Hanoi Jane

Annotation

Leon Rausch - a country singer, born on 2 October 1927 in Springfield, Missouri. Early in his career he performed with the Western Swing group Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys (from 1958 into around 1965-66), as lead singer.1 In 1973 he released the Vietnam War song "Hanoi Jane" (Derrick # DRC-100) in Dallas, Texas, written by Bill Rogers. The song title referenced Jane Fonda, a famous actress and political activist who visited North Vietnam in 1972, and met with American P.O.W.s. She released a documentary in 1974 with her husband Tom Hayden (referenced in this song), called Introduction to the Enemy, which depicted their travels through North and South Vietnam. Hayden, a political activist, one of the founding members Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), played a major role in the protests outside of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, 1968. He and several others were arrested for inciting riots, and they became known as the "Chicago Seven". While in Vietnam Fonda posed in a photograph with North Vietnamese soldiers and an anti-aircraft cannon. She urged US soldiers to stop bombing North Vietnam and accused them of being war criminals. As mentioned above, she visited a select group American P.O.W.s, while also delivering 200 letters from P.O.W. families. These P.O.W.s apparently 'volunteered' to meet Fonda for a photo shoot, and many had turned against the war. When the P.O.W.s returned to the US in 1973, the government paraded a selected group of hardliners who supported the president and the war. Those that had met with Fonda were accused of being traitors and threatened with court-martial. One of them, David Wesley Hoffman, claimed that he had been "hung from a hook by his broken arm until he agreed to meet" with Fonda. On 31 March 1973, the Associate Press quoted Fonda as saying that "POWs who reported that they were tortured are hypocrites and liars". Because of these activities, Fonda became known as 'Hanoi Jane'.234 The narrator of the song strongly criticised Fonda, and wanted her to "just leave America". Then directly speaking to Fonda, the narrator said: "button up your big mouth and leave our P.O.W.'s alone". The lyrics also mentioned a "Radical Ramsey" - a reference to the former Attorney General Ramsey Clark (under President Johnson, 1967-1969), who also visited Hanoi during the conflict. As Attorney General, he had oversaw the the prosecution of the Boston Five for aiding draft resistance, including pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock and Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin. He later turned against the war.Sources1The Encyclopedia of Country Music (Michael McCall, 2012)↩2academics.wellesley.edu↩3lrb.co.uk: Operation barbarella↩4The Vietnam War: An Encyclopedia of Quotations (Howard Langer, 2005)↩

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Annotation — P.O.W. / M.I.A. Songs

Leon Rausch - a country singer, born on 2 October 1927 in Springfield, Missouri. Early in his career he performed with the Western Swing group Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys (from 1958 into around 1965-66), as lead singer.1 In 1973 he released the Vietnam War song "Hanoi Jane" (Derrick # DRC-100) in Dallas, Texas, written by Bill Rogers. The song title referenced Jane Fonda, a famous actress and political activist who visited North Vietnam in 1972, and met with American P.O.W.s. She released a documentary in 1974 with her husband Tom Hayden (referenced in this song), called Introduction to the Enemy, which depicted their travels through North and South Vietnam. Hayden, a political activist, one of the founding members Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), played a major role in the protests outside of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, 1968. He and several others were arrested for inciting riots, and they became known as the "Chicago Seven". While in Vietnam Fonda posed in a photograph with North Vietnamese soldiers and an anti-aircraft cannon. She urged US soldiers to stop bombing North Vietnam and accused them of being war criminals. As mentioned above, she visited a select group American P.O.W.s, while also delivering 200 letters from P.O.W. families. These P.O.W.s apparently 'volunteered' to meet Fonda for a photo shoot, and many had turned against the war. When the P.O.W.s returned to the US in 1973, the government paraded a selected group of hardliners who supported the president and the war. Those that had met with Fonda were accused of being traitors and threatened with court-martial. One of them, David Wesley Hoffman, claimed that he had been "hung from a hook by his broken arm until he agreed to meet" with Fonda. On 31 March 1973, the Associate Press quoted Fonda as saying that "POWs who reported that they were tortured are hypocrites and liars". Because of these activities, Fonda became known as 'Hanoi Jane'.234 The narrator of the song strongly criticised Fonda, and wanted her to "just leave America". Then directly speaking to Fonda, the narrator said: "button up your big mouth and leave our P.O.W.'s alone". The lyrics also mentioned a "Radical Ramsey" - a reference to the former Attorney General Ramsey Clark (under President Johnson, 1967-1969), who also visited Hanoi during the conflict. As Attorney General, he had oversaw the the prosecution of the Boston Five for aiding draft resistance, including pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock and Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin. He later turned against the war. Sources1The Encyclopedia of Country Music (Michael McCall, 2012)↩2academics.wellesley.edu↩3lrb.co.uk: Operation barbarella↩4The Vietnam War: An Encyclopedia of Quotations (Howard Langer, 2005)↩

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Lyrics

English: Come and listen to our story were gonna tell to you of the little bamboo prisons we were in / Don't listen to the man named Ramsey and the girl called Hanoi Jane / Both traitors to America with communistic brains / I can't understand why we let them live in America, a nation we all call the promise land / Jane called our P.O.W.'s stupid and liars / But she has communist, ignorance in her brains / Hanoi Jane, why don't you just leave America / Button up your big mouth and leave our P.O.W.'s alone / Take your husband and Ramsey and go back to Hanoi / Because baby America knows that's where you belong / Hanoi Jane is nothing but an American traitor / She's running down the soldiers who fought for this great land / She's stepping on the toes of our soldiers who suffered agony and pain / This is the big mouth for Hanoi, that we call Hanoi Jane

Notes

Derrick Records Corp. 45-DRC-100-A; "Hanoi Jane" (Bill Rogers), 2:45, Smackover (BMI); by Leon Rausch; label shows an oil derrick. [From the record sleeve and labels]

About the artist

Leon Rausch (Edgar Leon Rauch, born 2 October 1927 in Missouri; died 14 May 2019 in Fort Worth, Texas, aged 91) was an American western swing vocalist and bandleader, best known as the lead singer of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys from 1958, later leading his own New Texas Playboys, rejoining Wills for the 1973 album 'For the Last Time', and continuing with the original Playboys until their final concert in 1986; he was inducted into the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame and appeared in the 1998 film 'The Hi-Lo Country'. "Hanoi Jane", written by Bill Rogers and prompted by Jane Fonda's 1972…

Themes

Patriotic · P.O.W. · Jane Fonda · Love It or Leave It

In collections

P.O.W. / M.I.A. Songs · US 'Patriotic' / Pro-Government / Anti-Protest Songs [War Years]