The Village of Ben Suc - Nation Building

"Throughout the first week, work teams from South Vietnam's profusion of patriotic groups for 'nation building' arrived at the camp, wearing a wide variety of uniforms. The first to come were five locally recruited girls in their late teens and early twenties, at least three of them strikingly beautiful, who wore conical straw hats and long, flowing, spotlessly white ao dai--the traditional women's dress in Vietnam, which consists of wide, ballooning trousers under a long dresslike garment split up the sides to the waist. The girls' job was to help the medical teams by searching through the camp for those in need of medical attention. They were doing this kind of work for the first time and were afraid to approach the villagers directly. For the most part, these young girls--shy, beautiful, and useless--simply clung tightly to their clipboards and kept their eyes trained properly in the air in front of them as they bravely sailed down the dusty aisles between the rows of squatting villagers." (p116)

"Next to arrive was … a troop of ARVN women, who were clad in tight-fitting Army-green trousers, jackets covered with pockets, and small, high-heeled black leather boots. … Wholly preoccupied with chattering to each other in low, nervous voices as they made their first appearance, they seemed ready, as a group, to giggle at the entire universe. When I asked a little knot of four of them, through an interpreter, what their job at the camp would be, they all broke into giggles and looked desperately at each other for someone to answer me. Finally, one girl replied, 'We don't know yet. We're here to help the refugees.' The giggling that followed precluded and further conversations." (p116)

"Later, reading a report put out by the American Advisors in the 32nd Division Tactical Area, which described 'the relocation of civilians' as 'an outstanding success,' I read that the ARVN women who were referred to as 'social workers,' were 'assisting in the necessary administration required in processing the refugees and giving adult hygiene and sanitation classes,' and also 'taking care of children and looking after anyone requiring medical care.'" (p116)

"After a week in the camp, the children began to show signs of a universally lamented transformation that seems to occur inevitably whenever Vietnamese children are brought into frequent contact with Americans. At first, the G.I.s, charmed by the shyness and reserve of the Vietnamese children and wanting to be friendly, offer pieces of candy or gum. Perhaps the children accept and polity offer thanks, but the next time there is less hesitation, and after several times the children, for from hesitating, demand the handouts. (p 117)

[Outside the camp, the children of the ARVN soldiers already storm Americans in groups, yelling 'Ok! Ok! Ok!, demanding candy, and shouting 'Cheap Charlie!' if they don't get it. Inside the camp, the villager's children are just learning to say 'Ok' and hold out their hands. As in America when we watch our children inundated with cheap thrills and purposeless lives, I suppose it is the parents' fault for not bringing their children up correctly]

"Another more or less inevitable development was the hasty construction just outside the camp, by local Vietnamese, of a whole row of little stands selling beer and soft drinks to Vietnamese at high prices and to Americans at exorbitant prices. When an American objected to paying seventy-five piastres (about fifty-five cents) for a soft drink, the venders, like the prostitutes, the beggars, and the children when they met resistance, would call out, 'Cheap Charlie!' and 'You Number Ten!'" (p118)