A War on Two Fronts
Part 1
The first interview with Ari Sesu Merretazon recounts his early life in Washington, D.C. with his family. Ari discusses how his parents' influence and the civil rights movement shaped his outlook on the United States and the military. In 1966, Merretazon was drafted during the Vietnam War, and he served in the Army from 1966 to 1968.In Vietnam, Merretazon carried out search and destroy missions. A squad or platoon would go out on patrols and lure the enemy into a fight. Then, the Americans would call in airstrikes. These tactics made many American combat troops feel like expendable bait and caused much resentment and disillusionment.1 Body counts became the criteria for measuring victory, creating the conditions for widespread atrocities and dehumanization of the Vietnamese. Amid the brutality of the war in Vietnam, Black soldiers formed bonds of solidarity with one another. Ari descirbes how Black soldiers survived through their "blood love." Many Black soldiers found commonalities between the Vietnamese struggle for independence and the ongoing struggle for civil rights in the United States, forging solidarity, respect, and sympathy for the Vietnamese people.
Revelations
Jason Higgins: Do you recall any reasons why your brothers discouraged you from joining the military?
Ari Sesu Merretazon: They were very discouraged about the relationship of this country to African Americans. I have come out like the political house that we always talked about that. But we never did anything, protest together. It was individual protest based on the age, structure, and that type of thing. But, it was solid as a rock. It helped me to understand my environment at the time. I may have mentioned to you too that when I was about 10 years old, Jason, in fact, I mentioned in the first paragraph of the book Bloods with Chapter 7 with my story. I used to sit on a stoop which was right behind the Capitol East Businessmen's Association which was relative to the intersection of 15 this Capitol. In about 60 feet there was a little two-step stoop. I will always come out, walk up to streets, sit there, and just reflect because that was the end of the bus stop for one of the D.C. transit lines. Basically, I would get a transfer and ride around the city because that was the end of the line to get transfers to your good. That's where I received a revelation. That I was going to war in prison. I think I was a 10 years old at the time. That was a very powerful revelation. I just knew that those two things were going to happen. As we moved through I decided not to – I fought it for a minutes minute because I didn't join with my partner. But nevertheless, the draft notice came, and it said, "You shall report, " and I reported down to Fort Holyberg and Baltimore, I think it was. Then from there to South Carolina, Fort Jackson. From Fort Jackson from all my infantry training base in AIT to Vietnam, from South Carolina to Vietnam.
Jason Higgins: Now, whenever you got the draft notice were you aware of the Vietnam War? Was that on your mind did you think that you would be sent?
Ari Sesu Merretazon: Yes. I was aware of the Vietnam War, and I knew I was going to be sent because, Jason, I hope I told you because while I was sitting on that stoop, I had the vision of going to war in prison.
Jason Higgins: I read that this morning as I was preparing for the interview. I have a copy here. [OVERLAPPING] Yeah, that was very interesting. You had this revelation that you would go to war and prison in your life.
Ari Sesu Merretazon: Prison, in that order. I didn't think I was doing anything to make it happen, but I was just living my life.
Kill or Be Killed
Jason Higgins: Was there any kind of solidarity or sympathy for the Vietnamese people between black soldiers in Vietnam?
Ari Sesu Merretazon: Yeah, the Vietnamese people themselves made sure that occurred. The Vietnam people engaged us. We engaged them because we are the same in the context of power structures in this country, and our country, in the world. We were the same, and that's how we dealt with that. We gravitated towards them. They gravitated toward us just because they considered us the same, same. Just basic people, poor people that don't have no input in decision-making, [LAUGHTER] that type of thing and just dealing with their daily affairs. We turned their country into a major war zone, that mean village by village. We went in burned hutches, hootches, and things like that. That was the major mission search, kill and destroy. That's the attitude you had to have. If you didn't have the attitude and you're out, there really is no assurance that some bad is going to happen to you. That is of your own making cause you are not ready. We were always ready. Always ready.
Jason Higgins: You're describing this kill-or-be-killed mentality.
Ari Sesu Merretazon: This is war, man. Exactly, that's what it was. That's exactly what it was; now you know there's no other way to structure that; it was kill or be killed. ‘Cause when you charge into a village after we chase a VC into the village, usually, all hell breaks out, and a couple of times it did. On one occasion, my squad got caught right up in the middle of it. Let's see, one… two…three… three of us did survive. Then one just didn't have the courage at the time to fight.
A Clear Racial Divide
Jason: In the middle of trying to survive a war, did you form opinions about the rightness or the wrongness of the Vietnam War?
Ari: Yes I did. I've formed it while I was in Vietnam. I was just a young 19 year old Gung Ho guy. I wanted to keep up with everybody, compete with everybody. But in Vietnam, there was a whole different thing. It was just like we going home. We got to make sure that we go home. That's our goal, is protect each other, so we can go home, back to the world, we would say. We would come out of the field some type of thing that we talked about when we came back off a mission. We were talking about what we're going to do when we got back in the world. We knew the dynamic in Vietnam between black and white soldiers. The racial divide was very clear. I think I might have mentioned to you, not to be repetitive, but 95 percent of the stockade in Vietnam was black soldiers. We call it LBJ because Lyndon Baines Johnson was the president at the time we call it LBJ. In fact, was in a lower part of the Vietnam called Long Bihn. We call it Long Bihn Jail, that was the stockade, 95 percent black soldiers.
Full Interview, Part 1
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- Ari Sesu Merretazon Jason Higgins