February 10th, 1970
Deep in the forests between Saigon and Cambodia.
In Vietnam, it’s believed that if you died
Far away from your loved ones,
far away from home,
You were cursed
To aimlessly wander the land in purgatory.
Tormenting everyone that’s forgotten you.
Blocked from passing on
into the spirit world,
to finally stop, and sleep.
Wandering Souls Tape: Hai ! Hai !
Viet Cong Soldier 1: ‘Did you hear that?’
VC Soldier 2: ‘It’s everywhere! All around us!’
Unless you were found,
whatever that was left of you that remained recognizable,
Wandering Souls Tape: “Daddy! Daddy! Come home with me, come home. Daddy! Daddy!”
Wandering Souls Tape: “Hai ! Who is that? Who is calling me? My daughter? My wife?”
VC Soldier 1: ‘Trời Ơi’
Wandering Souls Tape: “Your Father is back home with you, my daughter
Your Husband is back home with you, my wife.
But my body is gone.”
And brought back to your family
for a traditional burial
in your homeland.
In Vietnam, ‘homeland’, and ‘water’ are collective experiences so connected
that they share the same word – ‘nước’.
Water is at the heart of its creation myth, a story that people live alongside still today.
Vietnam’s landforms are sculpted by its monsoon seasons,
Its coastline is shaped by sea level rise,
Its rivers support its agrarian economy
and connect its trade routes.
But a collective self conception bonded to something as elementally mercurial and unstable as water,
Lạc Long Quân Dragon (Nguy?n Trãi quote)- “Like the ocean which supports a ship but can also overturn it”
Encourages an imagination of itself that perpetually evades arriving at any resolution.
Solidifying into any definition.
Properties that will have nothing
to do with you and still claim you
Or that you might
claim as your own.
Lạc Long Quân Dragon (Nguy?n Trãi quote)- “so the people can support the throne or sink it.”
Australian (A): (off panel) Oi, there’s this cave so big it has its own clouds.
I don’t know if they’re my own beliefs,
or something I picked up,
or a script I inherited,
A: I got a suit tailored, cheap as chips. Do you wear Pjs? Silk pjs?
Matt (M): Geez, how could you even say that? What’s the matter with you?
but I don’t need to question
them to claim them as my own.
A : It’s just a hop, skip and a jump from here, it’s good value. What are you afraid of?
M: I’m not afraid. Maybe a bit afraid of crossing the road…
They vibrate in my skull, carving well-worn paths each time they’re rehearsed
A: Maaate, I could show you ‘round!
And take a look. I don’t even know Vietnamese
For the opportunity to slip out through my teeth,
turning into waves through the air.
M: There’s no way I’m picking out window seats for a flight back to exactly where my folks sacrificed everything to leave, with two babies in their arms and some jewelry down their pants.
MUM: What a slap in the face! For you, it’s a holiday, but –
It doesn’t sound like me.
I recognise it still, or recognise
It’s something I have to protect
A: Yeah but, for you, it’s your homeland. Don’t y’wanna go back to the mother country?
What my parents would want.
They speak straight through me
MUM: ‘Back’ is not the direction we’re going, no.
I’m not unhappy where I am, trời ơi…
A: Oi, I’m from here mate. I’ll always call Australia home, I’m settled.
M: …I…
It didn’t matter if I couldn’t trust
what or who I was hearing. Or if I tried
ignoring it, avoiding it, running from it.
MUM: Thôi không muốn nói chuyện nữa. Don’t you like it in Australia?
M: …I…
Being confronted my inner voice
let loose from my head and heart
was enough to rattle through me
A: I reckon you’re just afraid they won’t see you as Vietnamese
and then you’ll won’t have anywhere to go.
A: Well big whoop.
They’re gonna see straight through ya soon as they give ya a quick once-over.
‘n guess what? They’re not wrong.
But you’ll be gone again soon ‘nuff.
When I moved to the United States, mum
acted like she’d never see me again.
Mum: Will you come back home?
And said things I’d never heard before.
Mum: “Love you Matt”
To placate the wandering souls from
dragging misfortune into their homes,
the Vietnamese would place offerings
at the foot of their front doors.
Wandering Souls Day is celebrated every
year to honor ancestors and mothers.
The Buddhist festival grew from the story
of how Mục-kiền-liên rescued his mother.
PHONE: “your call could not be connected.
Please check the number
and try again”
When Mục-kiền-liên found his
mother was starving in Hell,
he smuggled bowls of rice to her.
Each time he brought the rice to her
mouth, it would burst into flames.
The Buddha advised that Mục-kiền-liên could free his
mother and other wandering souls from their torment
by gathering devotees to pray and make offerings.
Me: Hello? Hellooooo…?
Mum: WHO IS THAT, WHO IS CALLING ME?
Me: Má? Ma? MA!
Mum: MM. OOH, ‘THEW OI ‘THEW, Cái gì? WHAT’S THE MATTER?
Me: NOTHING, I’M JUST CALLING – !
On Wandering Souls Day, wooden sticks and
gongs would be struck to invite tortured spirits
to offerings of rice, fruit, sweets, alcohol.
MUM: What time is it in NY? Are you lonely in the US?
Do you miss us? How are your old friends?
Have you eaten rice yet? Are you strong, no? Mập mập? Do you need money?
The ancient burial of servants, wives and tools with the deceased had evolved into the burning of symbolic votive paper replicas, to pass over possessions for the deceased’s benefit into their next life.
Gold gilded replica bamboo paper money would be burnt to
settle the deceased’s moral debts or bribe away their sins.
MUM: NO NO DON’T SEND ANYTHING! DON’T WORRY ABOUT US, SAVE YOUR MONEY. YOU NEED IT.
M: Ma, why were you picking up and hanging up, I’ve been calling…
Mum: I TH OUGHT IT WAS THOSE DEVILISH MARKETERS
M: WHY ARE YOU YELLING?
Mum: THEY WON’T STOP CALLING
M: MA I CAN HEAR YOU
Lotus lanterns were lit and released on the river
to guide the wandering souls on to the next
stage awaiting them in the afterlife.
A collective expression of deeply held spiritual values that has ingrained a shared belief in ‘hiếu’, or filial piety, and reverence for elders and ancestors.
A(off panel): What were you banging on about?
M: I wasn’t yelling, that’s just what my Vietnamese sounds like
A: Is that right? That why I never hear you speak in your mother tongue? You really shouldn’t!
The US Army’s 6th Psychological Operations Battalion and the US Navy exploited this superstition
(Leaflet 23) –
Dear Compatriots of North Vietnam,The Wandering Souls holidays are approaching.
Stop this war of aggression
With a psychological warfare campaign designed to demoralize the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong into deserting their posts and surrendering.
(Leaflet 23) –
suffering under the ruthless regime of the Godless communists.
US Military engineers spent weeks in a Saigon studio recording South Vietnamese soldiers pretending to be slain North Vietnamese soldiers howling from beyond the grave.
VOICE ACTORS: ooOOooo
The actors recorded in hollow echo chambers,
GHOST TAPE: “I am dead…I am dead…I am in Hell … just Hell
their voices reverberating until they grew larger than life.
GHOST TAPE:
It was a senseless death. How senseless … how senseless
But when I realized the truth, it was too late…too late
Friends …while you are still alive … There is still a chance that you can be reunited with your loved ones
Do you hear what I say? Go home …Go home friends Hurry …
VOICE ACTOR: If not, you will end up like me Go home my friends before it is too late
If the Americans weren’t convinced that recording voice actors in hollow echo chambers would be enough to pass for visit from the afterlife,
GHOST: Go home! Go home friends!
Then they would make certain with the wailing cries of women and children,
GHOST TAPE: Ve Di ! … ! Ve Di Ban! !!
The buddhist chanting,
The howling wind and gongs and cymbals of a funeral dirge
GHOST TAPE: “VE DI !! … !! VE DI !!”
When rumors spread of tiger attacks in the mountains of Vietnam, the 6th PSYOP Battalion had a pilot fly to a Bangkok zoo to record a tiger’s roar and had it mixed into the tape.
VC SOLDIERS: Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!
These elaborate productions dressed up
deeply personal spiritual beliefs, and blasted them
From the backpacks of camouflaged soldiers,
The tops of palm frond trees,
Floating down the Delta
Hung from machine-gun mounting of Huey helicopters.
From 8pm, up to 8 hours every night.
Penetrating the hearts and shaking the spirits of everyone in earshot
US SOLDIER: They are not equipped to hide from us, getting into their heads!
North Vietnamese Fighter: “Of course it affected our spirits. Imagine being separated from your family for years, hearing those voices alone in the dark. Did we really not know they were tapes? They made us think of what we missed. But then, it made us want to continue fighting back.”
Villager/farmer: “The VC Cadres were driving off the spirits with their bullets! But if we didn’t surrender the VC shooters to the Americans, the spirits would never leave our family alone.”
South Vietnamese soldier: “What if it were me? Where would my soul rest?”
US SOLDIER: We drew fire every single time we played the tapes.
So we started sending gunships to fight back.
Spirits, that I don’t know about.
But the rockets we were dodging, those were definitely real.
It was not that the Vietnamese necessarily believed they were genuinely witnessing the dead come back to haunt them. The sounds might have been artificial, but it stirred up fears and beliefs that were very real.
Forever being torn apart from family.
Dying alone and forgotten.
Never come home again.
Never resting
US Soldier: This lot can’t distinguish between a cassette tape and Casper! The Vietnamese soldier walking off the rice paddy and onto the battlefield can’t fathom the technology they’re facing!
MUM: Can you hear me? I can’t see you, are you there? I don’t know how to let you see me. ‘Thew oi ‘thew, do I look older, hm?
M: I’m here Ma. You look the same ma, none of us are going back. Are you strong? Happy?
MUM: Don’t worry, we’re the same as always. Nothing’s changed. I just sit. I’m old, I can’t walk so much. The doctor looked at my back. My knees. My blood. heart. It’s senseless. They’ll just make it worse. There’s nothing to do.
HANOI HANNAH (HH):This is the Voice of Vietnam Broadcasting from Hanoi, capital of the Democratic republic of Vietnam.
How are you, GI Joe?
Since the first US Marine ground troops set foot on Da Nang, Radio Hanoi targeted American soldiers with a special English broadcast on ‘Voice of Vietnam’.
The People’s Army of Vietnam’s politics department spoke through Trịnh Thị Ngọ,
who called herself Thu Hương because it had less syllables for non-Vietnamese listeners to grasp.
Her American listeners had other names for her.
‘Wicked Witch of the North’
‘Dragon Lady’
‘Hanoi Hannah’
HH: “I only heard the name Hanoi Hannah later. Hanoi begins with an H; Hannah
begins with an H. Americans like nicknames.”
‘Hanoi Hannah’ was timed to greet soldiers returning from the battlefield,
typically starting at 8pm every night.
HH: “Intelligent American GIs, why have you come to Vietnam?
Your government has betrayed you. You will never defeat the forces of our Fatherland. It seems to me that most of you are poorly informed about the going of the war. ”
As her popularity grew, her broadcasts were repeated throughout the day, waking prisoners of war in the morning.
HH: “Do you have a watch, American servicemen? Look at it, the minutes are ticking away. Soon your time will stop in Vietnam. There is nothing here for you except defeat and death.”
POW (John McCain) in ‘Hanoi Hilton’: “Ha! She should be in Hollywood!”
HH: “Why are you here?”
HH: “When you sit alone at night and think of your loved ones, our gallant soldiers are watching you. You cannot escape.”
Look at the photos of your loved ones, American soldier. Do you miss them? Do you miss your parents? Your wife? Your children? What will they do when your imperialist government tells them you died in Vietnam?
MUM: DO YOU HAVE WORK?
ME: I’m working all the time ma
MUM: DO YOU HAVE MONEY? WE CAN SEND MONEY, OR CLOTHES?
ME: …No no, don’t send anything!
MUM: WE DON’T HAVE ANY USE FOR IT! WELL WHEN WILL YOU COME HOME?
MUM: LISTEN. ‘THEW OI ‘THEW. YOU’VE BEEN AWAY 4 YEARS.
ME: ai ma biet
MUM: ai mà biết?
ME: I’m applying for a visa and then…
MUM: 3 MORE YEARS.
ME: and then I can work enough to…
MUM: WILL YOU COME BACK OR DO YOU LIVE IN AMERICA NOW?
ME: I can’t afford to go back and I can’t even afford to stay here and I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford being back…I’m stuck…I…I…
MUM: YOU LIVE IN THE US NOW. YOU HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT YOUR ROOF FIRST.
But unlike the US PSYOP’s piercing frequencies, Hanoi Hannah enticed soldiers to listen by offering a soft, female voice that was not too friendly, not too tough, not too shrill.
In an American accented English perfected under the tutelage of an Australian journalist mentor and subtitled Hollywood films.
Wilfred Burchett (off panel) – They’re gonna see straight through ya soon as they give ya a quick once-over, ‘n guess what? They’re not wrong. But you’ll be gone again soon ‘nuff.
HH (holding US Army Stars and Stripes newspaper)
Even if the soldiers didn’t believe her exaggerated reports of American casualties, they couldn’t resist tuning in for the tunes. Especially when she played songs that the US Army Radio wouldn’t play
HH : “Now here’s Connie Francis singing “I almost lost my mind”
And said all the things US Army Radio wouldn’t say
HH: “GI Joe, They are questioning why you are here. In America there is no unity, there is violence, there are protests against you.
Detroit has been occupied by three military divisions. They shoot your brothers back home with the same M1 Carbines that you point at us.
HH: They turned your sniper’s .50 caliber machine gun from a tank into four-year-old Tanya Blanding’s living room and murdered her. Your own weapons pointed at your own people in your own homes. Why are you fighting here?
Things that felt impossibly close to home, that no-one else could know or would tell them.
HH: “congratulations to Lieutenant Miller, it’s too bad he won’t make his
23rd Birthday.”
SOLDIERS: (throwing cans at radio) BOOOOO!
HH: And sympathies to First Battalion, 27th Infantry, 25th Infantry Division GIs Tim
Rickly, William Mitchell, Eugene Shannon Jr…
SOLDIER 1: “She’s got ears everywhere-!” “How did she know?”
SOLDIER 2: “I gave her a ring and she couldn’t wait – How could she do this to me”
SOLDIER 3: “That settles it, you’re in no shape to go out fighting tomorrow. News like this, it’s bad luck.”
On April 30th, 1975, ‘Hanoi Hannah’ was the first person in the world to report the Fall of Saigon.
Irving Berlin’s White Christmas: “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know
Where the tree tops glisten
And children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow, oh, the snow”
Captain Gerald Berry: “I repeat, US Ambassador Graham Martin is out, Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!”
‘Hanoi Hannah’ married a South Vietnamese man and followed him from Hanoi to Saigon.
HH: “Saigon is liberated. Vietnam is completely independent and unified.”
Her son escaped in 1973, part of the wave of boat people fleeing the country.
HH: “I don’t want to talk much about my son. He likes to become a painter. He went there (US) before of his own will. I don’t send him. Even I don’t want him to go away from the family. But he likes it, so he went away”
200,000 to 400,000 died at sea.
They will never be located, never identified, never reunited with their families.
It’s hard to imagine most of those that died on the battlefield will be, either.
Even without a physical presence after the evacuations, the US continued to punish Vietnam with decades of economic sanctions.
That were only eased when Vietnam agreed to US demands to establish an office to find and return the remains of American soldiers.
The growing economy made it possible for Vietnamese families to self-fund searches.
No analogous official centralized effort exists to find the bodies of Vietnamese soldiers privately.
Locating Vietnamese remains were focused on identifying mass graves. US Veterans returned decades later to help locate the razed battlefields, unmarked graves and bulldozed cemeteries, to discover they had since been built and planted over.
ME: A residency is like a…
MUM: LIKE A HOUSE!
M: No, it’s like I go far away to work on my art
MUM: WHO PAYS YOU
M: No, they give me a place to stay, a bed, food,
MUM: HOW MUCH DO YOU GET PAID
M: NO IT’S LIKE AN AWARD
MUM: ARE YOU GOING BY YOURSELF
M: MA IT’S OK, I’M JUST CALLING TO TELL YOU I’LL BE AWAY AND YOU CAN’T
HEAR FROM ME FOR A WHILE
MUM: WHY DONT YOU WORK FROM HOME? WHAT DO YOU DO THERE?
M: IT’S SO I CAN BE LEFT ALONE
MUM: tầm bậy tầm bạ, ai mà lo cho mày
Despite rapid development, and despite most Vietnamese identifying as irreligious non-believers, Wandering Souls Day, and the belief in ghosts, is still widely observed.
The rituals remain, even if they are barely recognizable under the influence of Vietnam shift to market economies, Western capitalism and opening to a global economy.
Joss money is still burnt, but replica Vietnamese currency has been banned and replica US dollars are preferred.
MUM: DON’T WORRY ABOUT US. WE’RE AT HOME, WE’RE THE SAME. YOU WORRY ABOUT MAKING MONEY. YOU CAN’T MAKE A LIVING IN AUSTRALIAN DOLLARS, YOU HAVE TO DO THAT IN AMERICA. KEEP GOING.
Dollars are worth more and are more easily exchanged and spent anywhere, even the afterlife.
MUM: AH! ‘THEW, LISTEN. THIS ARRIVED FOR YOU…CAN YOU SEE?
M: WHAT IS IT? CAN YOU READ IT?
MUM: IT CAME THREE MONTHS AGO.
Gongs would be struck, offering lost spirits a way back home.
M: MA, I HAVEN’T LIVED THERE IN OVER TEN YEARS, IT’S PROBABLY JUNK MAIL
MUM: … OK, OK. IT MIGHT BE IMPORTANT. I’LL KEEP IT FOR YOU.
MUM: Thôi. Đừng co lo nghe. Nhớ ăn nhé. Đi ngủ đi. GO BACK TO SCHOOL. GET MARRIED. BUY A CAR. HAVE CHILDREN.
Lotus lanterns carrying prayers are released on bodies of water,
MUM: BUILD YOUR OWN HOME.
to light the way for wandering souls to a peaceful life in whatever world awaits them next.
