Interviewer: What was the protest like? And in 1966 when your house was bombed, how did your husband and children die?
Nguyen Thi Chiem: In 1966...
Interviewer: Please tell us how your husband was arrested.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: In 1956 in my village there was the headman named Chac who was the most brutal of all.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: He would not be pleased if he did not see blood during a certain day.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: He shot and killed the inhabitants.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: For this reason, the inhabitants really hated him and wanted to kill him in order to regain their rights to life in the village of Phu Tuc.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Their hatred made the inhabitants to want to kill Chac, the headman.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: And there was a policeman named Tiep who was also most brutal.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Therefore, his soldiers agreed to have him killed.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: In 1960, Mr. Toan, a soldier, shot Policeman Tiep to express his sympathy for the local inhabitants.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: We were supportive of the soldiers and their action.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Because we were so outraged, we had to fight back harder and harder in order to avoid enslavement and death to innocent people, which were the sources of our outrage.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: By 1961, for all the reasons stated, I participated in the struggle.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: I fought because of the right to life and for democracy.
Interviewer: Please begin now.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: In 1956, village headman Chac arrested my husband and had him taken away.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: I just gave birth to my child then and did not have anything to eat for two days.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: The villagers carried my baby up there to show them that my husband had indeed gone to fetch a midwife to help me in my childbirth and so there was no reason for them to arrest him.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: So village headman Chac said: "I don't care.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: I’ll choke this baby to death too!" This was the reason for the outrage.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: He exiled my husband to Chi Hoa prison where he remained for a year and a half.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: After that they sent him to the district jail of Chum Ruot for six months before he was finally released.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: This was the reason for our outrage.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: I have hot blood.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: This was because we were just innocent people who had not done anything wrong at all.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: And yet my husband was arrested and tortured until he became injured.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: They broke his arms.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: As a result, he could not do anything to find food to feed his children at all.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: It was extremely hard for us.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: We were continually very hungry.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Therefore, my children also had to put up with a lot of hardship.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: My outrage caused me to stand up.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: On the day of the uprising I stood up to demand the basic democratic rights of the people.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: There was a soldier named Con who realized that the inhabitants were doing the right thing and supported the people.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Therefore, he stood up, captured guns and fought them.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: After the fighting was over, the enemy shelled us from Dong Tam, killing one of my children.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: In May 1966, they dropped bombs and killed another of my children.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: By the beginning of 1967 my husband was killed when they bombed the village.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: They died at different times and not all at once.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: In 1968 the Americans conducted a search and destroy operation into this area and shot and killed another of my children.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: For this reason, we were really outraged.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Therefore, as we were told by the soldiers, the women all over the world supported us.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: While we were struggling, we were roughed up.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: But there were some soldiers who told them that they should not rough us up.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: We heard that women in other countries in the world also supported the Vietnamese women and told the regime not to suppress us.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: This news encouraged us and so we stood up and fought for our rights.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Before that, I did not participate in any political activities at all.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: This was because I had so many children to take care of.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: And then I had to spend the whole day working and transplanting rice.
Interviewer: Please continue.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: In 1956 my husband went to fetch a midwife for me.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: The soldiers under the command of Village Headman Chac arrested my husband and took him into the military post, beating him up and saying that he was trying to get in touch with the Viet Cong.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: The villagers went up there and asked for mercy, but to no avail.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Finally, two days later, I took my newborn baby to the military post and asked for my husband's release.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: I said that my husband was really going to fetch a midwife and that it was clear that I had given birth to my baby two days previously.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: But Headman Chac said that he didn't care whether I had just given birth to my baby or not.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: He tortured my husband and then sent him that night to Ben Tre.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: From there my husband was taken to Chi Hoa prison where he remained for a year and a half.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: After that they sent my husband to the district jail of Chum Ruot for another half a year.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: So my husband was imprisoned for two years.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: During this period life at home was extremely difficult because of the young children.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: When my husband came back, one of his arms was completely paralyzed.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Because of my love for my husband I had to put up with all this just because he had gone to fetch a midwife for me, my outrage increased.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: If my children survived and grew up, they would certainly have been arrested and tortured.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Ngo Dinh Diem would certainly have them arrested and tortured.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: And so I was really outraged.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: I had to stand up and participate in the uprising with the hope that my husband and children would escape enslavement.
Interviewer: Under what circumstances did your husband and children die?
Nguyen Thi Chiem: One of my children was killed when they sent in artillery shells from the Quynh Duc firebase.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: This was in 1968.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Two months later, they sent in artillery shells again, and again another child was killed.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: A month and 10 days later, they dropped the bombs and killed my husband and another child.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Then the following year, another child was killed.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: So four members of my family were killed by American bombs and shells.
Interviewer: What did you think of Diem when he first came to power? And eventually what did you think of him?
Nguyen Thi Chiem: When Diem came into power he issued Law Code no.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: 10/59.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: According to this law code, if anybody traveled illegally at night – for example, if you went out at night to fish without a lamp or a torch – then they would guillotine you.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: At that time, whether you participated in revolutionary activities or not, you would get killed anyway.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Since it did not matter to them whether you participated in revolutionary activities or not, the population became really outraged.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: They did not make any distinction between the Viet Cong and the people.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Therefore, there were many innocent people killed at that time.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: They shot and killed people and herded everybody into the agrovilles.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: They forced people to dismantle their homes and brought them into the agrovilles.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: The graves were turned over and houses were newly constructed on these grave sites.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Therefore, the people were afraid that, by entering the agrovilles, they were putting themselves under enslavement.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: You did not know when you would get killed.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Ngo Dinh Diem announced at the time that the life and death of the people were in his hands.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Therefore, everybody was really afraid to live in the agroville.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: They would rather die in the struggle for their rights to life and to democracy.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: The demand was for peace and independence and not anything excessive.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Therefore, if Ngo Dinh Diem did not repress the population, there would never have been the general uprising at that time.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: But the situation was really out of hand at that time already.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Innocent people were arrested and killed.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Anybody who had a relative who had regrouped to the north was blacklisted and had to be taken to the military posts and the village administrative offices at night to sleep.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Then, in the middle of the night, they would take these people to the riverside and shot and killed them.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: This was the reason why innocent people became so outraged and were forced to stand up.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: It did not matter whether you participated in revolutionary activities or not.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: They would kill you anyway.
Nguyen Thi Chiem: Hence, everybody supported the revolution.