North Viet Nam: The Respite

While the South Vietnamese braced themselves to bear heavier burdens in the war, the North Vietnamese felt, at least temporarily, a great weight lifted from their shoulders. In the three weeks since President Johnson announced his partial bombing pause, life north of the 20th parallel—where 90% of the North Vietnamese live and where the U.S. has ceased attacking—has taken on a new and freer rhythm. After three years of fairly steady air strikes by U.S. planes, the North Vietnamese, though still basically too cautious to change the mode of life that they have devised to counter the air raids, have accepted the pause as a welcome breather (see following pages).

Under the threat of attack, Hanoi was a city organized to work and move at night. The shops have not changed their hours—5 to 8 in the morning, 5 to 7 in the evening—but on sunny days thousands of cyclists now jam the midday streets. The noisy streetcars are once again so crowded that passengers ride on their footboards. The tree-shaded boulevards around the Petit Lac, the garden spot in Hanoi's center, are daily thronged with strollers. The restaurants are full of people, many of them downing breaded shrimp, the favorite dish of Hanoi's residents. Each weekend, the routes in and out of Hanoi and Haiphong are jammed with parents headed for the countryside to visit their children, most of whom are encamped there for the duration, and men and women who work on the city's outskirts hurrying inward to visit friends and relatives. But the antiaircraft gunners still keep ready watch, and occasional alerts still sound, triggered by U.S. reconnaissance flights overhead. Hanoi has the mood of a city enjoying an unexpected, slightly eerie—and not quite thoroughly believable—respite.

A Rural Boon. An unusual number of Americans have been in North Viet Nam of late, able to sample the flavor of life in the Communist capital for themselves. Among them: Novelist Mary McCarthy, Harry Ashmore of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Miami News Editor William Baggs and CBS Television Correspondent Charles Collingwood. Collingwood's cameraman was French Pho tographer Roger Pic, who took the pictures on the preceding three pages after the bombing pause was announced.

The U.S. visitors report that the most visibly active man in Hanoi these days is Premier Pham Van Dong, 60, who runs North Viet Nam on a day-to-day basis for Ho Chi Minh. Neither Dong nor Ho seems likely to relax many of the arrangements necessitated by the bombing. They cannot, of course, be certain that the raids will not resume.

In addition, the decentralization of North Viet Nam's primitive industry has proved a boon to the rural economy; the factories may never be pulled back into Hanoi and Haiphong and Nam Dinh. Bringing back into Hanoi the 400,000 people who were evacuated would also raise large food-distribution problems. They were moved out in the first place not just because of the bombing but to take them to the rice areas, so that rice would not have to be shipped into the city and thus require transport that could otherwise be used for war goods. North Viet Nam has only recently solved the problem of food shortages, and Ho would not be likely to dismantle a successful system now. The North is, however, using the pause to patch up roads, rails and bridges continually hit by U.S. bombs.