i'd first like to do is just tell you a little bit about why i wrote the book in a kind of set the stage i look around here and i bet you a lot of you know as much or more about vietnam than i do  but i'll just say a couple of things about it was a long war ten years at least you could probably count twenty if you really looked at it closely but it was ten serious bloody years  the draft in back in one nine hundred sixty eight sixty nine was in compassing it was it was something that was weighing on the thoughts of every young person in the country especially young men also the young women who were trying to figure out what young men they might look up with two and a half million americans over that ten year period wound up in vietnam helping somehow to fight the war there was ten myself boy let me tell you we got the basic training whether or not you're going to be an infantry was something you really thought about a third of the casualties in vietnam during those ten years were drafte the army in vietnam represented a maximum effort on the part of of america to do something i happen to think and i think probably most of people here agree there was a terrible thing they wanted to do but still there was this mexican effort there were five hundred thousand troops in vietnam for several years and it put that a little bit of perspective that's the number of soldiers napoleon took and of into russia it was a grand army the army that was in vietnam and really if you stop to think about a whole heck of a more powerful than the  when i got to thinking about this book that what really triggered it was a visit by a friend who had just been in vietnam in the army let him come back to visit were he came back and we were at fort lewis and he flew through there and so he came and stayed with us in transit route way to go home to sacramento to visit his wife and baby and that night dunn told me story and that became the name is book i changed it to so long vietnam to kind of make it a little more clear but for years i called it done story and the reason was that dunn told me that when they  received notification that they were going to go into cambodia in an invasion it really threw his his whole company into a tizzy and you know i'm not saying that it wasn't happening all over the american army that he was a part of the fourth division which was assigned up in the parents speak not in the heaviest fighting but still they were very concerned about having to go into this new battle one of their  where the members of their company took his m sixteen and locked and loaded which meant that the thing was ready to fire but i met him twenty rounds if anybody mess with him and he didn't say anything he just sat down under banana tree and refused to talk and officers and other sergeants surrounded him and were trying to talk to him trying to figure out what to do and when his friends in the rest of the company got word that this was happening they decided to hold a meeting about half the company they were mostly like what they called the bros in the heads the black guys the brothers and the heads the refer to people who like marijuana but it was also people who didn't think the war was so hot so the bro's in the heads mid on the hillside and the topic of discussion was should we go into cambodia should should we fight this war for them i mean  been fighting all these years in vietnam and now they want to go into cambodia so the person who is in charge of this company i think was a really competent officer and instead of confronting any of these guys he knew they had a point he just called division and said you better get the helicopters here soon as you can and because we've got to get these guys loaded up and out of here before they get organized and that's how it happened the helicopters came my friend of the rest of his buddies got on and including the guy under the tree i got on and went into cambodia  years i thought about this meeting and thought about the fact that these american soldiers these grunts these rank and file guys these draftees were sitting there thinking about taking things into their own hands and led me to speculate well what would happen if american soldiers had really decided to take things into their own hands and that led me to try to write a story and so in my story the captain in charge wasn't such a sharp guy he was more like some of the commanding officers that i knew here at fort lewis and confronted those soldiers and what would happen if they were confronted and they stood up to him and they decided hey we're going to see this war has to stop we're going to have a mass movement to stop the war and that's the basis of my story so anyway i just thought i'd read a few things from in the book to you guys introduce you to a couple few of the characters december eighth one nine hundred sixty nine three days later the third battalion of the eighth light infantry brigade fourth of vision was moving out with barely enough time to sign the new guys their bunks dunlop got up early that morning to pack his rucksack he tried to think of everything he might need while they were out on patrol the resulting pile of stuff turned out to be more than enough for three packs he called the pile down to the bare essentials and stuff them in his rucksack after breakfast that he hadn't felt much like eating frank grabbed his gear he found the other guys and third platoon second squad assembled in the shade of their mess hall waiting for the slicks transport helicopters to pick them up for the planned operation f parentheses fucking new guy frank dunlap stood among a group of seven grunts and jungle fatigues puffing nervously on his third cigarette in twenty five minutes he was starting to feel a little dizzy from the nicotine i just thought of something that i meant to do before i started reading and that's to tell you that some of the language that we used is objectionable and i decided to write the book as as we really taught in the army in those days and so i want to apologize a fight if i have makes me feel bad saying these things and not doing it for that i'm doing it to really trying give a sense of the story and have it be a thin he was starting to feel a little dizzy from the nicotine today december eighth one thousand nine hundred eighty nine marked the end of his first week in vietnam he was a shining new a trooper as could be found in this part of the central highlands today but  around here wasn't usually a very good thing dunlap's jungle fatigues were deep green without even afraid area to alter the new guy impression he hated that he looked like such an inexperienced ignorant kid fresh from the world eyes from the guys landing by the mess hall as he scratched and fidgeted fearing they might notice it admiration in his case they were all such grizzled veterans leaning squatting and sitting in the shade with their gear sta casually in front of them they all seemed lost in thought confident in their ability to survive the murders battles they would face in the coming weeks the third battalion was pretty perry in itself for an operation that would keep it out in the really hills of central for least the next month all the officers and senior sergeants of the four companies assigned to the extended field maneuver seemed to be frenetically checking details hollerin his subordinates looking and talking tough for each other the grunts by the mess hall found this spectacle mildly amusing if they noticed at all it's going to be one fine christmas this year dunlap decided he wondered with a chuckle if santa would bring them presents if they were still out on war sergeant role in peterson leader of second squad third platoon d company gave up his favorite shady place under the mess hall window and strolled over to where done up a standing you better rub some dirt in  boot leather you your were in their troop peers and stood in front of dunlap with his legs spread in a casual athletic stance and took off his bush hat wiping the sweat from his brow with his forearm those toes are so fuckin shiny you might as well be wearing mirrors attracts the wrong kind of attention out there know what i mean riley peterson looked like a guy room highway construction crew in california's central valley the tall sergeant was handsome and confident and always on the alert for the possibility of disaster dunlop had heard from sources around third of the eighth the peterson was the best squad leader in the battalion frank flipped his cigarette on the ground as he hunkered down in digger and rubbing some of the local red mud under the toes of his boots you from california done up how did you guess the new troop looked up smiling at the question off forget that steers and queers shit man there's been a lot of new guys  battalion from cal lately that's enough done up look confused for a moment oh yeah he stood up and looked on his toes now you're lookin to know you start to look like something besides fresh meat for victor victor victor charlie the guy in the black pajamas who wants to make your wife glad you took out that x or life insurance policy before they dropped into this shit hole of that victor frank smacked his lips feeling a little dry in the mouth now if it's ok with you let's have a look at what you've got ned rucksack peterson squatted and before down a could respond open the bulging pack and push the top items aside he looked up and gazed into the distance for a moment his brow from his smoke and left of his own job then dying always seemed time and something or other when he wasn't high he was usually pretty nervous tapping out the beat to some song only lizard could hear ben dime wasn't what you'd call a popular soldier several of his fellow squad members had accused him in different occasions of stealing from their foot likers thefts have been proven but peterson believed it would be only a matter of time before the guy got nailed upon his rival form some of the squad to his skate a breaking and entering charge but joining the army besides it was widely believed that the slimy vandyne cheated at west saying a guy you look like you're going to the prom from frank st louis stood and pointed to the gear in front of don't let anybody with that many pairs of pants must be planning on dancing with the goose and let me tell you i'm in their name what they got mine for your young ass peterson looked up at his squad frowned and said why don't you guys to shut the fuck up can't you see i'm trying to get the guy squared away seventy your punishment is you got to go to vietnam p f c tom kelly said with his hands at his side in a casual approximation of the tension position on with four of his fellow soldiers at fort lewis the expressions on the g i faces gave way a little of what was on their mind they had all been told that morning formation to be at the sea of ceos office at the end of their workday and kelly figured he and the others knew pretty much what was up kelly was starving and exhausted from a heavy day's work at the logistics center he felt rumpled and dirty in his g i fatigues a mark contrast to the crisp and authoritative appearance of his commanding officer he decided to concentrate on looking his unconcern as his four black friends kept him willcox was pissed off he stood behind his desk and studied sheet of paper  great importance to his command the five forty third supply company finally he looked up and fix his gaze on the five silent soldiers in front of a human have made a giant mistake with this this petiti sir kelly interjected yes petition wilcox won his case on to kelly the captain's pale pinched face was expressionless except for his upper lip which curled slightly that's correct private kelly he said slowly wilcox returned his attention to the other four men this paper may seem innocent enough to the casual observer wilcox raised his fist to his mouth and cleared his throat one might even say that there is some merit to the pinion stated he continued hiding his hitting his stride like an angry minister in the middle of a sermon i'm sure that you for a minute had honorable motives for promoting this this document his body language made it clear which meant he was resting now and kelly could see that he was not one of them kelly knew the other soldiers on the carpet with him were just as responsible for the success of the petition is he was all young black fellows they felt strongly about a punishment that had been slapped on one of the brothers in the company it was unjust and unnecessary in typical army harassment with an added racial twist private daniel p wilson had not clean the toilet to the satisfaction of one of the lifers when the sergeant discovered wilson reading a book instead of cleaning the toilet for a third time wilson was assigned to a humiliating punishment detail that extended well be on the day he was supposed to get out of the army the absolutely worst thing that could happen in a g i was to have his e t s parenthesis estimated time a separation date extended especially when he was short like wilson with only a month ago that was a big mistake on the part of the army to petition have been kelly's idea and got her firmly one of the four guys now in the captain's office with him had run with it for firmly quickly wrote a statement in organize a do z all black to take copies around the fort and asked their phyllis soldiers to sign them in support of wilson kelley had not expected much would come into his of his petition but he thought it was worth trying for kelly was mostly something to brag about in a hit upcoming progressive labor party meeting for local g i members nobody was more surprised or more worried than kelly was the ball got rolling theoretically they could all go to jail for a long time all together one hundred one thousand signatures were collected over four days at the headquarters building the same fight him in gave the petitions to measure headley their battalion commander wilson's punishment was rescinded the following morning but despite the obviously good intentions in his statement wilcox went on i wonder what you would say if i told you that one member of this group in front of me is neither a good soldier nor a good american he looks lowly at each of the four avoiding kelly and then place a petition on the desk the faces of the enlisted men on the carpet remain blank as a matter of fact i've received reliable information that private kelly here has joined country's enemies and become a communist willcox under the last three words in a slow whisper then he smiled slightly what do you say to that private washington i don't know about communists or or i was mostly worried about wilson silence for a few moments what about you gallon anything you'd like to add to what washington just said no sir jones lips hardly moved and his eyes appeared fixed on an object behind him slightly to the left wilcox firmly wilke i've seen a little the sure of himself now no sir firmly look straight ahead respectfully when was wanting to help wilson sir communist kill he closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on what becky had fix for dinner the night before cheeseburgers his favorite t v show swish his head from one hand the other sniffed and said sir i guess i would say that if all communists do like kelly then i'm probably one myself will cops slipped a little on the desktop this straightened up and said his jaw the five men stood around the captain in silence go forward here a little bit again this chapter is one way to get out of long been jailed i want this fool out of my constrained voice was surprisingly high for such a large and fearsome looking man he had worked hard throughout his eighteen years in the army and had done well for a black soldier he had risen from the ranks to his thing in vietnam worse than hump in the boonies with your unit after nearly a month that l b j in the previous week in solitary private willie tug and i was thinking that he just might be glad to get back to a line you judging what by what was being yelled in front of his cell he figured his jail time would be coming to an end soon but sir we're looking into some very serious charges against this prisoner first lieutenant darryl johnson was read  spoke to his commanding officer the anxious prisoner watched the two officers argue over his fate through a small window in the cell door normally used for passing meal trays only a thick metal door separated the three of them targets bent over to look and turn his head from one side the other to follow what was being said sir johnson's voice shook as he spoke i have two of my best men in the hospital from beatings that i believe this man encourage other prisoners in this facility to administer that's exactly my point lieutenant watkins words were slow and precise his expression he glared at the young who tended to fane's in his temples looked ready to pop out of his head he was a large and powerful man who reminded targets of a massive bull named bill that his father purchased for breeding when he was a small boy i want this asshole out of here and until that happens you know as well as i do th to be less and less under our control he's right you know tug consider jack did and both officers turned toward the prisoner for a moment with surprise and contempt curling their lips and distorting their faces tegan smiled trying to look as pleasant and respectful as he could sir i can't a cut not accommodate your wishes at this time sir lieutenant johnson nervously fingered the large press key ring hanging from his black leather military policeman if i were to do so i don't believe that i would be in compliance with the codes are referring to the uniform code of military justice the legal bible for military policeman this current upward l b j began after a month amount of gunpoint and brought them to a c e o choosing the two soldiers of tempted rape of a civilian noncombat this it up in the first occasion when talking is use it come into sharp conflict with those in the unit this time h received a three month sentence to l b j for his efforts for the two first two weeks to stay in the notorious military prison had been largely an eventful he worked hard to blend in with the other prisoners wake up was it over five hundred for an hour of morning exercises under the watchful eyes of speech and guards who dole the verbal abuse while the other prisoners sweated and strained the rest of the day consisted of boring and repetitive assignments scraping old wax off a floor with a dull razor blade for thirteen hours or maybe clean toilets in the office quarter with a toothbrush were coming jobs the food was much worse than what the soldiers received in the field meals are only a chance to sit for a while no conversational on the first l b j seem like a more regimented big it's basic training awful but survivable but then tigers learn about beatings of prisoners especially by couple of vicious guards who worked the night shift what appeared to trigger the extreme punishments was anything other than grovelling respect and obedience toward the guards so talkings organized the guys in his barracks to resist the beatings by administering some of their own plan worked fairly well the rough treatment ended for the most part and the two for worst offenders were put in the hospital they served as an example to other guards that they were dealing with human beings and not animals to know surprise targets was removed from his barracks and place a vacant of the facility used for overflow solitary confinement when the main hole was full but then a letter arrived from a south carolina congressman with a copy and and black church leader in his south carolina congressional district the letter concluded with a paragraph in for the major of an upcoming congressional vote on the military funding bill watched the argument between the two minute front of his cell with such with a touch of humor he was fairly confident that the outcome would be in his favor we tend to johnson well i'm suggesting here is in full compliance with the you sanjay black and spoke so quietly that both tug and johnson had to strain to hear as words he thrust a thick paperback book toward johnson the cording to my reading this prisoner is due for release today and a provisions of the section in the mail regarding toward the main prison carrying the u c m j manual still open to the good behavior section its pages fluttered like a butterfly he's out of my jail by sixteen hundred lieutenant the major's voice echoed through the building just before he slammed the door shut so i hope that gives you a little bit of a flavor of the book and i hope that you decide you might get more interested in  i'd like to take a few questions now if anybody's interested in having a discussion and then we were going to have some small group discussions a little bit and i would suggest that from this book i'd like to see people come to the idea that mass movements among everyday people are really powerful that they could do huge good things  that's what my book is about as i'm sure everybody knows we have some issues in front of us like global warming and i don't plan to others that are going to really require some some mass pressure to to do something about so i hope that people will take that away from this book that it's worth a try it's it's worth a try to have a mass movement so  well the first half of the book everything i do it because i like people remember full metal jacket where they think they do the training and then over the war and that's how i did the book  then and everything up to the dominion on the hillside on the cambodian border was really as it happened and then from there the last third of the book goes into th you know i i've talked to some of the fellows and women men and women who are in the army today and one of the things i try to tell is that you just would have no idea about what the army was like when i was  that you know they're done for good there was a shelter half a coffee house and jane fonda came in and there's all this stuff going on stateside and there is actually quite a bit of stuff in vietnam and i highly recommend the movie sir no sir that's a wonderful movie that's that's who helped us get this picture for the cover of the book it's you know about rebellions in vietnam you know there was actually some some things that happened among some company size groups that you know refusing to do with they're told doing stuff like that never really coalesced but that's all i want to speculate oh sure ever one time i actually the truth of i didn't go to vietnam but i had my character the kind of represents me that's where it cut into fiction i had him go to vietnam but i stayed here for a couple years and learned how to be really good at picking up cigarette butts and for lewis i can tell you were they all were but one time there was a huge forest fire when actually and at the same time there was a there was a believe his american legion convention important national meeting that was a lot of people thought there was going to be huge demonstrations there and riots and so i soon that there were senators down there to confront the demonstrators and i further remember in the hallway yelling at my company commander i'm not going to pour them for you and that's when we found out that we were going to go to the fire instead so yeah people did it all the time especially in  the army i was and i doubt if they do it that much today in the volunteer army yes well there's this character that i read a little bit about in the willy targets he's based on a friend of mine who was just bowled me over and he was he's the most morally inspiring character in the book is a black eye from south carolina and he you know what i have in the book was you know that i mentioned strong moral sense that i like to center the story around because he becomes the leader of this group of g i s well yeah i mean the yeah that's those that was mentioned to us more than once and training was that you know you know if i for your country you fight for your buddy then you know because you know people get really close to one another in terrible situations and and they would look out for one another i think i might have included some of that in there there's this one conversation i have take place where these guys are talking to the character kind of represents me about look where we can fire fights you get a fight you know and it is like this really elemental level of buddies trying to do that the the group of soldiers that i use the bases of this book were up in the central highlands the fourth division and you know they they mostly tramped around and didn't run into much in the years that i the book represents my friend was there not like the poor guys in the night vision down in the delta got into stuff every day when his own man or yeah  i think so i think i think that at the point that they decided to pull the army out it was either pull him out or really have things like this happen  i mean i think the best indication of that is to ask high ranking military officials and pentagon people and stuff what do you think about a draft a look at you with horror you out of your mind we're never going to draft people you know and that this is very important understand how drafted army is going to be totally different i mean we were we were  normal everyday people who were forced to do or doing we didn't volunteer for us may well people do things that are in their interests i know that and and i think one thing to keep in mind is the scale of things and you know when you're talking about in vietnam before there were drones and smart bombs and you know the the apache helicopters had gotten so well turned out there is you know the i mean the north vietnamese army was huge and they were they were in terms of a and you know they so that if we tried to do it with mercenaries there were there would be enough of you know you had to have five hundred thousand guys and put them out there and say look you know either you know fight or you get killed and that and that's that's the way it would work you know i mean that they'd send guys like my friend don traveled around the hills until they would get attacked and they were bait so that then they bring air in and try to kill whoever attacked them but it you couldn't do it with just a few mercenaries i might just mention i might excuse me i might just mention real quickly that and idea i've had about the iran sanctions business is is that there's seems to me there's a tremendous amount of worry about the iranians building a nuclear bomb and that's at the basis of of our conflict with iran right now and this centrifuges and all that right i really think that americans particularly american jews which i count myself at least half a member of that group my wife is a full member my son to american and my daughter in law  american jews have a special role to play i think in that it would be i think one of the healthiest things we could do is call for a fulfillment of the nonproliferation treaty wonderful if we could say look these are the israelis are getting rid of theirs so you guys don't have to build any do you and see what happened right of course they do  and i think americans could really try to encourage especially american jews to try to encourage israel to join the nonproliferation treaty and agree to a nuclear mail postcard things you know the hose the pictures saying how much they love a rainy and then rains since the fact we love israelis and it was really nice it's really nice that there be a lot of support there if american and especially american jews would really get behind that i think yes or yes like i said i you know i had my characters really take a stand in order to be able to is it also is in the interest of these people and also what are we going to eat tomorrow and and things like that too but yes people in my story and my recollections from the army days there was a lot of moral concerns about what was going on in vietnam people were really comfortable with me  i never had any trouble with guys and i i was the most vociferous and i wore guy you could imagine among my friends so much so that when the army's criminal investigation people came in investigated me some high pentagon guys in suits it was i was told they weren't in uniform killing investigated me they call the guys down from my from i put my squad  there we're going to give king but this is this really responsible job you know do you think he's can handle it'd be a tremendous high security job in and they just wanted to get him talking about me and apparently they all just said oh he'd be fine and in i've sure all this time you know that's what they told me they came over again when they came back to the barracks they told me they covered for me and all these years i figure that's whiting out of you know because you know they f ologies if this couldn't get his buddies to cover for his level really cause trouble over there yeah but it was they'd they appreciated my moral stance they did yes man i think it's really important to have adults involved they provide a real anchor for young people that's that was my experience back in those days you know the stories about these young guys that don't have guy wrote a review of chris matthews book about kennedy and just ripped it to shreds because he says matthews just tried to make kennedy into a regular center right democrat and he wasn't and he really included this one passages that i loved about kennedy where he he was he decided he was vietnam was impossible that we'd never be able to win there because it was a national struggle and we were just fighting the entire people there and so you came up with this national security memory into sixty two which is a plan to get out of vietnam there's no long before he was killed and he he was he gave  is kind of downers stuff that kennedy would do and i think that they killed him about several of those things i think the main issue was vietnam i think they really wanted to do that we are going to go to a very special guest that we are lucky to have in live with us this morning in our studios k x p studios here it is none other than local seattle singer songwriter  musician activist jim paige good morning my own morning so you have a big event coming up next week in the bathhouse theater celebrating your fortieth well basically it's roughly forty years ago that i arrived in seattle i'm ok altered forty but yeah you know somewhere in nine hundred seventy i'm a little bit cloudy about it i think it was actually more like april or something that i ride but whatever i'm from california originally and i left for when when things got started to get kind of nasty late sixty nine i went to new york city and from in new york i met some people from seattle and when i was done kind of doing the village thing and i came out with them out here because i you know seattle sounded great like an adventure i'd never heard of the place before you know and i remember seeing it the first time and thinking wow this is just my size because i've been in manhattan for a year  wow man you could hold it in the palm of your hand comparatively back then forty years ago and it was a great and wonderful place and i've been here ever since i mean i've lived in europe for a few years so i could have been here entirely ever since but you know in your years l a for a little bit down oregon for a little bit but i always come back because this is i don't know so much of it in me so this is a for already it's forty anniversary of that and it's going to be a two part show the first  really so you know so it's at the bathhouse theater very good so what what got you involved doing music in the first place i was you know your typical dysfunctional teenager maybe in some ways more dysfunctional than usual and i discovered the acoustic guitar quite by accident one monday it was like in hopkins texas great texas blues singer and yeah and it was the way that he sang the way that he sang  got right through to me because he was you could tell he was able to go to break through that barrier of himself and become a nothing if you know what i'm saying and then come through with that through the radio into my ear sitting in the back of my parents car at the age of fifteen and that's it that's what i'm going to do because that's the way i could see myself drowning and so i went there and you know i jumped right into the local scene it was a coffeehouse scene in the couple of bars that these people played in and you know and i i had some older friends that val's for me and so i was able to start playing bars and i was like what it was eighteen i think you know i was like three years early all this kind of stuff and i just jumped right in right away and started learning and that took some lessons and i stole everybody's songs got everybody's repertoire you know went to all their gigs sat down front learned everything and it just became this thing that i did and it was my gateway to to society to social networking to friends due to the world everything and i learned i learned over a period of years what a song can actually do how you can go into a place that doesn't have a folk scene but it's got people like at almost every place in the world does right you know and you find out you know you see with those people congregate street corners cafes bus stations whatever and unless there's an angry policeman somewhere you can sing in that bus station on that street corner on that campus whatever and if you sing about what is happening in people's lives they will respond i mean obviously it's a social real thing to do i learnt that a song can do that it can carry the story of what happened to people over there to people over here and it can carry the story what happened to people over here for ongoing years and it's an old part of our oral tradition but unless you're but i didn't know that i you know because of who i am where i am but i learned it i learned by doing you know how important a song can actually be what it can actually do is bigger than you the listener and is bigger than me the singer it becomes this larger thing that's something that we all work on and we carry them you know they're amazing things that they're just they're amazing you know and the weirdest thing of all that i've learned one of the weirdest  learned over the years at once a song is is when you're done singing the song it's gone it's not there anymore it doesn't exist a song does not exist unless something is moving a song is a verb music of is a verb the whole thing is a verb unless that cd is spinning that m p three player is turned on or the person is on stage opening their mouth and actually doing it it doesn't exist when the gig is over it's all gone it's weird totally weird you spend your life doing something that doesn't exist anymore on seattle doesn't have a lot of those spikes in the show up from sun from time to time and then i guess the city takes them down or something when a bicycle rider get it is he is performing it next week at the bathhouse theater which is at green lake that's sunday june twelfth seven thirty pm and get your tickets for that of brown paper tickets dot com and we're going to be going right back to jim in just a few minutes