1306 Dorchester Avenue (Fields Corner) and 510 Washington Street (Codman Square)
Nine Vietnam veterans entered a U.S. military recruiting station in Dorchester’s Fields Corner area on the afternoon of December 30, 1971.
Using desks and filing cabinets, they barricaded themselves in the Air Force recruiter’s office; it was part of a coordinated set of actions by Vietnam Veterans Against the War at sites across the country during Christmas week. Called “Operation Peace on Earth,” its “crowning moment” was a takeover of the Statue of Liberty and the hanging of an upside-down U.S. flag from Lady Liberty’s face.
In Dorchester, members of the Boston Police Department’s Tactical Patrol Force arrived at the site within 20 minutes. Deploying tear gas, the police broke down the door and arrested the former soldiers, charging them with trespassing, property destruction, and injury to a building.
A little more than three weeks later, the veterans appeared for their trial at Dorchester District Court in nearby Codman Square. About 150 protestors organized by VVAW demonstrated in support of the “Dorchester 9” that day outside the building. Their lawyer argued that, given that courts played a role in enforcing the draft—during the war Vietnam, a large percentage of court cases dealt with conscientious objector petitions or cases of draft-dodging—military veterans opposing recruitment could not get a fair trial. Ultimately, the judge decided not to hear the case and sent it to Superior Court.
In April, a Suffolk Superior Court jury found eight of the nine guilty of willful and malicious injury to personal property and trespassing. The judge sentenced them to one year’s probation.
Dorchester was an appropriate place for one of the VVAW’s actions. As historian Christian Appy has shown, it was the type of community, with its large low-income and working-class population, from which U.S. soldiers in Vietnam came in disproportionate numbers. More than 40 years later, Dorchester demonstrates how imperial conflicts often generate significant out-migration to the country of the aggressor. The Fields Corner area is today the home of a large population of Vietnamese descent. Thus, it is more than an irony that the site of the recruiting station, at the time of its demolition in late 2016, was home to a flower shop owned by Vietnamese immigrants.
Getting there:
(To the recruiting station site) Red Line to Fields Corner Station. The building stood on the northeast corner with Linden Street. 0.5 miles (10-minute) walk.
(To the courthouse) Red Line to Shawmut Station. 0.5 miles (10-minute) walk. 0.8 mile walk from Fields Corner Station.
Nearby:
The Mather Elementary School, founded in 1639, the oldest public elementary and the first tax-supported school in the United States (1 Parish Street, Meetinghouse Hill, Dorchester).
To learn more:
- Appy, Christian. Working-class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam, Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
- Foley, Mark S. “Operation Peace on Earth” in Vietnam Veterans Against the War, 40 Years Anniversary Celebration, Chicago, VVAW Inc., 2007: 22-23; available at http://www.vvaw.org/pdf/VVAW_40th_booklet.pdfNicosia, Gerald. Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans Movement, New York: Crown Publishers, 2001.
Image: Demonstration in support of the “Dorchester 9,” Dorchester Courthouse, January 21, 1972. Credit: Ronald Donovan. Photo by Ronald Donovan, courtesy of the Boston Herald.