Jane Fonda aka “Hanoi Jane”
Jane Fonda visited Vietnam, traveling to Hanoi in July 1972 to witness firsthand the bombing damage to the dikes. After touring and photographing dike systems in North Vietnam, she said the United States had been intentionally targeting the dike system along the Red River.
Fonda made radio broadcasts on Hanoi Radio throughout her two-week tour, commenting on her visits to villages, hospitals, schools, and factories damaged in the war and denouncing U.S. military policy in Vietnam.
My brother, a career Air Force NCO with multiple tours in Vietnam during the war told me years ago he remembered Jane Fonda’s broadcasts. To put it mildly, he was not impressed.
Fonda has defended her decision to travel to North Vietnam and her radio broadcasts. During the course of her visit, Fonda visited American prisoners of war (POWs), and brought back messages from them to their families. When stories of torture of returning POWs were later being publicized by the Nixon administration, Fonda called the returning POWs “hypocrites and liars and pawns”, adding about the prisoners she visited, “These were not men who had been tortured. These were not men who had been starved. These were not men who had been brainwashed.” She said, “I’m quite sure that there were incidents of torture, but the pilots who were saying it was the policy of the Vietnamese and that it was systematic, I believe that’s a lie.”
In 2000 Fonda said, “I will go to my grave regretting the photograph of me in an anti-aircraft carrier, which looks like I was trying to shoot at American planes. It hurt so many soldiers. It galvanized such hostility. It was the most horrible thing I could possibly have done. It was just thoughtless.”
Maybe so but I am not buying it. She will always be “Hanoi Jane” and a traitor to me.
