Welcome Home Vietnam War

When the American soldiers returned home from World War II in 1945, they were greeted as heroes in the United States. Cities and towns across the country held parades to honor the returning veterans and recognize the sacrifices they had made. But for the soldiers of Vietnam, coming home was a tragic time. They came back to find the United States torn apart by debate and protests over the Vietnam War. There were no victory parades or welcome home rallies, instead most Vietnam soldiers returned home to a country that viewed them as the enemy. The anti-war movement began mainly at college campuses, involving students and faculty, but it also included famous artists. These movements represented a shift in the relationship between political leaders

Thousands of people were not going into service when called by the Selective Service Act. They wanted to overwhelm the federal court by having so many people being prosecuted for not going into war. When the soldiers returned home, not a single one was greeted with a "thank you", or a "welcome home". A very sad quote from Alan Cutter, a Vietnam veteran, is "My tour of duty in Vietnam ended in August of 1972. I flew back to my family in Maine; they were glad to see me, but none of them even said thank you or welcome home. Even if they had, I wouldn't have known how to respond." This is a very sad quote because the soldier families had nothing to be thankful for, they were fighting a war they didn’t need to be fighting. The soldiers didn’t even know what to say even if they did say thank you. In the year of 1968, over 50 million American home had televisions in their household. Around 6 p.m, the evening news had an average of 11 million viewers. For the first time in history, any American with a television could view the absolute devastation of the war. On January 30th, 1968 the Tet Offensive happened and marked a major turning point in media's coverage of the

The Vietnam War was given the nickname the television war because of the impact televised media had on how Americans viewed the war. The media played a key role in providing momentum for the anti-war movement. It covered the protests, movements, and sit-ins taken by the groups opposed to the Vietnam War. After the Tet Offensive, media coverage of the Vietnam War became mostly negative. Pictures of civilian and military deaths were being covered more and more. For some reason reporters started mostly covering loses of the United States instead of the battles it won. This in turn made more people hate the war. As the Vietnam War became more and more ugly on the television, the amount of people who supported it decreased dramatically. Under a ton of pressure, the government had to eventually make a decision, a decision that everyone wanted them to make for a long time. In 1969, President Nixon began to implement the Vietnamization policy and gradually withdrew U.S. troops from Vietnam. At the beginning of 1970, the media coverage of the Vietnam War in the United States started to