Alexander D. Shimkin
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Alexander D. Shimkin
| Alexander Demitri Shimkin | |
|---|---|
 Alexander Shimkin after he was arrested for civil rights activity in Alabama in 1965. |
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| Born | October 11, 1944 Washington, D.C. |
| Died | July 12, 1972 (aged 27) Quảng Trị Province, Vietnam |
| Nationality |  United States |
| Alma mater | University of Michigan Indiana University (Bloomington) |
| Occupation | war correspondent |
| Known for | investigating non-combatant casualties in Operation Speedy Express |
| Spouse | unmarried |
Alexander Demitri "Alex" Shimkin[1] (October 11, 1944 - July 12, 1972) was an American war correspondent who was killed in Vietnam. He is notable for his investigation of non-combatant casualties in Operation Speedy Express.
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Contents
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Early life and civil rights work
Born in Washington, D.C., Shimkin moved with his family in 1960 to Urbana, Illinois, where his parents, anthropologists Demitri B. Shimkin (1916–1992) and Edith Manning Shimkin (1912–1984), had joined the faculty of the University of Illinois.[2] He graduated from Urbana High School in 1962,[3] then attended the University of Michigan before volunteering in 1965 to become a civil rights worker, first with the Northern Student Movement in Alabama, where he was arrested twice in Montgomery;[4] then with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. In Mississippi, Shimkin was among 140 demonstrators arrested in Natchez on October 2, 1965, and detained three days at Parchman State Prison Farm, where he and others were kept naked in cold cells with no bedding.[5] Shimkin also wrote an eight-page "Natchez Political Handbook" outlining the local political structure and the right to demonstrate.[6]
Volunteer service in Vietnam and the Ba Chúc story
I have no right to be exempt from making sacrifices overseas.
“
”
--Alexander D. Shimkin. Taken from his International Voluntary Services
application by Mike Benge and Thomas Russell and posted at [1].
application by Mike Benge and Thomas Russell and posted at [1].
Returning to his studies, Shimkin graduated with "high distinction" in government from Indiana University (Bloomington) in 1969,[7] then became a community development worker with International Voluntary Services (IVS) in Laos[8] and South Vietnam. While with IVS in Vietnam, Shimkin and another volunteer, Ronald Moreau, became sources for a New York Times story by Gloria Emerson published in January 1971 about the forced use of Vietnamese civilians by South Vietnamese officers and their American advisers to clear land mines near the village of Ba Chúc on the Cambodian border.[9] As Moreau later described the situation, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers planted mines on hillsides near the village to protect their upland positions and successfully resisted combined American and South Vietnamese air and ground attacks. Believing that the villagers knew where the communist forces had placed the mines and booby traps, the American and South Vietnamese officers forced the Ba Chúc villagers at gunpoint to use hand tools to locate and remove the mines, a task that resulted in several deaths and serious injuries among the villagers when the explosives detonated. There were also casualties from mortar attacks by the communists who wanted to disrupt the operation.[10]
After contacting Emerson, Shimkin and Moreau went with her to interview the villagers. According to Moreau, Emerson's story "had an immediate impact," causing the Pentagon to order an immediate halt to the mine-clearing operation.[10] The story also brought a halt to Shimkin's and Moreau's service with IVS, which fired them for speaking to the press without permission. According to Moreau, Emerson intervened again, getting Shimkin a job as a stringer with Newsweek and Moreau one with the Washington Post.[10] [11]
Investigation of Operation Speedy Express
Alex Shimkin opened my eyes and showed me things about the war that
I had missed even after nearly four years in Vietnam. Traveling with him
and listening to him tell me what Vietnamese in the Mekong Delta were
saying, especially when they did not know he understood Vietnamese,
was one of the most informative and powerful experiences of my life.
“
”
--Kevin P. Buckley. Quoted by Nick Turse in "A My Lai a Month," The Nation,
November 13, 2008.
November 13, 2008.
Working for Newsweek, Shimkin read documents released by the United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV). Reviewing the MACV (pronounced "mack vee") documents about Operation Speedy Express, conducted in the Mekong Delta from December 1968 through May 1969, Shimkin noticed the large disparity between the American claims of 10,899 enemy dead and the reported capture of only 748 enemy weapons. Shimkin's conclusion, based on further documentary research and on interviews with American officials and Vietnamese witnesses, was that a large number of the reported dead were Vietnamese noncombatants whose deaths, whether accidental or deliberate, were used to enhance the body count that commanders of the Ninth Infantry Division considered the measure of the operation's success.[12] [13]
Shimkin and his boss, Newsweek's Saigon bureau chief Kevin P. Buckley, produced a 4,700-word story that specifically alleged "that thousands of Vietnamese civilians have been killed deliberately by U.S. forces." [14] Pared back to 1,800 words by Newsweek editors who feared that the allegations would be seen as a "gratuitous attack" on the administration of President Richard M. Nixon following the revelations of the My Lai Massacre,[15] the story was published in June 1972 under the title "Pacification's Deadly Price," but it attracted little attention.[15] A few weeks later, Shimkin was killed.
Shimkin at Trảng Bàng
 External images |
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http://lh3.ggpht.com/_HBVKhiKXg8k/SbSnWDS-NNI/AAAAAAAAC_4/RhpxiVxczgE/6kimRunsBehBUR720506_23_33.jpg.jpeg Author Denise Chong (The Girl in the Picture: The Kim Phúc Story, Toronto: Viking, 1999, p. x.) believes that the man in this photo by David Burnett may be Alexander Shimkin. |
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http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_94MHBXuNWGg/TUDZEGUptLI/AAAAAAAAG5c/g68jWzJE-5o/s1600/Napalm%2BGirl%2B.arte_facto%2Bhereges%2Bpervers%25C3%25B5es%2B09.jpg Another photo of nearly the same scene snapped from a different perspective. Original source: Corbis. |
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http://digital.archives.alabama.gov/u?/photo,1517 Booking photo of Alexander Shimkin after he was arrested for civil rights activity in Montgomery, Alabama, in March 1965. Source: Alabama Department of Archives and History. |
On June 8, 1972, a month before he died, Shimkin was one of the journalists present at Trảng Bàng in Tây Ninh Province when photographer Nick Ut captured his famous image of the nine-year-old Vietnamese girl Phan Thị Kim Phúc and some other children fleeing a napalm attack. Two South Vietnamese Skyraider aircraft went off course and dropped the incendiary bombs near the journalists, resulting in the deaths of two children and inflicting serious burns on others, including Kim Phúc.
"Jesus! People have been bombed!" Shimkin is reported to have shouted.[16] A picture taken by David Burnett from behind Kim Phúc shows a running man with his right arm outstretched toward her. Author Denise Chong has written that the man in the picture might be Shimkin.[16] A few minutes later Shimkin was on his knees weeping and telling others,"Leave me alone."[15] [16]
Death
On July 12, 1972, Shimkin and another reporter, Charles "Chad" Huntley, became lost in Quảng Trị Province.[17] Leaving behind their Jeep, they walked into a hand grenade attack by North Vietnamese soldiers. Fluent in Vietnamese, Shimkin attempted to communicate with the attackers, but was killed. Huntley, a veteran of the U.S. Special Forces, was only slightly wounded and later attributed his survival and escape to his military training.[18] Shimkin's body was not recovered, and he was considered "missing in action" for many years.[19] Former war correspondent Zalin Grant thought he had Shimkin's grave "fairly well pinpointed" in 2002,[20] but as of 2010 Shimkin's remains had not been located.[21]
Personal interests
According to information from Shimkin's IVS application, he liked the novels of William Faulkner and Theodore Dreiser as well as reading political science and American history.[22] At the time of his death he had been accepted for graduate study at Princeton University and hoped to write the "definitive history" of the Vietnam War.[23] Shimkin's interest in military history led him to donate books on the subject to the Indiana University Library.[24]
External links
- Alexander D. Shimkin at Find a Grave
- Freedom Forum Journalists Memorial: Alexander Shimkin.
- Nick Turse accepting Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction. (Contains tribute to Alexander Shimkin.)
- Christopher Hitchens, "The Case Against Henry Kissinger" (Part One), Harper's Magazine, February 2001. (Mentions Alexander Shimkin as Kevin Buckley's "friend and collaborator.")
- Christopher Hitchens. The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Verso: New York and London, 2001, p. 32. ISBN 1-85984-398-0 (Repeats reference to Alexander Shimkin in Harper's article.)
Notes and references
- ^ Shimkin's nickname sometimes appears as "Alec," as in Lynda Zimmer, "Urbana Class of '62 reunites; alum on trail of classmates," The News-Gazette, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, July 26, 2008.
- ^ Shimkin's father was born in Siberia and emigrated with his family after the October Revolution. See Demitri Shimkin obituary, New York Times, December 25, 1992, and L. Daniel Myers, "Memorial to Demitri Boris Shimkin," Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, (17)1, University of California Merced, 1995, pp. 1-4. Shimkin's paternal uncle was cancer researcher Dr. Michael B. Shimkin (1913-1989). See Dr. Michael B. Shimkin obituary, New York Times, January 20, 1989, and Michael B. Shimkin, University of California: In Memoriam, 1989.
- ^ In Memoriam: Urbana Class of 1962.
- ^ Information that accompanies Shimkin's archived booking photo in the Alabama Department of Archives and History indicates his affliliation with the Northern Student Movement and that he was arrested on March 18, and March 22, 1965, each time for disobeying police orders.
- ^ "Urbana Youth Shivers Through Jailing, Harassment in Natchez," Urbana Courier, Urbana, IL, Oct. 7, 1965, p. 3. Shimkin was interviewed about his civil rights experience by KZSU, Stanford University's student radio station. Cassette tape and transcript, Box 3, Folder 56, Archive no. 0050, KZSU (Radio station : Stanford) Project South, SC 066, Stanford University Archives, Stanford, Calif.
- ^ Description: University of Georgia, Civil Rights Digital Library, Record Number 1111. Facsimile: University of Southern Mississippi Digital Collections.
- ^ Demitri B. Shimkin et al. (eds.), The Extended Family in Black Societies, The Hague: Mouton, 1978, p. ix. ISBN 90-279-7590-6 "Government" was the name that Indiana University used at the time for its political science program.
- ^ Laos List Alphabetic Roster: Who Was There, 1945-1975.
- ^ Gloria Emerson, "Villagers Say Saigon Perils Their Lives," New York Times, January 10, 1971, p. 1. col. 6. In 1978, Ba Chúc became the scene of further tragedy when over 3,000 Vietnamese civilians were killed there by forces of the Khmer Rouge in what became known as the Ba Chúc Massacre.
- ^ a b c Memorial website in honor of Gloria Emerson: A Letter from Ronald Moreau in Islamabad (Newsweek Magazine) Tuesday, September 28, 2004.
- ^ Ronald Moreau later became Newsweek's correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
- ^ Nick Turse, "A My Lai a Month," The Nation, November 13, 2008. Former Senator Charles Hagel of Nebraska, a veteran of the Ninth Infantry, said, "You used that body count, commanding officers did, as the metric and measurement as how successful you were...." Quoted by Washington Post reporter Patricia Sullivan in a blog posting, "A Vietnam War That Never Ends," August 5, 2009.
- ^ In a letter to The Nation in 2008, Richard Brummett, who described himself as "a hanger-on at the Newsweek office in Saigon in 1971–72," wrote: "I remember Alex Shimkin concluding from his “captured documents” that the peak killing hour was the time when school let out every afternoon in the Delta." "Letters," The Nation, December 29, 2008, p. 24, col. 1.
- ^ "Pacification's Deadly Price," Newsweek, June 19, 1972, pp. 42-43. The numbers, if not the deliberate nature of the casualties, were supported by an official U.S. Army report that concluded: "[W]hile there appears to be no means of determining the precise number of civilian casualties incurred by US forces during Operation Speedy Express, it would appear that the extent of these casualties was in fact substantial, and that a fairly solid case can be constructed to show that civilian casualties may have amounted to several thousand (between 5,000 and 7,000)." Quoted in Nick Turse, "My Lai and Lockerbie Reconsidered," The Nation, September 14, 2009.
- ^ a b c Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty: From the Crimea to Vietnam: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker, New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976, p. 400 (Ironically, both the My Lai Massacre and Operation Speedy Express took place during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson.); p. 400 (Buckley stated, "There was a flurry of low-level Congressional interest and then it faded."); p. 407. ISBN 0-15-631130-5
- ^ a b c Denise Chong, The Girl in the Picture: The Kim Phúc Story, Toronto: Viking, 1999, p. 64; p. x; p. 69 ISBN 0-670-88040-X
- ^ They were near National Route 1A, the "Street Without Joy" of the First Indochina War made famous by Bernard Fall in his book with that title.
- ^ Chad Huntley, "Newspaperman believes service training kept him from being killed," Star-News (Marine Edition), Wilmington, N.C., July 17, 1972, p. 3. The same UPI article appeared in the Chicago Tribune, July 15, 1972, under the title, "Writer Survives Grenade Attack Behind Red Lines," p. W_B27. Huntley wrote that he saw Shimkin fall during the grenade attack and then counted "about 10 rounds" of Allied artillery fire that "blew away everything in the area."
- ^ Library of Congress: POW/MIA Databases & Documents: Updated Casualty List Reference number 1899-0-01.
- ^ Zalin Grant, "The War and I, Part 3," Zalin Grant's Letters from a French Village.
- ^ See Alex Shimkin record, Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office.
- ^ Information collected by Mike Benge and Thomas Russell from IVS applications of volunteers who died in Southeast Asia and posted on the web site of Roger Young's Northwest Veterans Newsletter.
- ^ Nick Turse, "The Vietnam Exposé That Wasn't," The Nation, December 1, 2008.
- ^ e.g. John Castell Hopkins and Robert John Renison, Canada at War, 1914-1918: A Record of Heroism and Achievement, Toronto, 1919; and Herbert Wrigley Wilson, Ironclads in Action: A Sketch of Naval Warfare from 1855 to 1895, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1896. The scans of these two volumes include Indiana University Library bookplates identifying them as gifts of Alexander Shimkin.
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