we worked at the prison itself, ah, the situation was fairly carefully screened for us. Ah, we would come in at a certain time and the prison officials would sort of line up sick people and bring them, ah, to us and our doctor on our program would look at the people and I would stand there and usually give, give out, um, these milk, um, infant formula, ah, vitamins for the babies and things like that. Ah, and you'd see people that had unusual injuries, um, often complaining of broken ribs, ah people that were badly ah, bruised, um, and you'd ask the prison officials, "well, what happened to this prisoner?" and they would say, "Oh, this man just happened to fall down the well accidentally when he was getting water in the morning," or another story was that, ah, somebody had been coming out, ah he'd gone out into the jungle, and they kept saying, "well, you know there're still, ah, tigers and lions in the jungles in Vietnam and this man had been mauled by a, by a tiger."

Well, these kinds of things seemed absurd and you knew that that wasn't really the case, but it was really when we went to the prison ward that, um, you could begin to see the more severe injuries and the way that you knew the people had been tortured was one, by talking with them; I spoke Vietnamese; I could interview them, get their own stories. And then, often we were able to have the people x-rayed. We would get permission for them to be taken from the prison ward into the x-ray room at the hospital, and we could document with the x-rays that the people had been injured.

And then sometimes we'd check with the American officials in town; we'd ask to have a prisoner release since they were chained to their beds, and and they would confirm the fact that, that, ah, people were, in fact, um, mis--they wouldn't call it mistreated, but that people had been, been tortured. And the prison guard one time said to me, "Well, you know these women are all having..." they would have seizures, um it was a, an extraordinary phenomenon, um sometimes I saw as many as seven women having, ah, seizures, in fact, at one time, where they would, ah, begin to froth at the mouth it looked like an epileptic, ah, seizure to me, um involuntary muscle convulsions ah, we believe that it was it could have been psychosomatic, but, ah, often they were forced to drink water that had been mixed with lime, and people have speculated that perhaps lime was a toxin and, ah, caused some kind of brain injury, and, and this would result in, ah, in the seizures.

Saying, just now, ah, in chains, you've made it all sound very medieval. I wonder if you can tell me about your first visit in, the first time things really made an impression on you, with the chains, and what it was like.

Well, the first time I went into the prison ward at the hospital, it was a, ah, small room; I guess there were maybe twenty beds in the room, and there were two people to each bed, and they would have to put the you know put their legs facing in opposite directions so that they could get the two people in the in the bed and then chain them, and they'd be chained to the ends of the beds it was a very uh...complicated, ah, arrangement for these people.

And, ah, it was dark in there. Uh, and I guess there was always the smell of urine. I mean, it was a really unpleasant place to come in in fact, your eyes would have to go through the adjustment of being out in the bright sunlight, in the tropical, uh, sunlight, and then, ah, suddenly the smells would hit you first, and then you would begin to, to see the, the ah, the people, um, in the prison.

And the first thing they would do ah, is to come up and, and ask you to see the sickest person first. They would say come to the back and see this older woman, um, so you usually, the first time I went in, I remember seeing this 67-year-old woman that was lying on a, on a bare m—bare m—ah, bed frame, springs they had just put canvas on the, cardboard on the top of it, with a hole cut in it through which she was supposed to defecate, and she had no clothes, and just a blanket that the other prisoners had given her.

And she had been partially paralyzed because she had such a severe, um, injury to her head. So I guess that was one of my first impressions was, you know, the, the smells, and the, and the, ah, real horror of the, of the situation I mean this old woman being treated like this, and how could she possibly be be dangerous, um to, you know, to the government enough that they had had to torture her into, to being, um, paralyzed.

Although, there was all of this that was very depressing ah, in the prison, but there was also the fact that these prisoners were so strong and were, most of them were women, and I think partially because I - I was the first American woman they'd ever seen - they were curious about me, and as I worked in the prison ward over a period of time, they were exceedingly tender, ah very sharing, and they talked a lot about their families, asked, ah, about me, um...and so, in the long run, although the first impression was overwhelming one of, ah, of, ah, revulsion, and, ah...I think, a lot of agony for me realizing the complicity of the Americans, um for having responsibility for, um, imprisoning all of these people finally, I think, ah, my overall impression was one of, of tremendous, um...ah...ah...pride, I guess, and, ah, for the, for these women, and, and one of, um real compassion, ah, respect for them.

Can you tell me a little bit more about some of the tortures that the you...do you want to stop for a moment?

No, it's all right I can...

I wonder if you can tell me a little bit more about...

Couldn't think of...

...the sort of tortures that you knew went on, and how did you know that they were going on you said about the scratching of the tiger, I mean or maybe you could tell me also about, a bit about paralysis. I don't think we've actually got the fact that, you know, people were there for so long, for such a period of time, and how did one, how come they ended up paralyzed?

Uh huh.

Could you go into that a bit?

Oh, over the years I worked, there were a lot of, um the results of the tortures that I saw, and I could only, um get the stories from the prisoners as to what they had actually gone through. Um I think one of the most frequent things you saw were broken, broken ribs, um and arms, um...that was a...and the women complained the most of electrical torture. They had electric, you know, certain devices that gave them electrical shocks at the interrogation center, and these electrodes were...attached to sensitive parts of their bodies and the women that were tortured by electricity were the ones that we saw having the seizures the most often. Um, a lot of internal injuries

I saw bleeding from the mouth, um they would tell me that they'd be put in a big barrel of water, and then they would beat on the sides of the barrel, and that the concussion, I guess, would give some kind of internal injury. But drinking water with lime was a frequent one, and they would fill their stomachs, and then beat their stomachs with sticks, or, or you know, push on their stomachs with fists, um, causing them to vomit, or throw up the lime, and so on.

But I did, um...ah, and the injuries to the head and brain were what we saw causing paralysis, ah...where it would be a permanent paralysis. I did come in contact with two men that had been kept in the tiger cages um, on Con Son Island. One man had been in the tiger cage fourteen years, and the other had been imprisoned nine years. Um, the tiger cages were, you know, as you know, sort of very, very small cages that were cement devices with bars on the top, where the guards walked on top of the people, and they were kept in there for so long and basically the muscles just atrophied; they had no exercise, no use of the muscles, so that they...came out of the tiger cages appearing to be paralyzed.

Now, in fact, um these two men that came to our center were able to receive intensive physical therapy, and eventually did, um regain use of their muscles. Um, sometimes the...legs were limp from atrophy, and then one of the men seemed to have, ah, one leg that had, had...ah, stiffened. Ah, I don't know whether there's also a form where if you haven't used your legs long enough you , you , your muscles lock, or, or...ah, this results in your not being able to walk, but...they ju—had crawl—they use a little tiny wooden stool, and, ah, use that to keep their rears off the ground, and then crawl like, like crabs, um along the ground. The irony of the situation was that...

We've run out of film.

That's okay.

No, you're doing, you're doing very well. (beeps) You loosened up considerably about half way through.

You were telling me about the irony of being with some of the Con Son prisoners...

Mm hm.

...in tiger cages. Could you carry on?

Well, two of the men that we treated at our center had been, ah, paralyzed by keeping, being kept in the tiger cages for such a long time that their muscles had atrophied. And in order to treat them at our center, one of the very ironic things that we had to do was to use a physical therapy device that gave an electrical impulse to the muscles to begin to stimulate them.

The muscles were so dead that we couldn't exercise them - well, we could move the foot, and gradually get some feeling back - but a, a faster more efficient way was to give them an electrical shock. And, here, these men had been tortured, themselves, originally and p—you know, lost use of their legs be—because they'd been, ah...given electrical tortures, and in order to get the use of their legs back, we were torturing them in a sense, ah once, once again.

But the men were extraordinarily ah, strong, um, from this experience. Ah, in fact, one...man, I guess the one that had been in prison for fourteen years, came into our center and within a day or so his family came to visit him, and his brother was an ARVN soldier, fighting on the other, on the other side, in a sense, ah, and there was a reunion there. And this man was calm, gentle, but firm in everything that he believed, and his compassion for his brother his patience in explaining why he believed what he did - cause his brother would say, "Well, take the simple route out, you know, confess and they'll let you go," and he kept saying, "No, I've...gone through this experience this is what I believe and until the foreigners are out of our country, I you know, will probably remain a, a political prisoner."

We did rehabilitate both of the men they were able to walk again, and within about two months, I heard that one of the men had gone back to his little hamlet, ah, been reunited with some of his family, and stepped on a mine, and after all of this experience, of living through the torture and the hell of the tiger cages, was killed by, by an American mine, and it was...you know, the Americans would put mines in and then move out of an area, and the civilians, and often the South Vietnamese Army, at that time never really had an accurate idea of where the mines were. People were continuously stepping on these mines, and he...was one of the victims, and that was a very tragic situation.

I think you're the first person I've ever heard talk about the Americans laying mines; I thought the VC were the only people who laid mines in Vietnam.

Oh no, Americans laid...thousands of mines in the area where, where our center worked in fact, the American Friends Service Committee decided to ah, go to Vietnam, with the project of, um, trying to fit civilians with artificial limbs, simply because there was no other civilian center in all of Vietnam, and as the people came into our center, we would interview them and say, "where were you when you got injured?" and "who do you think was responsible?" you know, "what kind of mine were you hit by?" And, ah, the majority of mines that caused the civilian injuries for the people that came into our center were American mines.

I'd like to go back to the question of, of torture and who was responsible for torture. Can you tell me, please, was there an American connection with the prison? Or was it one of Thieu's...prisons only? Who was responsible? How was the prison run, as far as you're aware?

Mm hm. Well, there was no doubt whatsoever, ah, that the Americans were responsible, I feel, for the entire prison system in the province where I worked and, you know, in the rest of South Vietnam. The Vietnamese knew that...um, you know, you...they saw all the results of what happened.

They were chained to their bed with Smith and Wesson handcuffs. Um, when they were tortured, it was either by Americans, in the, ah, latter 60's or in the early 70's, there'd be American advisers there. Um, they would see, you know, the equipment and the personnel, I guess, were the two primary things that, um, that the Vietnamese saw.

I myself, um, knew that Americans worked in the interrogation center, by seeing them come into the interrogation center in jeeps everyday. There was a house in the town - um again, you have to remember that we lived in rural area and things were quite open - and there was the American military compound, and there were the civilian advisers, and then there was a house with heavily fortified, and everyone knew, including the Americans, I mean, everyone called it the CIA house, and this is where the, ah, the CIA lived and worked, and they would go from this house in jeeps. They carried little rev—revolvers, which the military...

Let me just stop, sorry. Could you just say then, we were in the, we were in the...rural area, and nearby there was a town could you just start the story again so that I can use it as a separate thing?

Okay. All right. We were in a rural area, and in the town itself there was a house, ah that was called the CIA house by, by the Americans, by the Vietnamese it was very visible as a heavily fortified house. The CIA would go from the house in jeeps to the interrogation center...a couple of them in a jeep um, to work, ah, in the interrogation center, and I would see them go in and out everyday. I'd see them at the airport, ah, had occasion to talk them – knew that they worked there, had conversations with them about the fact that, ah, that they did, ah, work in the interrogation center.

And then, you'd see all of the e—the equipment, as well, that, ah, was part of the American supply that was used. Um, and then you'd talk to maybe a prison official and he...I remember one time we were trying to get a prisoner release that was the brother of one of our employees, and ah, you know, the man had been to the police academy in the United States, and we trained him, ah...we were responsible for, ah...all of, ah, what he'd learned about torturing and about, ah, interrogating prisoners.

Were you aware of Operation Phoenix? Can you tell us anything about what had happened to them specifically about Phoenix or was Phoenix-related?

Well, the prisoners often talked about ah the fact that they'd been picked up as part of a Phoenix sweep or sa—the whole policy of the Phoenix to pick up so-called Viet Cong suspects. Ahm. And, in our area, because the area was very resistant to, first the French control, and and then ah also resistant to American occupation, the ah Phoenix had been quite active in that area. And, so, as I met prisoners they would talk about ah...being in ah interrogated by people that were actually employed by the Phoenix Program.

Can you tell me something about the area in which you were living and you were in Saigon. Should we just stop a minute? How much have we got on that magazine?...sorry.

Can you tell me something about the area in which you lived and what, what it did and who ran it?

Mm hm. Well, I worked in a rural province. It was ah extraordinarily beautiful in spite of the devastation that had been caused by the war. We were about four miles from My Lai. You could go out there on a dirt road and see the pine trees and the irrigation ditch where they, where the people had been, been killed and then beyond that were a very beautiful area right along the, along the coast ahm where once the, well for centuries the Vietnamese lived and had a very complicated irrigation system.

Ah. You know, they, I often thought if I could talk to garden clubs in the United States, ah, about the flowers that grew out there, the way the people would tell me, "gee, when we used to be allowed to live on our land, I grew such and such a, you know, type of lily" and "we had this kind of bamboo shading our house." It was just exquisitely beautiful at one time.

Ahm. But, the people because of this policy of removing the people from the land, were all brought ahm from any of the outside areas near, near the city of Quang Ngai and a lot of them were put on a sandbars just a flat area of ahm sand ahm near, near the river and near a bridge leading into the town. They were put under ahm hot canvas tents, heavily barbed wired, ah, allowed only to go out in the middle of the day. In fact, I remember one old farmer saying ah we were asking him about his political affiliation. Whether he supported the Saigon government or he supported the PRG.

And he said "well, let me put it this way." He said, "When I lived on my land and was allowed to do what I wanted to as my ancestors had before me, we would go out in the early part of the morning when it was cool and we could go out and farm our land and come back in the middle of the day and have a quiet rest and then go back out in late afternoon and again when it wasn't, wasn't as hot, enjoy the sea breezes ah be near our, the graves of our ancestors, have our children go to school. Now, the Americans come. Where do I have to live. I have to live under this hot tent. I'm not allowed to farm. My children no longer know when the rice grows. How to transplant the li—rice. We're losing what it was, the thread for thousands and thousands of years, and I'm given food."

He said, "this is like a welfare situation. I, my dignity is hurt. Why should I support this government?" He said, "I don't want, you know, to get handouts. I, I know how to farm. I'm a good farmer. Ah. Let me do it the the way I've been used to. But," he said, "instead, you know we would only be let out of the barbed wire once a day and taken in a truck to work on some land and then, then brought back ah, again."

And so the situation was really that ah the refugees were being very quickly turned against the government because of, of this ahm policy of taking them off the land, and trying to herd them together in order to so-call protect them. These little protective ah hamlets. And, then ah the American presence was very heavy in the, in the whole province. The, it was the American military...

Start again. We want a chance to change this out. How did you see the American presence ah, in these hamlets?

Well, the Americans, military presence was very obvious as far as ah having, you know, ah troops and the helicopters and the guns and all the weaponry and coming in an out of the, of the town.

You were telling me about the people in, in the village and you were telling me about the old man under the tent, and the conditions they were, do you want to go on. Start again.

Can you tell me about, you were talking about the old man in the tent and so on and they basically blamed the regime. How popular was the Saigon government and how did its actions, I mean was there corruption, what did people think?

In the rural area where ah I worked the Saigon government was not at all popular. Ah. The area had never been controlled by the French. The Viet Minh had been very strong, and ah, the Americans were seen really as a foreign ah occupying force. Ahm, the, everything that they brought in was awful to the people. I mean they were allowed to farm on their lands until the American weaponry came. Ah. The corruption that was caused. You couldn't get any...

Sorry, can we cut? The noise, the sound...

Tell me about what the local people thought of the Saigon government.

Well, Saigon government was not at all popular in the area where, where I worked. They brought in really their presence meant that there was a, was war. Ahm. They, the devastation that was caused ah was, was tremendous to the people and then, of course, the corruption. Everything that they, was brought along by the Americans was such that ah the brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles of people were imprisoned.

Ahm. The black market existed to such an extent that, you know, the prices were inflated. People, the corruption was great. The Americans might give medical equipment to the hospital, but it immediately was taken out of the hospital and in order to get penicillin you'd have to go on the street and buy it, and bribe officials. Ah. So, nobody had respect. Even if you wanted to support the South Vietnamese government, they didn't respect it.

Ahm. And, the Vietnamese had a lot of pride, ah. There was racial ahm and uh cultural pride in, in themselves. And, so, what, what the American presence and what the Saigon government was doing was really some ah, quite abhorrent to, to the people themselves.

Are you saying then people in the village didn't see the Saigon government, that it was a Vietnamese government? Can you can you tell me about that?

No, the people didn't really view the Saigon government as a Vietnamese government. I mean they, they saw the, they saw the Saigon officials as people that were really victims of the war. They had to, perhaps, do what the Americans wanted them to do in order to survive. But, their heart often wasn't in it.

And, they, and even these corrupt officials would, would say that to you themselves. I remember some very high officials in Quang Ngai even confessing, because we spoke Vietnamese, right in front of their American advisors, they would say in Vietnamese. "Boy, I can't wait until these people go home and we can begin to establish our own government, our own way of life as it used to be."

And, so, ah, the liberation forces ah had a, control of almost all the area around the city of Quang Ngai. It was as if there was just this little center that, where the Americans were and the, you know, few government buildings that remained within the government control the whole time that I was there from '71 to '73, but in our back yard, ahm, at night the PRG officials, people, came in quite freely.

And, certainly, for instance you'd go down ah out of the town a few miles and we'd be there visiting a, a patient. Ah. We did a, social work follow up on some of our patients, tried to get them money to get re-established in their life and it'd get to be about 3:30, four o'clock, and people would say, you know, it's getting late in the afternoon. You better go home because the government's going to change and literally the ah Saigon government closed up and went home and ah the PRG people would come in, help the people, ah, maybe even work at night. You know, helping to ah sift the rice or put it in, in bags, talk to the people, bring them movies ahm or just visit.

They could, because, of course, the PRG in the area were not, as people thought, North Vietnamese that had come south, but were really the ah the people themselves. The brothers and sisters of the, of the people in the hamlet. The Americans were fooled. I mean, they, really, the whole time we were there, they were afraid to go out of the town.

When they traveled, they traveled, you know, with all of their visible role as a military people and with their weaponry and they traveled in jeeps. Only on the, on the highway they they couldn't get off the road and they didn't speak the language, but they were afraid to, to talk with the people, and so they were were protected and they were quite ignorant.

One of my favorite stories was about...little kids used to hang around in front of the American compound and the GI's would come out or, or the officials to the police advisors and they'd goof around with these kids and give em a little candy and they'd say “Oh these kids are really friendly, they just love us, and the kids have taught me to count to five. Dai, dah, doh, quok, me." Which means overthrow the American imperialists, instead of one, two, three, four, five as they thought they were learning in Vietnamese.

It was typical of the irony of the Vietnamese. You know, even the kids they're finding a way to express their hostility to, to these ah big, ah friendly Americans. Ahm. Their, their subtle way of getting, getting back at them. But, when, when we'd travel out into areas ah to visit patients we often traveled into areas ah that were controlled by the PRG.

And, in fact, it was much more pleasant in many ways to go out there because in the town of Quang Ngai itself, being so close to, to My Lai there was tremendous hatred for Americans and they would call me, as a woman, "Bah Me," which means Mrs. America, and ah, if I went into a refugee camp, til the children knew who I was or the older people, there were rocks thrown at us. There was this constant taunting, taunting, taunting, ah, "go home, go home, Mrs. America," and ah, I didn't like it.

I mean, it was a very, you'd sort of stiffen your back up because you were ah feel that a rock might be thrown at you and there was all of this hatred that you, that you felt for, partially, because we were the ones that were exposed. We were the ones that went out into the camps because the American officials, uh didn't do ah that.

But, if you went into the liberated area, somebody would explain to the children, look these are ahm Americans that are here to help the Vietnamese people. And, you know, they're treating people regardless of their political preference, their religious ideology or whatever and they're friends. These are, are, are people that we, that we really ah want to be kind to.

And, you see the kids. They looked healthier. They uh were treated often. You know, there was a whole network of medical clinics. The PRG, in fact, offered very good services to the people as far as the education and medical care in the ah areas that they, that they controlled. So, the people were friendly. It was really pleasant.

And, you had the less, uh awful signs of the American presence. There was less barbed wire. Ahm. Ah. People were able occasionally to, to actually be, not in their own homes, but perhaps, in some kind of simple structure that they were able to, to build, and so there was a real pleasantness to, to life in these areas.

You were telling me before about the prisoners. I wonder if you could tell me about some of the prisoners and how they affected you and what you thought of them.

Well, I think. I, you know, I remember back when I was going to Vietnam as to what I thought I would be seeing if I was treating uh, prisoners and I guess most of the people in the United States when I went to Vietnam were under the impression that ah the people that were being held in prisons were sort of prisoners of war.

And, when I went into the prisons (chuckles) in Quang Ngai most of the prisoners were women, ah, and ah, they, were...little babies in the prison with mothers, there were pregnant women that were giving birth ah in, in the hospital. There twelve year old children that were in prison. There were 70-year-old men and women, you know, grandparents, that were in the prison. Monks, high school, lot of high school kids. Ahm. This whole spectrum of the population. I think one of the things that was ah a problem for a foreign government coming in and trying to control an area where it was not popular was figuring out who, who was against the government.

So, their way of solving it seemed to be to round up groups of people randomly and interrogate them. So, if you had a relative that went north in 1954, you would be brought into the prison and interrogated. Ahm. If you were ah a boy of twelve, I remember carrying two vials of penicillin instead of one, you would be brought in because, in fact, you might be going to sell some of that ah to a PRG ah contr--into somebody that had a connection with the PRG. Ah. If you were a woman that refused to refugee because you wanted to stay with your heavy metal treadle sewing machine, couldn't pick it up and carry it, you might be suspected of wanting to stay in that area for ahm political reasons rather than very practical reasons, as that this is your life's savings and you're not going to stay, leave it there for somebody to come in and steal.

Ah. The, most of the, well, of all the prisoners that we saw, the majority were political prisoners and most of them were women. If you were a man after the age of eighteen, you had to carry a very formal paper, say, you know, an ID Card saying you were either in the military, or in fact, you've been deferred for what reason and these papers, and Vietnamese love paperwork and the Americans helped make ah ID Cards for the Vietnamese. So, it was very clear where the men ah were.

But, with the Viet--with the women they couldn't be quite ah as explicit as to whether or not they, they're sympathies were with, the Sai--South Vietnamese government or, or with the PRG. So, they would bring these women in and use the electrical torture and ah try to get some leads out of them as to ah what they were really...about.

(talking in background) I think we're there aren't we?