Word: pagoda
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Buddhists. But by his preoccupation with South Viet Nam's pagoda politics, the President has given the dangerous impression that the effort against the Viet Cong is also in disarray...
...Hour of the Tiger just before dawn, when Buddhist monks and nuns rise from their pallets to make their first obeisance, a portly, 55-year-old nun named Thich Nu Thanh Quang appeared in front of the Dieu De Pagoda in South Viet Nam's ancient capital of Hue. Removing her wooden-soled sandals, she sat down on the cement. While a Buddhist photographer took pictures, fellow Buddhists reverently emptied the contents of an American five-gallon jerrican of gasoline over her. She struck a safety match, and flames roared 20 feet into the air, until only...
...Meter, 20, agrees. After his tour as a 101st Airborne infantryman, he stayed on to take pictures. "A photographer has to be where the action is," he says. But for all the danger in the field, Van Meter found his scariest moments two weeks ago in the Tinh Hoi pagoda incident at Danang (TIME, June 3). "When you're out in the field, you always know there's your side and the other side. In Danang, I didn't have either side. The street stuff is ten times more dangerous than any jungle...
Hastening the End? The government forces did not attack the pagoda that night. There was no need to. Hopelessly surrounded and outgunned, its besieged defenders surrendered the next day, led by a paratroop captain who laid his carbine down at the foot of a tough young government colonel and saluted. That ceremonial gesture signaled an end to the city's nightmare of hysteria...
Danang's peace was probably hastened by the newsmen's harrowing experience the night before. If the Buddhist-inspired rebels had been planning a last-ditch stand in the pagoda, they would have done so only if they could have been certain that the press -and world opinion-would blame the Ky forces, and not themselves. When the reporters departed, so did the Buddhists' will to fight...