Tiger Force

A True Story of Men and War

By Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss

Drill sergeants and even officers used a litany of slurs to describe the people of Vietnam: gooks, dinks, and slant eyes. Boot camp even included an exercise in which soldiers carrying rifles with bayonets would charge targets and, with every thrust of the blade, scream the word “gook.”

Unbeknownst to many soldiers but not to Wood – the Army had been carrying out a subtle but powerful indoctrination program that was insidiously dehumanizing the enemy, stripping them of any human qualities, and thus making it easier for soldiers to kill them. In warfare, that’s not unusual, but in Vietnam, it had been a growing problem. Not all soldiers had been attempting to distinguish between Vietnamese combatants and noncombatants. “They all look alike,” as the saying goes.