Viewing articles tagged '1968'

FULRO, 1964–1992 On the night of September 19, 1964, the strike forces of four American-trained camps in Darlac and Quang Duc rose against their Vietnamese officers and marched on Buon Ma Thuot, and a movement announced itself: the United Front for the Struggle of the Oppressed Races, FULRO. It was made by the men of BAJARAKA, released from Diem’s prisons seven... Explainer 621 views Read More The men of FULRO FULRO is usually told as the story of one man. It was never only his. This is a register of the others we can name — the Cham officer who invented the word for what we were supposed to be, the two men called Adrong whom the record keeps confusing, the interpreter who funded a liberation front out of an American payroll, the commander who walked... Reference 101 views Read More Y Bham Enuol A Rhade official from Buon Ale-A who led both of our movements, spent more than five years in the prisons of the government he was petitioning, put our own name for ourselves into the official record, was held under guard by his own allies for the last six years of his life, and walked out of the French Embassy in Phnom Penh on April 20, 1975, i... Spotlight 134 views Read More Y Bham Enuol: Phnom Penh, the captivity and the death At the end of 1968, days before he was to sign a settlement with Saigon, FULRO men and Cambodian officers took his headquarters and moved him to Phnom Penh. He was held there for six years, still called president by the fighters in the forest and still signing papers for them. On April 20, 1975 he walked out of the French Embassy at the head of... Explainer 188 views Read More Paul Nưr and Nay Luett: the ministry years Two men who tried the other route. Both were BAJARAKA founders, both went to prison for it under Diem, and both then took office inside the government that had jailed them — one as a province administrator who became the first highlander in a Saigon cabinet, one as the minister who held that ministry to the last week of the Republic. Both died i... Spotlight 160 views Read More Mike Force, SOG and the special operations war From 1964 the Americans stopped asking our men to guard their own villages and started asking them to go wherever the war was worst. They went: in the Mobile Strike Forces, the Mike Forces, that were flown in to camps under siege, and in the reconnaissance teams and raiding companies of MACV-SOG that crossed into Laos and Cambodia. The Americans... Explainer 336 views Read More The missions and the doctors In May 1972, with Kontum under siege, the American doctor who ran the highland hospital there put half of it on helicopters and flew out. Before she went she handed the hospital over to Sister Gabriel, her most experienced Montagnard nurse. Earlier in the fighting, more than thirty of our staff and patients had lain on top of her in a human blan... Explainer 96 views Read More Tet 1968 in the highlands The American field force that held the highlands wrote its own verdict on Tet four pages after it counted the dead: “Heaviest attacks were launched initially” at “the highlands population centers of Kontum and Ban Me Thuot.” The first and hardest blows of the 1968 offensive in the whole of II Corps fell on two of our market towns. Then the same... Explainer 128 views Read More