Jefferson, Harold
Harold Jefferson: Vietnam War
Born: January 29, 1948, Michigan
Interviewed: November 15, 2002
Interviewer: Ruby Annette Robertson
Q: What war were you drafted in?
A: Vietnam.
Q: Can you tell me on the day that you were drafted what happened?
A: I was devastated. I thought the world had came to an end for me.
Q: Why?
A: Being drafted into the military.
Q: How old were you?
A: Eighteen.
Q: Did you have a lot of plans before you got drafted that got interrupted?
A: Of course. College.
Q: When you got drafted, how did you feel? Emotionally? What did it do to you?
A: I felt kidnapped and raped. Bitter. Total bitterness.
Q: Towards who?
A: The United States of America. That’s who drafted me. Toward anyone connected with having the power to draft me.
Q: How were your family affected by this?
A: Upset, as most families were in that day.
Q: So you were in high school at this time?
A: Yea.
Q: Who was the president at that time when you were drafted?
A: Who was the man in the president’s office? Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Q: What was he like?
A: He was a man for filling another man’s position. He wasn’t really a president.
Q: What do you mean by that?
A: He was president when Kennedy got killed. And then he became president.
Q: So in your opinion, at the time you were called to go to war, he didn’t have good judgment at that time?
A: Sure. And you must remember, the United States was not at war. We intervened in someone else’s war.
Q: So we weren’t really involved in anything. We were kind of neutral at that time?
A: No, we were just trying to get into somebody else’s business. Went to another person’s country to supposedly aid them.
Q: What country?
A. Vietnam.
Q: What nationality were they actually? Who were we dealing with?
A: The South Vietnam were non-communist. North Vietnam was communist. We went to aid South Vietnam, supposedly. I disagree with that to this day.
Q: To aid them? What exactly does “aid them” mean?
A: Help them, support them, whatever they were doing to fight the North Vietnamese.
Q: Do you remember what they were fighting about?
A: Yes.
Q: What?
A: The North Vietnamese wanted to take over the whole country and make it communist. South Vietnamese didn’t want that.
Q: I’m trying to understand why were there or what they were fighting for before that.
A: We were there to make other folks rich, that’s why. There were factories and businesses taking part, so we were making money for them being over there.
Q: What was basic training like?
A: Basic training was training a man to get him in shape to fight in a war or to do military combat.
Q: Do you know a lot about basic training today? Is it the same, or was it more crucial, or what’s different about it?
A: It’s probably the same. It’s probably better now. You don’t have all the hard-core stuff. It’s a new thing now.
Q: So in your opinion, as far as racism in the military, what was that like when you were there?
A: Racism was everywhere, so it was in the military also.
Q: Give me details? Were you involved in any type of racial acts or did you see any?
A: You could feel the difference. They were catering to one creative color because, you know, it’s there. Which blacks and Hispanics and anything else falls short to the white man.
Q: So there was no actual personal acts toward you or anybody you saw? It was just in general as far as blacks and Hispanics were concerned?
A: Correct. Anything personal toward me, I will take care of myself. I was already mad, so surely they weren’t going to make me madder. It could have happened, but it just didn’t.
Q: So give me a little insight on what actually happened in the war when you went out for battle. Tell me a little bit about what you saw and what you remember?
A: Well, in any war zone, there is casualties. There is fighting. There is stress. . . .
Q: But what did you actually see?
A: People being killed everyday. Basically, physically 12 hours a day you’re fighting – off and on all day. It’s constantly fighting all the time. Then you have moments of let up where there’s no fighting, that’s just the mind thing they play with you because you’re in their country and they play these games with your mind. To see how strong you are – see how intelligent you are.
Q: Who played games with your mind?
A: The enemy.
Q: So give me a little insight about the war and what you saw?
A: Fighting everyday. Trying to survive 24 hours a day. Not trying – you’ve got to. You have to psych yourself out – “I’ve got to make it this next hour” before the hour gets there.
Q: Were you scared?
A: Not really. You get scared during a fight.
Q: In the midst of combat?
A: When you’re fighting you get scared. Because you don’t know if it’s your time. Since we don’t know our own time, you can get scared in a firefight – that’s what it’s called.
Q: Firefight?
A: Yes. You’re fighting the enemy and he’s fighting you back? Then the Vietnam war was so different because you had to fight kids, villages, adults.
Q: So you all actually killed kids?
A: No. They killed kids. I was just there.
Q: So you never killed anybody?
A: I did whatever the gun did, wherever it was aimed.
Q: So in your training, were you taught a certain way to think, or psychologically how did they train you to get through this?
A: They taught you their way of thinking – military. The regular military thing of you are a military soldier, you are in the army, you are whatever it takes to – once you get in a war zone, you have to come up with some things of your own to survive or you’ll die.
Q: So, we were talking about casualties. Did you have to help rescue anybody? Were there rescues? Or was everybody for themselves?
A: Yes, close as you are to me right now. There’s somebody in between us and he gets hit and I can’t panic because he got shot or wounded by the enemy. There’s nothing you can do but try to hold him down so he’ll be safe from the next thing. Then you’ll see about him later. You have no time to tend to his wounds or whatever, because it may happen to you.
Q: And you were in situations like that?
A: Daily.
Q: Were you injured?
A: Thank God, no.
Q: So, in your opinion, as far as the war was concerned, what did you think about the president at that time, as far as his decision in drafting you?
A: I basically gave you my opinion. But the president was only working for the people that were behind the president.
Q: Which was?
A: Whoever they are that send us off to war. To make money for them or others.
Q: So you feel that the war was about money?
A: Anybody who went to Vietnam knows the war was about money.
Q: So are you bitter about this?
A: Yes. Even today. That we were manipulated, used, slaves again – of the military.
Q: When the war died down, what exactly happened? How did they do that? When they called the war off, how did they notify you and when did you get discharged?
A: I got discharged 11/28/1969. The war was over in the 70s. I can’t remember exactly what year. 74 or 75. So, it’s like – excuse the term – “new meat.” Somebody goes in this time, then they come back – if they come back – and ship some more in. Just keep doing that till everybody’s had a chance to go. As far as Uncle Sam and the government is concerned. I came home bitter – totally bitter.
Q: When you got home, what was the economy like? Were the prices up? Or could you tell the difference after war as far as the community and things like that?
A: The only thing I can really tell – housing went up some – housing was bitter, so it went up. And gas was up about 5%.
Q: So there had been some, to a certain degree, a little prosperity in the community?
A: A little?
Q: In the cities? Was it more?
A: Major prosperity.
Q: In that aspect, in you coming back from war, being in combat in Vietnam, to sum up this interview, as far as you’re concerned, what do you feel that the war was about and as far as the president was concerned, how do you think that he should have handled it?
A: First thing, there was nothing the president could do. He’s just in a position, and he’s working for someone – we do not know. He’s not working for the people. He’s elected, supposedly, by the people. But all that’s just a front. We should have never been in Vietnam anyway. The United States was not at war. We decided to go get in a war that didn’t concern us. As Kennedy once had said, why should we help Vietnam? They’ve been fighting this war 300 to 400 years? So what does 15 years from the United States render? What does that aid? Then they fought the war after we left, so what’s the difference.
Q: Which was war that?
A: The Vietnam war – it went on after we pulled out. That’s why they are over here. See, Americans don’t understand that.
Q: What is that?
A: We go fight a war for 20 years almost, or 15, and actually, the South lost, and came over here to the United States. We shouldn’t have never went. If that was going to be the case, then, we should have just told them, well, you all get on a boat or a plane and come on over to America. Because that’s exactly what we did in the long run.
Q: So you basically paved the way for them to get here, is what you’re saying?
A: No, all the bloodshed from Americans in Vietnam was total loss. If we pulled out the Vietnam war, and then a year or two years later, the South Vietnamese and any other Vietnamese come to the United States, why did we ever go to the Vietnam anyway? It was all in vain. Bloodshed for nothing. Money wasted. It wasn’t money wasted, because people got rich behind it. You’ve got companies that got totally – I mean people made trillions. Companies made trillions of dollars.
Q: What companies do you remember that . . .
A: Any company that Uncle Sam was using – if he was using a toothpick or Kleenex company – hot sauce, M&Ms, toilet tissue, potatoes – you know, the potato people made a lot of money with Uncle Sam. Meat. Whoever sold them cattle.
Q: Well, everything pretty much went up after the war.
A: As in most wars.
Q: What about jobs after the war? Were they hard to find?
A: What jobs?
Q: There were no jobs available after the wear?
A: Yea, if you come home and find an opening. Uncle Sam, he didn’t try to make sure we had them when we got back.
Q: So there was no employment for the troops after the war?
A: Not from the government. Out of the kindness of somebody’s heart that needed someone to work, yea. This is a war you really didn’t know too much about yourself, except for it’s history. So, didn’t too many people want to hire a Vietnam vet if he returned. Especially if he didn’t have a college education. That might would have helped. Now there was a lot of us got hired, but there was a lot of folks didn’t want to hire us. You still had the protests going on when I came back because we were still in Vietnam. They were protesting the war so they weren’t that glad to see us. Only your friends and relatives. The people in general, they were like, so what, you’re back – you killed all them people over there.
Q: So the people were bitter about the war as well, just as well as you were unhappy about going?
A: True. There you go. You had people protesting the United States involvement in the Vietnam war, and we were forced to go. It was either go or go to jail.
Q: So during the protests, I understand from the history now that I’m reading, there were riots and things like that. Did you see any of that?
A: No, I was in Vietnam.
Q: After? You said there were protests. Were there any riots?
A: No, by that time - I lived in Oklahoma City, and there wasn’t too much demonstration here. The demonstrations were done in major cities, probably like Los Angeles, California, Chicago, New York, all the big places. Washington, D.C.
Q: So, Mr. Jefferson, now that you have expressed your opinion and frustrations about the Vietnam war, emotionally, do you suffer today any type of psychological trauma?
A: Hell, yes.
Q: Can you explain that?
A: Flashbacks. You know, you try to sleep at night or something, and you dream about it, or – just flashbacks. Maybe a strong incident – something that happened real strong, never bothered you before, and then it comes up. You remember a day that a group of people got killed, or one of your friends got killed, or something happened real bad and. . . but I don’t have to be asleep. I can be driving or walking or watching TV and it will hit you.
Q: I’m going to go back to the war a little bit. Do you remember anybody suffering from any type of serious diseases at that time?
A: No, cause we didn’t get them at that time. I mean, we got them – we were consuming them without knowing that we were. So it’s not like – man, I’ve got Agent Orange. How do you know? I can feel it. We didn’t even know Agent Orange was there, or we wouldn’t have Agent Orange – I wouldn’t have.
Q: Was that one of them?
A: Whatever – they used different stuff, ah, just different things. I can’t think of all the chemicals that was used.
Q. So there were some diseases and things like that. . .
A: The country is diseased. You’re not in America, now. You’re in a foreign country.
Q: So, in conclusion, your opinion, do you feel that wars are still continuously going on about the same and for the same purposes, or, in your opinion, has things changed?
A: They’re the same. The United States makes wars. We bombing people right now that had nothing to do with anything. It’s cause we’re looking for a group of men.
Q: Mr. Jefferson, I want to thank you for your time and your effort in supporting Rose State College. This is Annette Robertson.
