Correspondents' Correspondence
Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. Illusory War Pnompenh--One of the ironies of covering...
...Why were they left to walk into a carefully set Communist trap--especially since intelligence reports indicated that the enemy had decided to hole up in the village...
...You see that the country probably cannot survive whenever you see their troops confronting a highly motivated Vietnamese Communist enemy...
...American military analysts in Pnompenh speak, with all too familiar optimism, of the will and spirit of the Cambodian Army...
...Although many foreign women are struggling for self-expression or personal fulfillment, the Japanese woman has always had meaningful cultural satisfactions in the tea ceremony, flower arrangements, folk dancing, singing, or drawing...
...Most women abandon any idea of a career because of this...
...When you arrive at the scene it is hard to get the impression of real men engaged in a real war...
...They bunched together, easy prey for mortar and rocket rounds...
...A leading women's magazine in Tokyo, for example, has an all-female editorial staff...
...Most of those myths," Miss Nakane declares, "were written in books by men...
...You search for it a few hundred meters on, but it seems almost illusory...
...talk of "role-seeking" or a "women's liberation" movement brings stares, sometimes laughter...
...They had radios, all the rice and fish they could eat, medical facilities--not to mention American air support...
...Although Cambodian officials invariably complain about lack of equipment, this deficit was not apparent in the operation around Taing Kauk--one phase of what had originally been advertised as the Cambodian Army's "first major counteroffensive...
...But situations like that are exceptional...
...Why didn't they at least send out small patrols and set up ambushes at night...
...The truth is that the Japanese woman always has been strong...
...If the Cambodian troops are not actually "in contact," they appear as unfazed by the struggle as do their comrades in the rear...
...Many Japanese men...
...The second, more profound, reason is the continuing strength of traditional Japanese culture...
...Soldiers are sleeping in hammocks slung between some of the vehicles, and their wives and children are cooking food, gossiping or playing beside the road...
...It is far from certain whether the North Vietnamese really aim to overrun Cambodia...
...It was a fairly typical outing for the Cambodian Army...
...We had feminist movements here even before the War," said Miss Nakane, "but they were imported from England and America...
...Still, most of the press corps here tries to "get out" every day in order to report on the scene of the nearest, most dramatic fighting...
...That night the Communists, with deadly awareness of the precise location of all elements of the battalion, lobbed in another 80 or so mortar rounds, accompanied by sporadic rifle and rocket-grenade fire...
...They moved slowly, painfully slowly, from one point on the road to the next, giving the Communist troops all the time they needed to get a fix on their locations and fire at them...
...Perhaps all they want is to recover their old border sanctuaries and sea-land infiltration routes so they can go on with their war in South Vietnam...
...even among the younger generation, also practice these gentle arts...
...Some observers rank poor leadership as the Army's greatest weakness...
...My own most recent "field" expedition was a drive to Taing Kauk, a village Cambodian soldiers have been trying to take for six weeks...
...past gleaming rice paddies and waving peasants, to the French colonial comforts of the Royale and the bustling, still peaceful, streets of the capital.--Donald Kirk Women's Lib in Japan Tokyo--Japanese women are too busy being feminine to be feminists...
...not in public, but in the home...
...The column fell back in confusion, retrieving 14 of its dead en route...
...It is not possible to attempt to "evaluate" the Cambodian Army on the basis of such a fragmentary glimpse, but correspondents who have been visiting the various "fronts" several times a week assured me the scene I witnessed was fairly typical...
...And though nighttime is playtime for Japanese men, married as well as single, more wives are getting away during the day for golf, skiing, tennis--and other diversions...
...While there are a few lonely voices here complaining of sex discrimination, most Japanese females do not feel the urge to merge with the male world...
...It's not just a matter of sex, but of culture...
...Japanese women are 'tied' to many things, and it is therefore very difficult to get a group of them together to form such a movement...
...The soldiers I saw were all armed with American-made M79 grenade launchers or Chinese-made AK47 rifles, rated better than the American M16 by many who have fired both weapons...
...The majority of Japanese wives not only run the home but often take the husband's full paycheck and give him pocket money...
...Sadly, the troops I accompanied in the assault on Taing Kauk had just completed eight weeks of special training in South Vietnam...
...While the thriving detective business here had previously depended upon female clients seeking information about their errant husbands, now about one-third of its clients are anxious husbands...
...Nevertheless, it is Cambodia that is dying...
...Somewhere beneath their placid countenances you know that they're worried about fighting and dying, yet you would never guess it from the Boy-Scout-outing atmosphere of their encampment...
...There was nothing genuinely Japanese about them, and since our culture has not changed much since then, the basic impulses of Japanese women have not, either...
...This is not to say, however, that the image of the Japanese woman as a retiring, almost wholly passive creature is correct...
...In America," remarks noted anthropologist Chie Nakane, the first woman professor in Tokyo University history, "you have this deep cleavage between the sexes, but in Japan, the woman is tied to the man...
...Ironically, those few Japanese women who do have a career in some cases enjoy working conditions American women are just now angrily demanding...
...Only when you consider the potential consequences of this little war in Cambodia do you shiver with the realization of its pathos...
...The fact is that Cambodian officers and noncoms are woefully incompetent...
...The Cambodians called off their offensive for the day...
...Cambodia's ultimate defense may be the Army of South Vietnam, which in the long run would doubtless show no more respect than Hanoi for Cambodia's national integrity...
...Illusory War Pnompenh--One of the ironies of covering the war in Cambodia is that you can do it in luxury...
...The soldiers committed almost every error in the military book...
...As it happened, the enemy offered little resistance, firing only a few shots and one mortar round...
...Despite their minis, midis or maxis, most Japanese girls still are instructed in these arts, often as a preparation for marriage or, in the case of many working girls, as a special service offered by their company...
...One is the still highly stratified Japanese society...
...Why did they perform so miserably...
...Although swollen in number from 35,000 at the time of the overthrow of Prince Sihanouk last March to approximately 140,000, the Army appears as ill-trained and inexperienced as it ever did...
...You vaguely ponder these problems as you speed back from "the front" in your Mercedes-Benz limousine...
...The public role of Japanese women--or Japanese men--is perhaps best defined by a traditional saying: "The nail that sticks up will be hammsred down...
...Yet this was enough to stop the entire advance...
...First you find parked along the road those circus-looking buses that carry Cambodian troops to battle...
...Recent years have also seen a significant rise in the number of runaway wives, usually accompanied by younger men...
...There seem to be two basic reasons for the minimal impact here of the new feminism...
...Or else they go fishing in the rice paddies, or swimming and washing in a nearby stream...
...No need for a sit-in there...
...This is precisely the kind of role discrimination Western feminists despise, yet it is not the product of male chauvinism...
...I was with the advance element of a Cambodian battalion as it attacked the outskirts of Taing Kauk, purportedly occupied by anywhere from 600-2,000 enemy troops...
...They put up their ponchos and tarpaulins in the form of tents and sleep soundly through the hot afternoon...
...Correspondents get into their chauffeur-driven Mercedes-Benz limousines behind the charming old Hotel Roy-ale and go off to battle, as it were, with none of the enervating sweat and grime normally associated with a war--but some, of course, have been captured and killed while on such sorties...
...Some of the government soldiers were deployed across the rice paddies, but the focal point of the thrust was Route 6. the narrow paved road that links the heart of the country around Pnompenh with the beleaguered northern provincial centers of Kompong Thom and Siem Reap...
...Even when the troops are engaged with the enemy, the war has a make-believe quality...
...Even men have to struggle to find a decent or interesting job," says a Tokyo housewife, herself a university graduate...
...they decide what goes into each issue, and the only men who work there take orders from women...
...Michael Berger...
Vol. 53 • November 1970 • No. 21
