"Where is my child?" - An indictment of war by Joan Baez

Nearly 42 years ago, on May 19, 1973, the famous singer Joan Baez released her latest album, Where are you now, my son?. This album is considered an important chapter in Joan Baez's musical life because it is not only a collection of new songs but also an extremely strong anti-war message.

Baez spent 13 days "on the field" in Hanoi right at the opening of the US Linebacker II bombing campaign, carpet-bombing Hanoi, Hai Phong, Thai Nguyen...

Billboard, in its review a week before the album was released, said that “this is a very uncomfortable musical-poetic work to listen to.” Because this is a haunting indictment of war that Joan Baez wants to convey to the listener clearly and strongly.

Halfway around the world

Joan Baez was touring the eastern United States in early December 1972 when she received a call from Cora Weiss, head of the International Liaison Committee for Peace Organizations (ILCOP). Weiss wanted to invite Joan Baez to join a delegation to visit Hanoi. This was an invitation from the Committee in Solidarity with the American People. At that time, Joan Baez was considered the leader of the anti-war movement, and her songs always opposed the senseless war in Vietnam.

The trip consisted of just four people: Joan Baez; World War II general Telford Taylor; civil rights activist Michael Allen; and Vietnam veteran Barry Romo.

Joan Baez’s arrival in Hanoi at that time was considered a special event. During a press conference on December 13 at JFK Airport, Joan Baez said that she wanted to meet people on the other side of the front line and to see for herself the brutality of the war. All major news agencies reported this in full and they were waiting for Joan Baez to return.

After flying several flights and receiving a passport in Laos, on December 15, 1972, Joan Baez and her friends arrived at Gia Lam Airport, Hanoi. And she could not believe that, just a few days later, this airport was devastated by B-52 bombing.

Cover of Joan Baez's 1973 album, Where Are You Now, My Son?

Christmas to remember

“Out of 13 days in Hanoi, 11 were bombed. This was the result of the “hardest decisions” President Nixon had to make during his term. The Christmas bombing that year was the heaviest bombing in world history,” Joan Baez recalled in her memoir.

But Joan Baez was met with uninvited, unorthodox smiles. “Everyone knew that an American in Hanoi at that time had to be a pacifist,” Joan Baez said, and she was welcomed wherever she went. “We saw everyone, everyone staring into the camera. We saw Vietnam in thousands of newspaper articles every day, men lying with bullet holes in their bodies, lying dead in the fields.” But there were other images that Joan Baez never saw. The people of Hanoi welcomed them as friends and protected them when B-52s began bombing Hanoi on December 18, 1972, not far from where they were staying, the Hoa Binh Hotel (now the Metropole).

The first day of Hanoi, Joan Baez welcomed them in the rain, with “bomb craters flooded with rainwater” and bicycles bent over the cratered streets, “seemingly not knowing where to go,” Joan Baez wrote. And the following days were filled with torrential rain.

They went, saw, lived like a Hanoian during the war. They saw an entire village without a single person. They went to Kham Thien, witnessed the suffering of mothers who lost their children, the scene of devastation, saw with their own eyes the white wreaths at Bach Mai Hospital... They had to go down to the Hoa Binh Hotel shelter repeatedly. There, they were scared when they heard the air raid siren (my heart beat twice as fast as normal - Joan Baez) and then from fear, they became angry. There, right on the balcony of the Hoa Binh Hotel, Joan Baez sang anti-war songs, right when the bombs were falling. She and her friends refused to go down to the shelter. Joan sang from the time the siren went off, the electricity went out, until the "flock of hawks" retreated, the electricity came back on, she still sang. Singing Pete Seeger's "Nothing Can Move Us" songs, singing about drunken soldiers returning from the Vietnam battlefield (Sam Stone, composed by John Prine)...

And there were tears. Joan Baez recalled that as she sang Sam Stone, her fellow veteran Barry Romo seemed to tense up, as if buried sins from the past were being unearthed.

Where is my child?

Where Are You Now, My Son? is not a title Joan Baez came up with. It is the lament of a mother who lost her only son on the night of the Kham Thien massacre. That question haunted Joan Baez.

Returning to the US, in addition to the recorded images, Joan Baez also brought back 15 hours of audio recordings of the sounds of Hanoi during those fierce days. And part of that was skillfully included by Joan Baez in the album of the same name released in May 1973.

Where Are You Now, My Son? takes up the entire second side of the album, nearly 22 minutes long, opening with an air raid siren and footsteps running into a shelter. The song consists of 12 verses with the repeated refrain “Where is my son?”. Interspersed between the verses are audio recordings from the field in Vietnam. There are shocking quotes inserted, such as “Right here, two people died, their bodies are still being searched for” or Barry Romo’s on-site narration saying that he was hearing bombs very close by… The sound of falling bombs was also recorded, although the recording quality was not good, it still gave the feeling of sitting right in the shelter. The voices of mothers who lost their children, the cries, the laughter of hope after each bombing, the singing of the Saigon Uprising Choir, were inserted to create a very strong auditory response.

The album cover also tells a very meaningful story when Joan Baez decided to use a photo of herself standing in front of Hoa Lo Prison, where American prisoners of war were held. The photo was taken on December 19, just one day after Operation Linebacker II began. On the back, there is an image of a child playing in a flower garden.

Where Are You Now, My Son? made a splash in 1973 and made it to the Billboard charts. But for Joan Baez at the time, the album's success only mattered if it spread and made more people understand the horrors of war.

And with all her love, she dedicates this album to the Vietnamese people.

According to TT&VH