(page 2 of 5) I was learning the hard way that sometimes those of us in the news business face dangers that our education does not prepare us for. No journalism school I know of teaches students how to defend themselves against brutal police, or arrest. Maybe that should be part of the curriculum – for international reporters, anyway. It is not as though we are out there, just looking for trouble, as these pictures I showed you last week suggest. No. But there comes a time in every reporter's life that the story may require a physical risk. I hope that those of you who may one day face it, will find the right way to handle it. Just remember, there are times to be bold, and times to back off. The Vietnamese Buddhist organization was opposing President Ngo Dinh Diem, the man chosen by the United States to run the country in the mid 1950s to prevent the communists from taking over South Vietnam. His selection came after the legendary communist leader Ho Chi Minh, and his armies, defeated the French colonial forces in 1954, taking over the north of the country and its capital, Hanoi. Ngo Dinh Diem was a mandarin, a nationalist and an anti-communist. These were good enough credentials for President Dwight D. Eisenhower to choose him to lead America's Southeast Asian fight. But Diem had significant drawbacks. He was an autocrat, which meant he ruled not by public approval but by proclamation. He made all the important decisions himself. And he was a practicing Roman Catholic in a country whose people were mainly Buddhists who worshipped in temples. But one of the most impressive structures in Saigon, that's the old name for Ho Chi Minh City, was the Roman Catholic cathedral in the center of town. It was built 100 years earlier by the early French colonists. The human suicide burnings began in June 1963, when an elderly monk named Thich Quang Duc stepped out from a Buddhist procession in the streets of Saigon, sat himself on a cushion and folded his legs. Two companions poured gasoline over his shaven head and yellow robes. The monk calmly lit a match in his lap and folded his hands in the lotus position as flames enveloped him. He was protesting what his Buddhist group charged were abuses by the government, including unfair arrests of monks. The AP bureau chief, Malcolm Browne, had been invited to attend the Buddhist rally, not expecting the suicide. But he took many pictures, which shocked the world and the United States Government. The Saigon Government had been increasingly critical of the few American reporters in the city, and the pictures of this suicide angered the officials further. Full censorship was imposed on our reports and our pictures.         PREVIOUS PAGE RETURN TO BIO NEXT PAGE