Quakers and the Anti-War Movement during the Vietnam War (1963-1975)

"They made their choice to fight us. But they didn't want to, and they don't hold it against us." -- Lady Borton, author of "After Sorrow: An American Among the Vietnamese" Our fascination/distress also explains why those who saw the war and Vietnam close up continue to have a story to tell. One such person is Lady Borton, now a 52-year-old Ohio farmer, but once a twentysomething with a Quaker background and such a high sense of civic obligation that, when the government was forcing its men to go to war, she decided she ought to be there, too. In person and in her recently published book about her post-war stays, "After Sorrow: An American Among the Vietnamese" (Viking, $23.95), Borton endorses the theory that U.S. involvement in Vietnam was critically damaged by events that happened years before, when, during the Cold War frenzy of the early '50s, the U.S. State Department was purged of Southeast Asian experts who might have saved us from our ignorance.

"There, as a private physician helping to rebuild a hospital, I saw how serious the Quakers were about their opposition to the war and their commitment to its many victims. They defied an embargo to deliver food by boat to Hanoi. They also set up and ran a hospital in South Vietnam. They saw beyond the politics to the people in need," says [Peter Wolff], who has encountered Quakers in Ethiopia during his research in civil war-torn Africa throughout the past 15 years. "Do you know what the legend on that postmark read? It said in Dutch, "Vacation in the Peaceful Fatherland," says [Michael Rice], who considers himself both a Jew as well as a Quaker. "I used to call myself a Jewish Quaker; now I call myself a friendly Jew." 1. Michael Rice and Peter Wolff: over apple cider, memories of Eerde Ommen. "[Quakers] also set up and ran a hospital in South Vietnam. They saw beyond the politics to the people in need," recalls Wolff. 2. Kinari Horton, 8, examines "Quiet Helpers," an exhibit in the foyer of the Boston Public Library chronicling centuries of Quaker volunteer work. / GLOBE PHOTO / JODI HILTON

The war in Vietnam was obviously our prime concern. Marge Nelson, AFSC's medical doctor at AFSC's Quang Ngai project which made artificial limbs for amputees, had been captured at Hue during the Tet offensive. It fell to me to arrange meetings with representatives of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF) and the North Vietnamese government in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where we could make our case for her release. I am certain that the anti-war and humanitarian reputation of Quakers was the major factor in our success. During this same period in Singapore we made arrangements to house, feed, and provide moral and spiritual support for AFSC's Visa Volunteers and Quang Ngai staff who had been evacuated from some very dangerous security situations in South Vietnam during the Tet offensive. Just before and after this period I had a chance to travel in Indochina with AFSC's Bronson Clark and then John Sullivan as they gathered information and returned to the US to report in Philadelphia, Washington, and around the country.

The country has changed significantly since [Nancy Klatt] arrived here in 1967, then 30 years old. A peace activist at home, Klatt opposed the war before she came. But she felt a duty to see the devastation the war was causingfor herself -- and help where she could. At the time, Klatt was one of just a dozen Quakers from the United States to make the trip. Another one of those was Betty Boardman, now a Madison resident, who traveled by ship to North Vietnam during the war to bring medical supplies. Both Klatt and Falk were in Saigon during heavy fighting, including the Tet Offensive. While Klatt wasn't near the front lines, she still experienced what it was like to live in a nation at war. She watched bombing raids from atop a building.

Throughout a long career making limb replacements and braces, much of it spent at Eastern Maine Medical Center and in private practice in Bangor, Marshall has returned three times to Vietnam to monitor the needs of the disabled. Over the years, he has seen the little Quaker-built hospital in Quang Ngai undergo its own transformations. The hospital was closed soon after the war ended in 1975 and the flow of international relief funds began to dry up. When it finally was reopened about three years ago -- a slightly rebuilt improvement on its rudimentary beginnings -- it underscored a need that surprised even Marshall so many years later. In Quang Ngai province alone, one of the poorest in that part of Vietnam, many thousands of people disabled by war amputations and deformities still had nowhere to turn for artificial limbs and rehabilitation. Leprosy continued to cripple people in alarming numbers. The small hospital last year alone treated 15 local people who had been injured by long-forgotten land mines planted during the war. After his recent tour of the facility, where he met up with some of the people he trained during the war, Marshall realized that the commitment he made long ago to the people of Vietnam was not over. With a New York filmmaker who is making a documentary about the original Quaker hospital in Vietnam, Marshall now hopes to raise enough money from church and humanitarian groups to build a new prosthetic rehabilitation center in Quang Ngai.

HANOI, Vietnam -- Chuck Searcy, a lanky ex-soldier from Georgia, makes leg braces for children stricken with cerebral palsy. Lady Borton, a Quaker from Ohio, delivers medicine and hope with a smile, as she has since the height of the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War ended 25 years ago on April 30, unleashing a torrent of refugees, most to the United States. Today, a trickle flows in the opposite direction Americans who were here during the turbulent conflict and have returned as aid workers because they believe the United States has an obligation to help its former foe. With the South Vietnamese army in a panicked retreat and the last Americans fleeing in the war's final days, Borton and three colleagues from her pacifist Quaker group were among the few possibly only U.S. citizens in communist North Vietnam.

The book documents the little-known activities of the American peace activists who traveled to Vietnam to meet with officials in Hanoi and with the National Liberation Front (NLF). What began as an effort to provide information about the war to the American public encouraged travelers to organize mail deliveries between American prisoners of war in Hanoi and their families at home. Activists included Mary Clarke of Women Strike for Peace; Staughton Lynd, former director of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom schools; Dr. George Perera of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (who researched the effects of defoliants that Americans used during the war);, Elizabeth Boardman of a Quaker Action Group; Joseph Elder of the American Friends Service Committee; and actress Jane Fonda. Although Washington officials opposed their endeavors, seized their passports and bank accounts, and usually refused to issue licenses for medical equipment and supplies, the activists continued their efforts. By 1967, they averaged one delegation trip a month to Hanoi. They continued to bring back news from North Vietnam and won the release of some American pilots.