Actions and Opposition
In May 1965 Keith Holyoak announced that a battery of 161 New Zealand soldiers would go to Vietnam following the nurses and engineers sent in 1964. The New Zealand troops in Vietnam were stationed at US military bases and fought in South Vietnam. A large amount of the New Zealand public supported the war. When anti-war protesters had demonstrations they often got harassed or insulted. And when the president of the US Lyndon B Johnson who escalated the war in Vietnam, came to New Zealand with his wife he was met with cheering crowds. The anti-war protesters tried to demonstrate against him the New Zealand public tore down some of their banners and overran the demonstration to cheer for the president. The US pressured New Zealand into providing more troops. Keith Holyoake had to meet these demands while trying to keep New Zealand’s participation in the war at a low level. A SAS Force was sent over in 1969 with two rifle companies deployed straight from Malaysia two years before in 1967. All together 3,400 New Zealanders were sent to Vietnam, 37 died including two nurses and 187 were wounded. Many also died later or were wounded due to the effects of Mustard Gas. There was opposition to New Zealand’s involvement in Vietnam which occurred before the war protesting the sending of troops.
But the most significant opposition to New Zealand involvement and the war itself occurred in the late 60’s after a few years in the war. Images and videos of the war were brought to the public via news and were shown nightly on television. And in the late 1960’s the counter-culture movement and the anti-war movement grew greatly. Using both images of the war and strong slogans, vivid posters surfaces in quite large numbers to draw peoples attention to the issues of the war.
Protest largely aimed to draw peoples attention to the suffering of the Vietnamese civilians due to the war and demonstrations included hunger-strikes and displaying of cages similar of those that prisoners would have to survive in. Opposition to sending troops from Vietnam came from groups like PYM, and people protesting what they saw as wrongly killing innocent people. At the start of New Zealand’s involvement there was little protest except from more radical groups. However, because technology was beginning to be developed, people began to see what the war was like from their living rooms. And far more images of the bombings and the fighting were brought to the public eye. Because of this the protest movement grew steadily as people became enraged to think that their own country was contributing to slaughter and also because they felt that America had no right to be in there either. Opposition in the form of protest was seen through brochures, leaflets, posters, speeches, demonstrations and protest marches. Early marches got around 35 people participating but by the late 60’s protests were as large as 35,000 people.
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