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Part of Saigon's Precocious Pitfalls

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Saigon's ,Precocious Pitfal.ls
WAR in
T HE
South Viet Nam
has brought many
changes in the way of
life for the country's
women, such as the
ones shown here in a
Saigon bar. Some have
joined up as WA Cs,
some have gone inf or
· black marketeering,
most have endure,d
increasing hardship.
Herald Ttibune
special conespondent
Beverly Deepe, in the
last of five a1·ticles,
discus.ses the boom
in bars and brothels.
By Beverly Deepe
A Special Correspondent

SAIGON.
The build-up of American
forces has produced a plethora
of bars, brothels and cheap
hotels and battalions of prostitutes.
For the young Vietnamese
woman, the soldier's needs for
"entertainment" have given
her an unprecedented chance
to reach undreamt of social
heights.
To the American and South
Vietnamese governments, the
bars and prostitutes present
not only an economic, social
and moral problem, but they
have affected the security and
political fields as well.
For instance, when Premier
Nguyen Cao KJ' recently pr&posed legalizing prostitution so
as to bring it under a measre of control, both Saigon
intellectuals and the Hanoi
·adio ,attacked him as a "pimp
for the Americans."
The almost magical opportunities for a young peasant
girl to earn a luxw-lous livelihood in the cities marks one
of the important social explosions of Vietnamese womanhood. It means emancipation
from the family, from rural
or low-class llfe and from traditional cultural values. For
many girls it may mean the
first time in their lives they
can afford to own a dress.
Young Vietnamese women
from the provinces, who a
few years ago came to Saigon
as housemaids, began recently to work as bar girls
and waitresses in restaurants.
Midqle-class Saigon housewives complain they can no
longer find maids, housekeepers and baby-sitters.
A bar girl's ambition ls to
become a bar owner-which

IN THE TUDO BAR in Saigon, American men dance with Vietnamese girls.
she calls being a businesswoman. For some, it's not
difficult. Reliable sources report that one very successful
bar girl saved one million
piastres
(roughly $10,000)
within a two-year period.
Less successful bar girls
complain, however, that by
the time they pay off the
bar owners and the police for
protection they have less than
5,000 piastres ($50) a month
left. "It's better to be a prostitute to one American man
for 10,000 piastres a month
until he goes home," one bar
girl said .
In the past three years
a transformation has taken
place on Saigon's main street,
called "Tu-Do," which means
freedom. Garish hotels, called
"short-time brothels," and
'bars have mushroomed. There
are 146 bars in one downtown
area. There are several thousand throughout Saigon.
Whatever the economic
wonderland for Vietnamese
women, the bars and brothels
plague the Vietnamese and
American governments.
Politically,
the
problem
takes on three aspects.
tilf Premier Ky goes
through with his proposal to
legalize prostitution, he would
be criticized by the Vietnamese in the urban centers.

Likewise, American officials
blanch at the thought of repercussions within the United
States.
f[In the words of one American official, "The American
GI is now competing with the
Vietnamese government soldier for two of the scarcest
commodities in the countrywomen and booze. Obviously,
the American has more money
and wins-which doesn't endear him to his Vietnamese ·
allies."
f[The American image has
been immeasurably tarnished
by the flourishing trade of
what the Communists call
"decadence." One American
official, witnessing the mad
rush of drunken GI's and
bar girls for cyclos and taxis
at the curfew hour in Saigon,
groaned "The American image
here is terrific! These poor
fellows lose the war in Saigon
but die to win it in the
provinces."
The security and intelligence side of the probl~m ls
considered as tangled as the
political.
"You must know the Viet
· Cong have ,a cell in every block
in town, in every bar and in
every restaurant," one highly
reliable security source explained. "The waiters or the
doormen or the bar girlssomeone has to be Viet Cong

or the bar would not be allowed
to exist."
One bar girl confided, "Oh,
the Americans tell us everything. They even tell us where
they'll build new airbases and
installations so we can buy up
the land in that section."
Often the American GI ls
robbed. In some cases, the GI
loses his weapon; other times
his b!llfold, including his
American mllitary identity
card. Some security officers
fear these cards are being ,
used by Communist Caucasians to penetrate American
installations.
«I Medically, one officlail said,
"There is a high incident rate
of venereal disease-and that
rate is rising, but it is not
rising as quickly as is the increase in the number of
American troops," In one random catch of 44 bar girls in
the U . S. Marine Corps enclave at Da Nang, 21 had
venereal disease.
There is no compulsory,
government-sponsored or approved medical program for
the bar girls. But in seine of
the remotest cutposts and
towns,
American
Special
Forces medics are known to
treat medically the women involved. A Vietnamese government program of medical
control is now under discussion.