Primary Source Analysis: Vietnam name:

Directions: Annotate as you examine the documents. Then, answer the questions about the documents at the end.

Document A: 1972, Activists meet in the Nam Can forest, wearing masks to hide their identities from one another in case of capture and

interrogation.

Document B: A Viet Cong guerrilla stands guard in the Mekong Delta. "You could find women like her almost everywhere during the war," said the photographer. "She was only 24 years old but had been widowed twice.”

Document C: 1970, A guerrilla in the Mekong Delta paddles through a mangrove forest defoliated by Agent Orange. The Americans denuded the landscape with chemicals to deny cover to the Viet Cong.

Document D: Children fleeing from a napalm attack.

Document E: Date unknown, Viet Cong meet the enemy face-to-face, most likely in the Mekong Delta or Plain of Reeds. This rare image shows both sides in combat, ARVN soldiers at the top and Viet Cong in the foreground. The VC have flanked the enemy at left and right, which likely meant the ARVN unit was wiped out.

Document F: March 1965 hovering U.S. Army helicopters pour machine gun fire into a tree line to cover the advance of South Vietnamese ground troops in an attack on a Viet Cong camp

18 miles north of Tay Ninh, northwest of Saigon near the Cambodian border, in Vietnam

Document G: Sept. 15, 1970, A victim of American bombing, ethnic Cambodian guerrilla Danh Son Huol is carried to an improvised operating room in a mangrove swamp on the Ca Mau Peninsula. 

Document H: April 30, 1975, Combat boots litter the road on the outskirts of Saigon, abandoned by ARVN soldiers who shed their uniforms to hide their status. "I'll never forget the shoes and the loud 'thump, thump, thump' sound as we drove over them," recalled the photographer. "Decades of war were over and we finally had peace."

Document I: May 1975, Elders from North and South embrace, having lived to see Vietnam reunited and unoccupied by foreign powers.

Document J: Philadelphia protest against the Vietnam War (Photograph courtesy of Julia Ryan)

Document K: American soldiers in Vietnam

Document L: June 15, 1967 American infantrymen crowd into a mud-filled bomb crater and

look up at tall jungle trees seeking out Viet Cong snipers firing at them during a battle in Phuoc Vinh, north-Northeast of Saigon in Vietnam's War Zone D.

Primary Source Analysis

Compare and Contrast: For each set of documents below, compare/contrast the events in the photos.

Role of Women: Docs.

A & B

Chemical Warfare: Docs.

C & D

Military Success: Docs.

E, F, & G

Peace: Docs. H, I, & J

Soldiers at War: Docs. K

& L

Based on the documents, what was the outcome of the Vietnam War on the Vietnamese and on Americans?