Thought Reform

The Curriculum of Vietnamese Reeducation

Gregg NevilleHST 4854/23/09

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After the end of the Vietnam War, some soldiers and civilians of the former Republic of

Vietnam found themselves in a dangerous situation as communist forces walked into Saigon,

changing not only the name of the city, but the ideological framework in which its inhabitants

lived. In order to effectively integrate the former Republic of Vietnam supporters into the

newly unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the communists chose to use a system of

Reeducation modeled after thought reform methods from China and tailored to the

Vietnamese experience. The designers of the Reeducation program created a curriculum that

hoped to effectively reeducate both non-threatening civilians and blacklisted RVN supporters.

This curriculum sought to indoctrinate detainees with communist policy and theory delivered

through forced learning sessions, regular nightly meetings, and post-release courses.

While originally being portrayed to the public as political training courses where RVN

supporters would learn communism and its ideals in order to live within the new society,

Reeducation Camps soon became forced labor camps where starvation, torture, extreme

punishment, and execution were commonplace. The number of prisoners who were interned

in these camps numbered several hundred thousand, with estimates varying from 250,0001 to

2.5 million.2 In order to round up such large numbers of prisoners, the SRV forces required all

civilian contractors, policemen, soldiers, and party members who had supported the RVN

1 Metzner, Edward P. Reeducation in Postwar Vietnam: Personal Postscripts to Peace. College Station: Texas A&M

University Press (c2001), pg. xiii.2 Vo, Nghia M. The Bamboo Gulag: Political Imprisonment in Communist Vietnam. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland (2004), pg. 55.

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regime to register for and then attend a short 3-10 day training course. Once there, the RVN

cadres loaded the men onto trucks and drove them to the camps. Here their original 3-10 day

stay would be indefinitely extended, leaving men in the camps anywhere from a few months to

several years before their official release. Over the course of the reeducation system, hard

labor amid extreme conditions was used to reinforce the lessons of political learning sessions.

While political indoctrination was heavily emphasized early on and became less prevalent

overtime, it continued throughout the duration of the prison camps and served as one of the

main rationales for the camps.

The model for the Reeducation Camp program lay in China, where methods of

communist education and prison camps were observed by Vietnamese communists and

brought to Vietnam. In 1948, General Nguyen Son wrote pamphlets about “correctional

training,” which he had observed in Yunan, China, while serving with the Chinese Communist

Party.3 The original ideas of General Nguyen were influential, but rejected because of political

infighting between the General and party leaders. However, this method of thought reform

was eventually implemented in communist Vietnam in 1953 by Chinese advisors.4 Correctional

training usually begins with a lecture, after which “the student body is divided into small

groups, usually three members, and the material is thoroughly discussed along with examples

and explanations. The students discuss all the material paragraph by paragraph, and if it is

necessary countless repetition follows…When lessons are completely mastered, the student

makes a partial confession, i.e., each student admits in front of his group his previous errors

3 Hoang, Van Chi. From Colonialism to Communism; A Case History of North Vietnam. New York: Praeger (1964), pg.

126. 4Ibid.

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and demonstrates before the group how “smart” he is now by having had the opportunity of

acquiring an education.”5 Through this description of correctional training we can see that the

method contains important foundations of the Reeducation Camp program such as discussion,

self-criticism and self-evaluation.

During the pre-war period, leaders of the communist party used correctional training

and its foundations to reform the thoughts of Viet Minh fighters who, while strong nationalists,

found themselves struggling with the growing focus on communist ideas. As communist

programs expanded within the North after independence, these methods of thought reform

helped unify the party and the state. With the fall of Saigon, the communists found themselves

now needing to unite the whole of Vietnam. The task of handling former RVN supporters was

left to the SRV Defense Ministry, but was eventually handed over to the Ministry of the Interior

because it already maintained a network of detention camps in the North and could expand

that into the South.6 Bui Tin, a former cadre, claims that as a result of this change “men who

had been regarded as prisoners of war became transformed into political criminals, needing to

be punished.”7 This hand over and transformation may explain the change of emphasis from

Reeducation to prison labor that occurred during the early days of the program. For it was

during this period that the prison camp system was combined with the methods of corrective

training to create the Reeducation Camp and when the curriculum for these camps was

designed.

5 King, Edmund J. Communist Education. London: Methuen (1963), pg. 437.6 Bui, Tin. Following Ho Chi Minh: The Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel. Honolulu: University of

Hawaii Press(1995), pg. 90.7 Ibid.

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This Reeducation Camp curriculum can be split into two general categories: Civilian and

Blacklisted. This distinction was made based on a person’s perceived threat to the SRV. Civilian

reeducation courses were created in order to indoctrinate prominent civilians, such as teachers,

with communist ideology so that they could spread it to the general populace. The blacklisted

prisoners were sent to the reeducation prison camp system in order to politically indoctrinate

them in communist ideals, while at the same time, keeping these prisoners out of the public

arena, where they could potentially undermine the new government through disobedience,

crime, spreading discontent, or rebellion. Civilian reeducation courses were roughly a month

long and contained much of the same theoretical content as that of their blacklisted

counterparts. The important difference was that they were allowed to reintegrate with the

community after the completion of the course while their counterparts were moved to labor

camps for indefinite periods of time.

The initial Reeducation courses for civilians were designed to rid prisoners of their

capitalist and democratic ideals, while also forcing them to confess their participation in RVN

activities. These courses were held at local Saigon schools and lasted 20-24 days and they were

titled “Officer Government Official Course.”8 The communists forced local doctors, pharmacists,

engineers, and teachers to attend because of their ability to influence the public opinion within

their neighborhoods. Through taking one of these courses they would be versed in communism

and be able to help push communist agendas within their communities. These courses

consisted of lectures and speeches given by provincial leaders, security service chiefs, and

political commissioners. The speeches focused on praising Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, and the 8 Lu, Van Thanh. The Inviting Call of Wandering Souls: Memoir of an ARVN Liaison Officer to United States forces in Vietnam ho was imprisoned in communist re-education camps and then escaped. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland (c1997), pg. 50.

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revolutionary spirit of the communists who had defeated the U.S.9 The lectures included

instruction in communal living and forced condemnations of U.S. atrocities, bombings, and

gasings of North Vietnam. Nguyen Thi Kim-Anh, a Saigon high school teacher, explained that

during these lectures, prisoners “just copied everything down and made it into a very nice

paper to turn it back in. If you said exactly what they said, agreed with them one hundred

percent, you got a perfect score.”10 Following these lectures, students were expected to write

papers on topics such as “Why We Like Ho Chi Minh.”11 Lu Van Thanh, a liaison to the U.S. army,

points out that once having completed such papers, each student stood before the class and

expressed his “own opinion concerning his antirevolutionary activities, and acknowledged his

past mistakes in thus impeding the liberation of South Vietnam.”12

At the end of the course, each student was required to write self evaluations reports

“relating to his biographical sketch, past activities, education, results of the course, along with a

confession and a promise he would be loyal to the revolution.”13 These self-evaluation reports

were a distinctive feature of all Reeducation courses. Prisoners would spend days writing these

evaluations which were expected to run about 100 pages.14 Once they had written these

lengthy reports they were then made to copy them several times. They included minute details

about name, rank, service unit and declarations about wives, parents, brothers, wife’s parents,

as well as histories of occupation, employment, the ways in which family members had died,

9 Ibid.10Engelmann, Larry. Tears Before the Rain: An Oral History of the Fall of South Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press (1990), pg. 330.11 Ibid.12 Lu, Van Thanh. The Inviting Call of Wandering Souls, pg. 51. 13 Ibid.14 Ibid.

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promotions, and military activities.15 Not being detailed enough was considered proof of guilt

and the cadres positively reinforced the act of admitting to crimes against communists and

claimed that the men who did so were sincere in their reeducation efforts. Unfortunately for

many who fabricated crimes these reports were secretly used to create justification for their

further incarceration within the camps. Some prisoners in the civilian program found this out

the hard way. Thanh explains that “as a result of this course, we were placed on their special

blacklist, and were then considered to be harmful opponents of the new regime.”16 Once having

been blacklisted they were transferred to the indefinite captivity of the Reeducation Camps.

Many prisoners were blacklisted due to their perceived danger to the SRV and placed

within the Reeducation Camps, where their experiences became heavily influenced by intense

labor and harsh working conditions. Within these camps, as in the civilian courses, political

training was still a part of daily life and continued throughout their imprisonment through

learning sessions, nightly meetings, and post-release courses.

Throughout their experience in Reeducation camps, prisoners were forced to attend

learning sessions every three to four months.17 These consisted of varying numbers of

prisoners listening to cadres or special guests giving lectures either outside or within a main hall

structure within the camp. The length of these sessions could vary from a few hours to 15 days,

during which prisoners were made to study and discuss the session and then to critique their

responses to the content. The curriculum of these learning sessions can be broken down into

two content groups: policy sessions and theory sessions. Sessions devoted to communist policy

15 Tran, Tri Vu. Lost Years: My 1,632 Days in Vietnamese Reeducation Camps. Berkeley, Calif.: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California (c1988), pg. 20.16 Lu, Van Thanh. The Inviting Call of Wandering Souls, pg. 51.17 Metzner, Edward P. Reeducation in Postwar Vietnam, pg. 12.

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focused on camp rules and regulations as well as important communist programs to which

prisoners were expected to contribute. Sessions devoted to theory focused on political

indoctrination of communist ideals and were the only real attempt at reeducating former RVN

supporters to integrate them with the communist public. Together these two content aspects

of the curriculum were the basis of Reeducation.

Soon after their arrival at the Reeducation camps, prisoners found themselves gathered

into a conference hall for their first learning session. This session often focused on learning the

camp rules and regulations. A political officer would inform them of the basic rules which they

were to follow. These rules included not being allowed to go outside the gate or visit other

camps, not being allowed to beat each other, being forced to participate in nightly meetings

where they would critique their work day and sing revolutionary songs, not being allowed to

sing old regime songs, being forced to plant a vegetable garden and to do calisthenics every

day, and being made to attend a weekend meeting where they would critique each other’s

work and elect one person who was most “progressive.” 18 These rules became the framework

for everyday life within the camp. They also included rules for clean and neat living, having to

write home to families in order to boost morale and having to watch a movie once every

quarter year.19 Through these rules the cadres were able to control the prisoners and force

them to participate in further thought reform and labor. Reeducation policy created the

“progressive” award throughout all camps. It was an award given to a prisoner who was elected

by his peers for working and studying the hardest and making the most strides toward

reeducation. The cadres informed the prisoners that the people who won this award would be 18 Le, Huu Tri. Prisoner of the Word: A Memoir of the Vietnamese Reeducation Camps. Seattle, WA: Black Heron Press (2001), pg. 27-28.19 Tran, Tri Vu. Lost Years, pg. 13.

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the first to be released. It worked very effectively to encourage good behavior up until the

point when prisoners began to see that no one was going home. Le Huu Tri, a prisoner,

described his feeling after this session, “I knew that if I wanted to return home soon I would

have to obey the camp rules and work hard.”20 Prisoners were also lulled into a sense of trust

by the communists through other sessions.

One such session that the communists designed to create this sense of trust was one in

which they explained the “Act of Clemency.” The act of clemency was the policy that “South

Vietnamese were guilty of betrayal, and therefore, owed a blood debt.”21 A political officer

explained that, “Your crimes deserve the death penalty. But the revolution, out of clemency,

has permitted you to be reeducated.”22 This lesson tried to play toward a communist image of

being merciful. Prisoners were expected to trust and thank the cadres for allowing them to live

after they had betrayed the SRV by fighting against it. Later on, as time went by, they were

taught Reeducation Policy and what it entailed. This caused many to lose hope as they now

realized how long they would remain in the camps.

The cadres eventually came to give learning sessions on the policy of Reeducation itself.

The cadres explained how this policy was used to deal with the former RVN supporters in a

session titled: “The Thirteen Points of Reeducation.”23 These points were little more than a

breakdown of groups of the RVN supporters in order to give them a sentencing of years in the

camps. Examples of these group break downs are: policemen, noncommissioned military

officers and soldiers, commissioned military officers and soldiers, civilian contractors for the

20 Le, Huu Tri. Prisoner of the Word, pg. 28.21 Nghia M. The Bamboo Gulag, pg. 144.22 Tran, Tri Vu. Lost Years, pg. 13.23 Le, Huu Tri. Prisoner of the Word, pg. 73.

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RVN government, public servants, and civilian RVN party members.24 For each group the

political officer would read out the sentence and number of years they would remain in the

reeducation program. Providing a sentence and justification for punishment to the prisoners

ended the original motivation of early release for prisoners to work hard and receive the most

“progressive” award.

To encourage prisoners to work hard once they knew that release was far off, the cadres

created a policy called The Labor Production and they made this policy the focus of learning

sessions. The labor production consisted of “The Production Battle” and the knowledge that

those who participated in it would receive extra food.25 The battle consisted of a competition

held over three days, where the most “progressive” men would compete to see who could hoe

the fastest. If they were lucky, they were chosen as part of the “Golden Hoe Group” which

would go on to work at a new camp, which they had been informed had homes, running water,

and free visitation.26 Unfortunately for the prisoners, the goal of this policy was to identify hard

working prisoners in order to transfer them to an area where they would build a new camp in

the middle of the jungle. This learning session while completely devoted to a policy of creating

new camps and not to reeducation was in many ways similar to another session that was more

tailored to reeducation and reintegration with society.

One of the final policy oriented learning sessions prisoners received had to do with New

Economic Zones (NEZ). The NEZ program forced people from the underemployed and crowded

cities onto unused areas of land in order to calm tensions in the cities and to boost agricultural

output for the country. The learning session explained this policy to the prisoners by showing

24 Le, Huu Tri. Prisoner of the Word, pg. 73.25 Ibid., pg. 80.26 Ibid., pg. 83.

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that the NEZ policy was the right response to the needs of the country, explaining past

experiences of organizing labor forces and how to establish a NEZ the right way, and explaining

the duty of each individual in relation to the NEZ policy.27 These session lasted one week and

finished with a discussion of “How should reeducation camp inmates respond to the question

of setting up NEZs?” In response to this question they were eventually forced to sign a pledge

saying they would go and work at NEZs upon release. One inmate explained that a cadre had

“read directives from the Central Committee on Reeducation, telling us to write home and urge

our folks to apply for resettlement in new economic zones. Only if his family registered to go

would a prisoner’s case be reviewed and might he be discharged.”28 It is very likely that this

learning session did not contain information about the true conditions of the NEZs, nor did it

point out that reeducation prisoners were in many ways already doing this kind of hard labor

and were perhaps intended by the communists to be pushed into these areas after release to

remain away from the general public.

The content of these learning sessions was not all policy related. Throughout their time

in the camps and especially during their first months, prisoners had to participate in learning

sessions designed to indoctrinate them with communist theoretical content. These learning

sessions included lessons on general communist/Marxist theory, the glory of labor, American

Imperialism, and the idea that the RVN had been America’s pawn. These lessons were

ideological in nature and were designed to truly reeducate the prisoners in communist doctrine

in order to reeducate them and provide them with the necessary view of society for

reintegration with the rest of the country. 27 Tran, Tri Vu. Lost Years, pg. 122.28 Huynh, Sanh Thong. To Be Made Over: Tales of Socialist Reeducation in Vietnam. New Haven, CT: Council on Southeast Asia Studies, Yale Center for International and Area Studies (c1988), pg. 140.

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The prisoners’ first encounters with Reeducation learning sessions were classes focused

on educating them in communist and Marxist ideology. The cadres presented the origins of

the communist part in Vietnam, the rise of Ho Chi Minh, and how the party’s only goal had

been Vietnamese independence.29 They also spent time teaching “the Maxist-Leninist

principles that led to a better life with equality, freedom, and justice.”30 These sessions were

usually the prisoners’ first wake up call to the new world in which they found themselves. They

were forced to pretend to agree with everything the cadre were telling them about

communism and to vow that they would follow it as best as they could. They were expected to

know these lessons throughout their stay in the camps and were often lectured on ridding

themselves of individualism and family ties.31 The cadres often informed them that the best

way to rid themselves of these things was through hard labor for the good of the country.

In many ways the most important of all lessons that the Reeducation camp would

reinforce within the camps through not only learning sessions, but daily labor, was the idea that

“Labor is Glory.” They would be lectured on the glory of labor and production for the country

and how all labor contributed to the cause of the country. During these sessions it was

explained to prisoners that Reeducation was a manual-labor training course and that cadre

would train them to be masters of different manual skills.32 The rationale behind this training

for prisoners that was that, “under the former regime, they [the prisoners] represented the

upper strata of society and got rich under US patronage. They could but scorn the working

people. Now the former social order has been turned upside down, and after they have finished

29 McKelvey, Robert S. A Gift of Barbed Wire: America's Allies Abandoned in South. Seattle: University of Washington Press (c2002), pg. 153.30 Lu, Van Thanh. The Inviting Call of Wandering Souls, pg. 82.31 Ibid., pg. 67.32 Le, Huu Tri. Prisoner of the Word, pg. 46.

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their stay in camps they have to earn their living by their own labour and live in a society where

work is held in honor."33 Thus through the glory of labor they would be able to reintegrate and

participate in a communist society of working class people. Only by throwing off their ties to

American ideals of individualism and wealth, could they expect to be released.

In order to remove these ideals from the minds of the prisoners, the cadres used several

learning sessions which detailed the imperialist ambitions of America and the ways in which

they had been working against the betterment of the Vietnamese people. The content of this

session focused on the idea of Americans as imperialist and as the main enemy of Vietnam and

communism. With titles such as “The American Imperialists are the Number One Enemy of Our

People and the People of the Entire World,”34 the cadres would begin by presenting “The Five

Steps of Aggression of the American Imperialists.”35 They would explain that the American

imperialists had had designs on Vietnam ever since they had sent their first military mission into

the country in 1945, going on to “pull the rug” from under the French, creating the civil war

between the RVN and the communists, invading Vietnam in the “War of Aggression,” and

creating what the “Special War” after their withdrawal. 36 Through these five steps of

aggression, prisoners were made to believe that American interests had always included the

occupation and subjugation of Vietnam from the beginning of their presence in the country.

They outlined American imperialist ambitions by claiming that Nixon had made statements

declaring the American frontier to end at the 17th Parallel.37 Working to show SRV power and

33 Sagan, Ginetta. “Reeducation in Unliberated Vietnam: Loneliness, Suffering, and Death.” The Indochina Newsletter, Oct.-Nov. 1982. 34 Hawthorne, Lesleyanne. Refugee: the Vietnamese Experience. New York: Oxford University Press (1982), pg. 143.35 Ibid.36 Ibid.37Hawthorne, Lesleyanne. Refugee, pg. 147.

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glory through their defeat of the Americans, they studied the “Great Victory in the Spring of

1975” over the Americans and how the North hadn’t beat the U.S. militarily, but by crushing

their will to fight.38 The cadres also made sure to point out such facts as that “the American

presence reached its peak when 600,000 troops, including those of “satellite states,” fought

alongside 1 million nguy soldiers, that at one time, 90 percent of American war industry had

been put at the service of the war in Vietnam, and 80 percent of American scientists had been

given the task of devising plans and finding means to conquer Vietnam.”39 These lessons were

expected to be unquestionably believed by the prisoners, even though many of them had been

a part of the RVN military and knew them to be false. These men questioned problems in the

cadre thinking such as the idea that America had been defeated, when as far as the prisoners

were concerned, it was the RVN that had been defeated after the Americans had pulled out.40

These questions were quickly answered with more propaganda and those who asked them

were disciplined for performing poorly in the session. In order to further convince the prisoners

to stop such questioning the regime, the cadres also sought to paint the RVN as having been

used by the Americans.

Having discredited the Americans, the cadres set their sights on the RVN regime. Under

such titles as “False Military Men and False Government Officials Were Slaves of the U.S.

Imperialists,”41 these sessions laid out the ways in which the RVN had been tools of the

Americans. They explained that the former administration was the political tool of American

Imperialism because the nguy army was the war machine of American Imperialism and the

38 Ibid., pg. 143.39 Tran, Tri Vu. Lost Years, pg. 52.40 Ibid., pg. 55.41 Metzner, Edward P. Reeducation in Postwar Vietnam, pg. 12.

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political parties and those who chose to live under and work for the former regime were

reactionaries, and in an indirect way, the servants of American Imperialism. 42 This session was

used not only to undermine support for the RVN, but to make clear that those who had

supported it were guilty of aiding the American Empire. One cadre explained to a prisoner that

“Any antirevolutionary activity is, without a shadow of a doubt, planned or instigated by the

Americans.”43 The session went on to explain ways in which the Americans had betrayed the

RVN, such as claiming that the coup against Diem, the American puppet, had been instigated by

the distribution of pictures showing perceived attacks against Buddhist monks by Diem’s

soldiers, which were actually pictures taken by the CIA of the Chinese punishment of Tibetan

counter-revolutionaries.44 By showing the former regime to have been a pawn of the

Americans, the cadre could combine such lessons with those of the “Act of Clemency” in order

to show justification for the containment of prisoners while at the same time undermining the

accomplishments of the former regime even further, causing the prisoners to lose hope in

being saved by some remnant of the RVN. Having presented their content of reeducation, the

sessions often concluded in assessment tasks.

Most learning sessions concluded with some form of assessment designed to monitor

prisoner’s responses to the content. These would often include group discussions in which

prisoners were made to voice their opinions on topics and critique each other’s ideas. 45 These

discussions could last for several days and were led by cadres and statements within them were

highly monitored and susceptible to punishment. At the end of each session prisoners were

42 Tran, Tri Vu. Lost Years, pg. 63.43 Ibid., pg. 63.44 Hawthorne, Lesleyanne. Refugee, pg. 143.45 McKelvey, Robert S. A Gift of Barbed Wire, pg. 91.

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made to write a report that had five parts.46 The first part was a viewpoint and opinion section

that had to explain how the prisoners would adopt and apply the lessons to help the revolution,

as well as reaffirm their belief in reeducation and communist principles. The next part centered

on labor and had to describe the highest forms of physical labor, telling whether the prisoners

were fulfilling them, and if not why, in order to show that they were cleansing themselves of

the old ways through hard work. The third section focused on regulation and cooperation and

had to list the rules of the camp and then confess whether or not the prisoners had broken any

of them since the last session. This was followed by a reeducation section which had to list

what activities the prisoners had participated in to be actively involved in reeducation, such as

studying, singing, newspaper reading, film watching, etc. The final section was to explain future

plans and was required to describe what they would do in the future, how they would change,

and how they would improve themselves. Once written, these papers would then be critiqued

the following day where prisoners were scolded for writing too much and using good

handwriting, as these were seen as habits of bourgeoisie classes and were not needed in

communism.47 Following the writing and critiquing of these reports, prisoners would return to

their barracks and continue with everyday life within the labor camps. After the first few

months of intensive Reeducation, the gaps between learning sessions would grow larger and

larger, but this didn’t mean that prisoners stopped receiving reeducation; instead they were

forced to participate in regular nightly meetings to review the participation within the camps.

Throughout their detention in Reeducation camps, prisoners were forced to attend

regular nightly meetings after working 12 hour days. During these sessions prisoners would be

46 Ibid., pg. 91.47 Metzner, Edward P. Reeducation in Postwar Vietnam, pg. 59.

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taught proper methods for harvesting, sowing, planting and plowing, as well as how to further

understand the communist party line and the goals of reeducation.48 These could last several

hours and their main purpose was “to evaluate the workday for each individual who in turn,

should personally discuss his own strong and weak points.”49 They would stand before each

other and recite a self-criticism of themselves based on the same five points that they were

made to write reports on following learning sessions. Each person would then repeat this same

mundane criticism and criticize each other’s performances for the day. They would then

choose a “most progressive” person for the day. The cadre would then comment that everyone

had not worked hard enough and usually conclude the meeting with a quote from Ho Chi

Minh.50 The nightly meetings were usually used as a way for cadres to set up the work for the

next day and explain camp announcements, while using the criticism to maintain a fear among

the prisoners of being called out by their fellow prisoners for not working hard. The prisoners

were forced to participate in these meetings almost every night for the duration of their time in

the camps and they were forced to work hard and hope that one day they would finally be

Reeducated and eligible for release.

After finally being granted release after many years spent in reeducation camps,

prisoners found themselves required to attend a final course. This began within the camp and

was a sort of curriculum review as prisoners spent two days going over “chapter after chapter,

document after document, and then directives and new instructions from the government.”51

Once being released back into the public, prisoners were still required to attend courses at local

48 Lu, Van Thanh. The Inviting Call of Wandering Souls, pg. 82.49 Ibid., pg. 65.50 Ibid., pg. 66.51 Lu, Van Thanh. The Inviting Call of Wandering Souls, pg. 118.

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hamlet chief offices every night for three and a half hours.52 During these post camp courses

they would relearn all the things they had been taught before and engage in self-evaluations

once more to prove that they were working hard and trying to reintegrate, hoping to show that

reeducation had changed them.

The curriculum of reeducation influenced prisoners in many different ways. Thanh

explains that during the original civilian courses “our minds were strained to the maximum

during those days.”53 And afterwards he pointed out, “I began to realize then that it would be

difficult for me to adjust to this new life…because of this “bamboo curtain.””54 For those within

the prison camps the physical daily labor added to the emphasized the curriculum. Once having

been moved to the camp system, Thanh described how prisoners “were worn out with fatigue.

In addition, we were mentally depressed because we were being inundated daily with foolishly

corroded reasoning, the so-called communist logic, and we had hardly a moment of peace,

even in our sleep.”55 Le Huu Tri, a prisoner, detailed how he and his fellow prisoners came to

realize that the cadres often lied to them, that “the more we believed the cadre, the more we

were tricked by them,” and because of this “I became depressed about the communist policies

and I lost my enthusiasm for our work.”56 Col. Tran Van Phuc explained that, for him, the time

spent in the camp was “clearly burned into my memory because of the great and constant pain

endured during the separation of my family.”57 The mental and physical exhaustion that

resulted from the combination of labor and content within the reeducation curriculum worked

52 McKelvey, Robert S. A Gift of Barbed Wire, pg. 157.53 Lu, Van Thanh. The Inviting Call of Wandering Souls, pg. 50.54Ibid., pg. 52.55 Lu, Van Thanh. The Inviting Call of Wandering Souls, pg. 82-83.56 Le, Huu Tri. Prisoner of the Word, pg. 89.57 Metzner, Edward P. Reeducation in Postwar Vietnam, pg. 10..

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hand in hand to indoctrinate the prisoners. Yet, for many, the lying and harsh treatment

practiced by the cadres turn them away from communism early on, undermining the goals of

reeducation and leading many to attempt escape.

By rounding up the RVN supporters, the SRV cadres sought to separate non-threat

civilians from blacklist threats to their unification of Vietnam. They attempted to do this

through short reeducation courses that would indoctrinate those influential civilians, while at

the same time, creating the Reeducation Camp system in order to indoctrinate dangerous

prisoners, while keeping them out of the general populace. Within the camps, the cadres

forced the prisoners to attend learning sessions in which they learned communist policy and

theory. Policy courses on camp rules, the Act of Clemency, Reeducation, the Labor Production

Movement and New Economic Zones were coupled with theory lessons on the history of

communism, the Glory of Labor, the threat of American Imperialism, and the manipulation of

the RVN by the Americans. The physical labor of the prison camps demoralized prisoners and

set them up for thought reform. It was in this way that the reeducation curriculum sought to

indoctrinate and influence the political views of hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese

that would one day reintegrate and help a unified Vietnam rebuild.

Works Cited

Bui, Tin. Following Ho Chi Minh: The Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, c1995.

Engelmann, Larry. Tears Before the Rain: An Oral History of the Fall of South Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Hawthorne, Lesleyanne. Refugee: the Vietnamese Experience. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Hoang, Van Chi. From Colonialism to Communism; A Case History of North Vietnam. New York: Praeger, 1964.

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Huynh, Sanh Thong. To Be Made Over: Tales of Socialist Reeducation in Vietnam. New Haven, CT: Council on Southeast Asia Studies, Yale Center for International and Area Studies, c1988.

King, Edmund J. Communist Education. London: Methuen, 1963.Le, Huu Tri. Prisoner of the Word: A Memoir of the Vietnamese Reeducation Camps. Seattle,

WA: Black Heron Press, c2001.Lu, Van Thanh. The Inviting Call of Wandering Souls: Memoir of an ARVN Liaison Officer to

United States forces in Vietnam ho was imprisoned in communist re-education camps and then escaped. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, c1997.

McKelvey, Robert S. A Gift of Barbed Wire: America's Allies Abandoned in South. Seattle: University of Washington Press, c2002.

Metzner, Edward P. Reeducation in Postwar Vietnam: Personal Postscripts to Peace. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, c2001.

Sagan, Ginetta. “Reeducation in Unliberated Vietnam: Loneliness, Suffering, and Death.” The Indochina Newsletter, Oct.-Nov. 1982.

Tran, Tri Vu. Lost Years: My 1,632 Days in Vietnamese Reeducation Camps. Berkeley, Calif.: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, c1988.

Vo, Nghia M. The Bamboo Gulag: Political Imprisonment in Communist Vietnam. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004.