64
Vietnam War: Primary Sources
A young man burning
his draft card.
Reproduced by permission
of AP/Wide World Photos.
Although tens of thousands of young men relocated to
Canada and elsewhere to avoid military service, this strategy
was commonly seen as a last resort. It was usually chosen only
after other possible “draft dodging” alternatives had been
exhausted. After all, men who fled to Canada knew that they
might never be able to return home to America to see their
family and friends without risking arrest.
Draft resisters.
Another popular strategy for avoiding
military induction was outright defiance. Hundreds of thou-
sands of young American men openly resisted the Selective
Service System during the war. Some refused to register for the
Tim O’Brien
65
Some North Vietnamese men tried
to evade their own country’s military draft
during the Vietnam War. Many families
supported their sons in this effort.
Important officials in the government often
arranged to keep their sons out of the
military by sending them overseas to
study. Ordinary families, meanwhile, hid
their sons or bribed doctors to disqualify
them from service.
“Many parents tried to keep their
sons out of the army,” recalled one North
Vietnamese man in
Vietnam: A Portrait of Its
People at War.
“They would hide them
when they were called up by the recruiting
center. Anyone who didn’t show up
automatically had his rice ration cut off.
But families would buy food on the black
market or just get along by sharing
whatever they had. They would survive
that way while they tried to scrape up
enough to bribe a recruiting official to fix
up the files. Other draftees mutilated
themselves or managed to find other ways
to fail the physical. People with money
were able to pay doctors to disqualify their
children. These kinds of things were easier
to do in the three big cities—Hanoi,
Haiphong, and Nam Dinh . . . where the
government officials and Party leaders
lived. Many of them were looking for ways
to keep their children out too. . . . And
people had more money in these places,
so corruption was more a normal thing.
Also, it was simply easier to hide in the
cities and there was more information
about how to stay out. The result was that
the big majority of the Northern army was
made up of young people from the
countryside. They were just more naive.
They believed the propaganda more easily.
They didn’t have the same chances to get
out of it.”
Avoiding the Draft in North Vietnam
66
Vietnam War: Primary Sources
Draft card burning in New York City’s Central Park.
Reproduced by permission of AP/Wide World Photos.
draft. Others burned their draft cards to protest the war. “Hell
no, we won’t go!” became a popular rallying cry within the
antiwar movement.
Active resistance to the draft became particularly com-
monplace during the mid- and late 1960s, when the American
public became divided about supporting the war. “The growth
in public opposition to the war . . . enhanced draft resistance’s
appeal,” confirmed Tom Wells in
The War Within.
“Resisters
