POSTAGE DUE FOREVER STAMPS
This book contains twelve sets of stamps with images that cannot be found on U.S. Postal Service stamps. These include, among others, images of Vietnam’s leader Ho Chi Minh working with U.S. soldiers during WW II, images of American prisoners of war (POWs) drawn by a former North Vietnamese soldier/artist, images of Agent Orange victims, images of the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam, images of a badly burned young girl fleeing from her village which had just been napalmed, and images of Hiroshima and Ngasaki, Japan, after the U.S. nuclear bombing of those densely populated cities.
I never really thought much about the importance of how we chose what images to place on our stamps until one day in 1995, when I went to the post office and asked for an interesting stamp. The woman behind the counter handed me a sheet of the recently issued Richard Nixon stamp. This stamp was issued only twenty years after he was forced to resign in disgrace as the 37th President of the United States. Needless to say, I handed them back to her with some choice words.
Click any image for slideshow.
The next time I thought about stamps was in 1996, when I went to the philately society in Hanoi, Viet Nam, while doing research for a book on President Ho Chi Minh. Of course I found dozens of stamps with the image of Ho Chi Minh as well as many other World leaders including Vladamir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Karl Marx, Mao Tse Dung, and Mahatma Gandhi. Other stamps I found depicted Vietnamese war and sports heros, butterflies, frogs, flowers, and even a 1966 stamp depicting the shooting down of the 1,500th U. S. aircraft brought down over North Viet Nam and one with the image of Norman Morrison, the man who immolated himself outside Robert McNamara’s office at the Pentagon.
I have began to understand the real power of this little jewel which may be the smallest form of propaganda avail-able to all governments. These miniature posters travel all over the world spreading their message of the country of issue. Not only is it important what we decide to include on our stamps but possibly more important is what we chose not to put on our stamps.
Just a few days before the U.S. Post Office issued Robert Indiana’s LOVE stamp in 1973, the U.S. heavily bombed the densely populated city of Hanoi killing hundreds of innocent Vietnamese civilians.
For many summers during the 1950s and 60s my sister Karen and I, in order to escape the summer heat, would spend hours upon hours swimming and playing at Raymond Pond, Maine. On a similar hot summer day in June of 1968, Kim Phuc was playing with her two brothers in a tiny hamlet just north of Saigon when a U.S. fighter jet dropped napalm on them, killing her two brothers instantly and burning the skin off her back.
The images in this book were selected because they depict important events in American histroy which seldom appear in our historical documents. They are intended to force you think and ask questions about our history as well as our future. If we refuse or ignore to face these facts, how can we ever have a clear understanding of our history? And won’t we simply continue to repeat our mistakes? My Lai will become Abu Ghraib and on and on.
This book is printed in a limited edition of twenty-five with five artist’s proofs. Each book is numbered and signed by C. David Thomas.
All pages are printed on Innova short grain, 200 gram, natural white soft texture duo paper. All pages are printed from a Hewlet Packard Photosmart Pro B9180 using archival ink. Each book contains twelve individual pages of stamps and is presented in a black linen box handmade by craftsmakers in Hanoi, Viet Nam.