VINH MOC TUNNELS

Jane Fonda earned the nickname ‘Hanoi Jane’ by visiting North Vietnam in 1972, while Americans were still dying there, and posing on an anti-aircraft battery. 

Later she wrote that she was manipulated into sitting on the battery, and was immediately horrified at photo’s implications.

Who knows?

But even the most ardent soldier has (or should have) a code against unnecessary civilian deaths, especially when they are children.  And it’s hard to begrudge a bit of respect for the incredible lengths that Vietnamese civilians went through to avoid become casualties of carpet bombing raids during the worst years of the war. 

Nowhere is this more apparent than within the tunnels of Vinh Moc.

Over a mile of interconnecting tunnels, kitchens, meeting rooms, bedrooms, medical clinics—even a maternity ward where seventeen children were born during the war—this remarkable achievement sits in Quang Tri province.  With the threat of B29 bombing raids, two communes essentially moved underground for six years.

On March 5, we had an opportunity to explore these tunnels, which still exist, intact, to this day.  That’s due to the particularly hard clay of the area and  its proximity to the sea winds—numerous smaller ventilation kept the walls dry.

In use between 1966 and 1971, the tunnels are evidence of human ingenuity in times of crisis.