In Thich Quang Duc, the monk that set himself afire in Siagon I find facts totally different. What is the Japanese translation of 釋 ?

2018-06-23T17:51:31-04:00

The Chinese word 釋 has also been translated into Japanese. I can not find the Japanese characters for this word or even the real meaning. BUT, that is not the issue, just a small bit. Here is what I want to talk about:

Evidently, Thich Quang Doc did not immolate himself as a protest to the war between North and South. Thich Quang Duc was angered by the heavy-handed government treatment of the Buddhists. Duc had decided on self-immolation ......
The rest of the story is found here: https://books.google.com/books?id=qBybCK8NjkEC&lpg=PA291&pg=PA291#v=onepage&q&f=false

Historical Dictionary of Ho Chi Minh City

Offering a concise overview of Ho Chi Minh City’s history and development, the ‘Historical Dictionary of Ho Chi Minh City’ presents a comprehensive historical survey of the city in the form of an alphabetical list of keywords and names, with accompanying definitions. Both well-researched and authoritative, the volume draws upon a wide range of modern sources, and contains an introductory essay about the city, a chronology, a list of acronyms...

Response by MAJ Ken Landgren made Jun 23 at 2018 6:02 PM

2018-06-23T18:02:40-04:00

I googled 釋 and got the response of "release". I can only imagine the reaction of the American people when they saw the iconic pictures of self immolation and the nude girl burned by napalm.

Response by SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth made Jun 23 at 2018 6:14 PM

2018-06-23T18:14:06-04:00

Excellent history share brother.

Response by Sgt Private RallyPoint Member made Jun 23 at 2018 6:17 PM

2018-06-23T18:17:45-04:00

PVT Mark Brown What you found is correct. He killed himself as a protest to the way that Buddhists were treated.

Response by Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen made Jun 23 at 2018 6:40 PM

2018-06-23T18:40:01-04:00

Everything I remember was that he was protesting treatment of Buddhists in Vietnam, not the war.

Response by SGT Michael Thorin made Jun 23 at 2018 6:59 PM

2018-06-23T18:59:10-04:00

Excellent share brother, my uncle had told me about this when I was 12. He knew the reason and would get moderately upset when he would hear people say otherwise.

Thank you for the share PVT Mark Brown . COL Mikel J. Burroughs,Maj Marty Hogan,SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth,LTC Stephen F.

Response by SCPO Morris Ramsey made Jun 23 at 2018 6:59 PM

2018-06-23T18:59:30-04:00

I remember this event!

Response by Cpl Scott McCarroll made Jun 23 at 2018 8:23 PM

2018-06-23T20:23:33-04:00

PVT Mark Brown, I wish you well in finding out more about the character. One thing that you have to remember, and I took Japanese when I was with 3rd Tank Bn. There is like 4 different dialects. And sub-dialect. So what I learned on Okinawa, stood out like a sore thumb when I went TDY to Mt. Fuji.

Response by Sgt Wayne Wood made Jun 23 at 2018 8:33 PM

2018-06-23T20:33:07-04:00

None of the Buddhist protests (immolations etc) were protesting the war per se... it was always about the Catholic minority (french colonial holdovers) treating the Buddhist majority like shit.

Anybody telling you different is full of shit.

Response by SSgt Brian Brakke made Jun 23 at 2018 11:01 PM

2018-06-23T23:01:34-04:00

Excellent reminder of what lengths people will go to when they feel wronged.. :(

Response by LTC Stephen F. made Jun 23 at 2018 11:23 PM

2018-06-23T23:23:31-04:00

Thank you for sharing PVT Mark Brown yes Thich Quang Duc was angered by the heavy-handed government treatment of the Buddhists.
President Ngô Đình Diệm was an interesting South Vietnamese politician who became President with the help of the USA. Later, the USA backed away from supporting Diem in part because he was heavy handed in treatment of South Vietnamese minorities including Buddhists.
Background from http://allthatsinteresting.com/thich-quang-duc-burning-monk
When the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc burned himself alive on the streets of Saigon on June 11, 1963, it sparked a chain reaction that changed history forever.
His act of protest was on the front page of papers in almost every country. For the first time, the word “Vietnam” was on everyone’s lips when, before that day, most Americans had never even heard of the small southeast Asian nation hidden away on the other side of the world.
Today, the “Burning Monk” photograph of Thich Quang Duc’s death has become a universal symbol of rebellion and the fight against injustice. But as famous as the photo of his death is, only a handful of people, at least those in the West, actually remember what Thich Quang Duc was protesting.
Instead, his death has been reduced to a symbol — but it was far more than that. It was an act of defiance against a corrupt government that had killed nine of its own people. It fueled a revolution, toppled a regime, and may even be the reason that American entered the Vietnam War.
Thich Quang Duc was more than a symbol, more than the “Burning Monk.” He was a man who was willing to give up his life for a cause — and a man who changed the world.
Buddhist protesters pull on barbwire in a conflict with the police. Saigon, South Vietnam. 1963.
Thich Quang Duc’s story starts on May 8, 1963, at a Buddhist celebration in the city of Hue. It was Phat Dan, the birthday of Gautama Buddha, and more than 500 people had taken to the streets waving Buddhist flags and celebrating.
In Vietnam, however, this was a crime. Though upwards of 90 percent of the nation was Buddhist, it was under the rule of a Roman Catholic, President Ngo Dinh Diem, who had made it a law that no one could display a religious flag.
Grumbling voices across the country were already complaining that Diem was discriminating against Buddhists, but on this day they got proof. Just a few weeks before, Diem had encouraged Catholics to wave Vatican flags during a celebration for his brother, a Catholic archbishop. But now, as Buddhist filled the streets of Hue with flags of their own to celebrate Phat Dan, Diem sent in the police.
The holiday turned into a protest, with a growing crowd coming out to demand equal treatment for Buddhists. The army was brought out in armored carriers to keep the peace, but things got out of hand.
Soon they’d opened fire into the crowd. Grenades were thrown, vehicles were driven into the crowd. By the time the crowd had dispersed, nine were dead — two of them children who had been crushed to death under the wheels of armored personnel carriers.
Thich Quang Duc sits calmly as a monk pours five gallons of gasoline on his head. Saigon, South Vietnam. June 11, 1963.

On June 10, Malcolm Browne, the Saigon bureau chief for the Associated Press, got word that “something important” was going to happen outside the Cambodian Embassy. He believed it.

Things in South Vietnam had been heating up since the massacre. The Buddhists had issued a list of five demands that called for religious equality and justice for the dead, and he knew that they were ready to do anything to make life better in South Vietnam.

Browne met Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk who had spent three years living in total isolation as a holy hermit in the mountains of Vietnam, at a pagoda in the city. He followed him and a procession of 350 monks and nuns as they made their way into the center of the city and Duc sat down on a simple cushion in the middle of a busy Saigon intersection.

A five-gallon petroleum can was in Thich Quang Duc’s car. As he sat on the cushion, his legs crossed as if he were in deep meditation, one of the monks took it out and poured every drop over the monk’s head. Coated in gasoline, he remained the picture of serenity, rotating the beads around his neck and chanting a prayer to Amitābha Buddha.

“I realized at that moment exactly what was happening,” Browne would later say. He started snapping pictures as fast as he could.

Though no one had noticed it until then, Thich Quang Duc had been holding a match in his hand. The last words of his prayer left his mouth, and then he lit the match. He dropped the match onto his own robes and, in an instant, his whole body was engulfed in flames.

The crowd broke into a panic. The sound of people’s screams was pierced by a monk yelling into a microphone, “A Buddhist priest burns himself to death! A Buddhist priest becomes a martyr!”

The fire department was trying to make their way through the crowd. They were shouting at each other desperately, arguing about how to put out the fire without killing Duc. But they would never get the chance to try. The monks laid down in front of their wheels, risking their lives to keep them from saving Thich Quang Duc’s.

Only one person was calm: Thich Quang Duc himself. “He never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound,” a witness recalled, even as his body burned. For 10 minutes, he was nothing but a burning match on the ground. Then, finally, his body collapsed.

“I don’t know exactly when he died,” Browne later said. “He never yelled out in pain.”

The Raid On The Pagoda
Monks Making Funeral Chants
Manhai/Flickr
Monks in the pagoda chant funeral prayers for Thich Quang Duc. Saigon, South Vietnam. June 11, 1963.

When the fire died out, the monks covered Thich Quang Duc’s body with yellow robes, put it in a wooden casket, and carried it back to the pagoda.

The body of the “Burning Monk” didn’t leave alone. Though Thich Quang Duc had arrived with 350 men, a crowd of more than 1,000 followed the body away from the scene — some monks, some civilians, and some even police officers who’d been moved to abandon their posts.

At the pagoda, his body was cremated. By 6:00 p.m., the pagoda was surrounded by police. They came in armored vehicles, rifles in their hands and riot gear on their bodies, and swarmed the monks inside. Thirty-six were dragged out, arrested, and charged, in the end, with holding a prayer meeting on the street.

But it was already too late. Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation photograph was already on its way to the United States. Malcolm Browne had already sent the photo off to be transported by what he called a “carrier pigeon” — an undercover passenger on a plane smuggling out his roll of film. By the morning, Thich Quang Duc’s burning body would be on the cover of papers around the world.

The “Burning Monk” photo would change the course of history – but even it, Browne would later say, was nothing compared to the experience of actually being there. The “Burning Monk” photo was missing, he said, “the smell of gasoline and diesel and the smell of burning flesh”, and, with it, “the wailing and misery of the monks” that filled his ears.

The “Burning Monk” Photograph That Changed The World
Malcolm Browne In Saigon Office
Manhai/Flickr
Malcolm Browne, on the right, helps a fellow AP photographer while he examines a photo reel. Saigon, South Vietnam. April 3, 1964.

For all his eloquence, John F. Kennedy’s first response to seeing Thich Quang Duc’s burning body was much simpler. Reportedly, when the “Burning Monk” photo landed on his desk, the president only spit out the words “Jesus Christ!”

Suddenly, Vietnam’s problems weren’t just their own. This was an international incident.

President Diem, originally, had planned to do little in response and simply hope that the Buddhist crisis would die down — but the Americans wouldn’t stand for it. The U.S. ambassador to Vietnam started putting pressure on Diem to meet the Buddhists’ demands, while Secretary of State Dean Rusk directly threatened to public renounce him if he didn’t do it.

Diem bowed to the American pressure — but for many, it wasn’t enough. It was widely believed that he had no plans to go through with his promises to deal with the Buddhist crisis. Furthermore, his own family’s callousness to Thich Quang Duc’s death kept the people against him. Rumors even got out that Diem’s sister-in-law, Madame Nhu, had joked that she would “clap hands at seeing another barbecue show,” and many believed that Diem agreed.

Diem proved the doubters right. He sent his special forces into the pagoda where Thich Quang Duc’s ashes were kept in order to steal the dead man’s remains. Two monks escaped with the urn that held what was left of the man himself, but the special forces got away with the bigger prize: Thich Quang Duc’s miraculously unburnt heart.
The dead body of President Diem lies in the back of a carrier. Saigon, South Vietnam. 1963.
After the “Burning Monk” immolation, President Diem’s days were numbered. Vietnamese nationalists led by General Duong Van Minh started plotting to overthrow him, and the United States backed them up. General Minh met with CIA operatives who encouraged him and promised they wouldn’t get in his way.
Diem wouldn’t live to see the New Year. On November 1, 1963, Minh and his co-conspirators attacked. There was little resistance. Only a handful of people still supported Diem enough to stand in their way.
Diem and his brother tried to escape through an underground passage hidden in their Catholic church, but they didn’t get far. They were found before sunrise, dragged into the back of an armored carrier, and shot dead.
With a single spark, Thich Quang Duc had helped topple a government.
As the war began, images of Vietnam became a regular part of American life. February 13, 1968.
Today, the “Burning Monk” photograph is remembered as a symbol of rebellion and resistance — but perhaps it means more than that. Thich Quang Duc’s burning body was more than just a symbol. It was the spark that, according to one of Kennedy’s advisors, “set in motion a series of crises” that ended up bringing America into the Vietnam War.

North Vietnam capitalized on the chaos following the immolation and the overthrow of Diem. Ho Chi Minh responded to Diem’s death by saying, “I can scarcely believe the Americans could be so stupid,” and the conflict between the two countries ramped up. In less than two years, America would enter the war in Vietnam.

Copy Cat Buddhist Monk
Wikimedia Commons
Another monk follows in Quang Duc’s footsteps and immolates himself on the streets of Saigon. Saigon, South Vietnam. October 5, 1963.

Elsewhere, Thich Quang Duc sparked something in people around the world. Five more monks in Vietnam would follow in his footsteps, burning themselves alive in protests.
And even on the other side of the world, five Americans would immolate themselves in protest of the Vietnam War that Thich Quang Duc had inadvertently drawn them into. Those protests would have an impact, too, and in time, America would pull itself out of the war in defeat.
It’s a chain reaction whose effects are still being felt today, all started by a single spark lit by a monk sitting on a cushion in the streets of Saigon. Deliberately or not, Thich Quang Duc’s death changed more than just one life. It changed the whole world.
After this look at Thich Quang Duc, the “Burning Monk,” explore the stories behind the other iconic photographs of the Vietnam War era: the Saigon execution photo and the scared child known as “Napalm Girl”.
Mark Oliver
Mark Oliver is a writer, teacher and father whose work has appeared on The Onion's StarWipe, Yahoo, and Cracked, and can be found on his website."
Thank you for mentioning me SGT Michael Thorin
Image: 1963-06-11 Thich Quang Duc Burning Monk.jpg

FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen C. LTC Orlando Illi Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj William W. "Bill" Price CPT Jack Durish Capt Tom Brown MSG Andrew White SFC William Farrell SGT Private RallyPoint Member Sgt Albert Castro SSG David Andrews Sgt Randy Wilber Sgt John H. CPL Dave Hoover SPC Margaret Higgins SrA Christopher Wright PO1 William "Chip" Nagel

The Full Story Of The Burning Monk Who Changed The World

Would America have even entered the Vietnam War if not for one strike of a match?

Response by SPC John Waisman made Jun 24 at 2018 12:10 AM

2018-06-24T00:10:55-04:00

Horrible way to protest.

Response by MSgt Danny Hope made Jun 24 at 2018 9:49 AM

2018-06-24T09:49:23-04:00

Looks like the Japanese pronunciation is " Ozo Mashi" which is a statement to express shock at someones actions that are particularly vile or nasty....it's a comment that is rarely used in public.