Jane Fonda will appear on Oprah’s Master Class on April 7 to give another interview, but it was her last video from the show that has surfaced again and struck nerves from her actions in Vietnam never long dormant.
On January 8, 2012, almost forty years after her infamous trip to Hanoi in 1972 when she was photographed sitting on a military weapon laughing with North Vietnamese soldiers, Ms. Fonda did the reflective interview on Oprah’s network (Own) and she told of a meeting many years ago with Vietnam vets where she apologized again for her actions. Her take away was that empathy is revolutionary and listening is imperative to healing.
It was not the first time Fonda has apologized for her infamous trip and the photographs taken while she was there. The event happened on the last day of her visit. She was tired and looking forward to getting back home. Everyone was singing in Vietnamese and before she knew it, she was singing along as best she could and she sat down on a missile launcher as photographs were being snapped. She realized later that it was most likely a propaganda setup and she knew it was a mistake on her part, but she was a young idealistic activist fighting against the war and had no idea how much the picture and her speeches would define the rest of her life.
There were no US planes in the area and the missile launcher was inoperable, but Fonda knew it wouldn’t make any difference. The stunt earned her the nickname “Hanoi Jane,” which is still used by vets to this day.
“I made one unforgivable mistake when I was in North Vietnam, and I will go to my grave with this,” Jane Fonda said on the Oprah Winfrey Network as quoted in Under the Radar. “I was an adult. I take responsibility for my actions."
In a 1988 interview with Barbara Walters, the Oscar winning actress made the distinction between her actions surrounding the photograph, which she still regrets—and her activism against the US government to stop the war and end the killing—which she doesn’t regret. Still Fonda used the opportunity to apologize again to veterans for her misguided actions that directly hurt them:
I would like to say something to men who were in Vietnam, who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of things that I said or did. I was trying to help end the killing and the war, but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless about it and I’m very sorry that I hurt them. I will go to my grave regretting the photograph of me in an anti-aircraft gun, which looks like I was trying to shoot at American planes. It hurt so many soldiers. It galvanized such hostility. It was the most horrible thing I could possibly have done. It was just thoughtless.
Jane Fonda’s actions in Hanoi happened a long time ago, but to many veterans of the Vietnam war, it was like yesterday and most still think of her as a traitor and a communist criminal, as demonstrated by a ton of derogatory comments left on any article covering the event.
In 2005, while Fonda, 75, was at a book signing event for her memoir My Life so Far, a Navy veteran of Vietnam was arrested for spitting chewing tobacco in her face.
Over forty years later, Jane Fonda, who was married to Ted Turner for ten years, still considers herself an activist and feminist, doesn’t expect that everyone involved will ever forgive her, but she has spent the rest of her life trying to contribute positive things to society, including being on the board of organizations like Women’s Media Center, protesting the Iraq war and violence against women.
Ironically, Fonda won her second Academy award in 1978 for the Vietnam veteran movie, Coming Home, co-starring Jon Voight.
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