Posted on: Friday, September 3, 2004

ISLAND VOICES

By Robert E. McGlone

The firestorm over Sen. John Kerry's war record threatens to end in maddening ambiguity.

In part, to be sure, the television ads sponsored by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are an avowed effort to destroy Kerry's reputation for truthfulness and his credibility as a prospective commander-in-chief. The acknowledged animosity of John O'Neill, retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffman and others in the group dates from Kerry's testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971 as a spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War and, more recently, to claims in Douglas Brinkley's biography, "Tour of Duty."

A detailed analysis of available sources by The Washington Post published in The Advertiser clarifies some points but leaves much in question. Here's why:

Thirty-five years after the incidents in question, memories inevitably differ. Experts in the scientific study of memory have shown that eyewitness testimony about startling events is likely to be unreliable even when memories are fresh. Over time, memories not only fade or "decay," they are subject to "interference." That is, later accounts of the same events alter the original memories.

This is because memories are not like snapshots or film clips that can be called up at will. Neurobiologists have shown that memories of personal experience are saved and later recalled in complex processes involving several areas of the brain. What we remember initially is only the gist or essence of our experiences. These fragmentary representations then become "encoded" in long-term memory in association with established memories by means of affinities of meaning. That process inevitably changes them further. They change again every time they are "retrieved" or recalled from memory under new circumstances. Moreover, similar events that occur later (or before) the one in question may alter it. In the end, we sometimes remember not so much distant events per se as what we ourselves have said or read about them.

Even images of climactic experiences and moments of historic significance are reconfigured in memory. We actually reconstruct our past as we try to remember it, and the context in which we do so has much to do with the way we dig up or assemble our memories of personal experience.

One problem is that similar experiences that occur repeatedly are stored in memory as scripts — generic summaries or codifications of routines or the rules by which everyday experiences are understood. Thus for Swift boat sailors, repeated missions up the Bay Hop River may have blurred into a script, so that, despite their best efforts, it has become difficult to distinguish episodes occurring during one mission from those occurring during another. (Try to remember a particular class meeting from your high school days or a weekly club meeting just a year ago. Unless something truly extraordinary happened on that day, you may find it impossible to do so.)

Of course events of historic significance get special encoding. But even brilliant men like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had conflicting memories of the same events. We all sometimes get our memories wrong; we even have false memories of events that did not happen to us.

Thus Sen. Kerry may be mistaken about being across the border in Cambodia on Christmas Eve in 1968. No surprise. And two of his present opponents who gave very different assessments of Kerry's performance 35 years ago may have confused their memories. No surprise.

Traumatic experiences tend to focus attention narrowly on the source of danger. For that reason, Jim Rassmann's account of gunfire from shore during his rescue is probably more accurate than the memory of men on other boats, especially those who had made similar runs up the Bay Hop River.

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have promised to air a "documentary" film in September. But just finding additional witnesses is not going to resolve the bitter partisan disputes that swirl about these memories. Even with the best of intentions, intense passions can lead us to manufacture false memories. We must hope that further actual documentary records dating from 1969 will be found, and, when properly authenticated, will help to lay this ugly controversy to rest.

Robert E. McGlone, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of history at UH-Manoa.