Jane Fonda: Hanoi Jane photo was a 'huge mistake'

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jan/20/jane-fonda-hanoi-jane-photo-was-a-huge-mistake

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Jane Fonda has once again expressed regret over the infamous ‘Hanoi Jane’ picture taken of her during the Vietnam war.

“It hurts me and it will to my grave that I made a huge, huge mistake that made a lot of people think I was against the soldiers,” she said at a personal speaking engagement in Frederick, Maryland. Protestors had massed outside the event with copies of the photo and signs reading “Forgive? Maybe. Forget? Never.”

The series of photos were taken during Fonda’s visit to Hanoi, where she met with North Vietnamese troops, and was pictured sat on an anti-aircraft gun being used to target American planes. There was outrage at the pictures and Fonda was branded a traitor, but she has frequently expressed regret for them.

Related: Vietnam war: classic AP photographs - in pictures

One protestor told the Frederick News Post, “She got Americans killed ... and she went to Vietnam to advance her husband’s career.” Fonda added that she understood this anger, and that she often met with veterans to discuss it: “I’m a lightning rod. This famous person goes and does something that looks like I’m against the troops, which wasn’t true, but it looked that way, and I’m a convenient target.”

In a lengthy blog on her own website in 2011, she gives her side of the story. “I hardly even thought about where I was sitting. The cameras flashed. I got up, and as I started to walk back to the car with the translator, the implication of what had just happened hit me. ‘Oh my God. It’s going to look like I was trying to shoot down U.S. planes.’ I pleaded with him, ‘You have to be sure those photographs are not published. Please, you can’t let them be published.’ I was assured it would be taken care of. I didn’t know what else to do.”

She also debunks myths about her trip in the blogpost, saying that “the lies distort the truth of why I went to North Vietnam and they perpetuate the myth that being anti-war means being anti-soldier”.