Don Luce, activist who helped end the Vietnam War, dies at 88

His relentless anti-war campaign and exposure of South Vietnam's "tiger cages" helped turn the American public and Congress against the war .

BANGKOK - Don Luce, a persistent opponent of the Vietnam War whose activism led the last American ambassador to South Vietnam to call him one of the main reasons the United States lost the war, died on November 17 in Niagara Falls, N.Y. He was 88 years old.

His death, in Niagara Falls Memorial Hospital after suffering sudden cardiac ischemia, was confirmed by her husband and sole survivor, Mark Bonacci.

Mr. Luce, a civilian aid worker, was best known for denouncing the existence of "tiger cages", where the South Vietnamese government imprisoned and tortured opponents and critics in cramped cells.

In response, the Vietnamese and American governments turned against him and he was expelled by South Vietnam in 1971.

Reporting his deportation, Time magazine said, "Don Luce is to the South Vietnamese government what Ralph Nader is to General Motors. created the Indochina Mobile Education Project, affiliated with the Indochina Resource Center, and traveled the United States to broadcast a anti-war message.

The project was part of a larger anti-war movement that Ambassador Graham Martin blamed for America's defeat in Vietnam in April 1975, turning the public against the war and leading to cuts in funding of Congress.

"The main organization, I think, is the Indochina Resource Center," he told a Congressional hearing in 1976," and I really think another major element would be the multifaceted activities of Mr. Don Luce. never seen," he added, "These people deserve huge credit for a very efficient performance."

Mr. Luce lived and worked at Vietnam since 1958, first as an agricultural specialist and later as national director of International Voluntary Services, a church-supported precursor to the Peace Corps.He was fluent in Vietnamese and culturally sensitive. country.

People who knew him then described him as always calm and discreet.

"His manners were always calm, his humor lively,” Thomas Fox, an I.V.S. colleague, said in an email. came to endure.

"Don had no rough edges. His strength - and it was enormous - came from his ability to cling to a truth and to say it larly. He was always most passionate when speaking on behalf of those who had never had this opportunity. being a supporter of a critic of an increasingly vocal opponent of the war.

In 1967, Mr. Luce and three other senior I.V.S. resigned in protest and wrote a widely published five-page open letter to President Lyndon Johnson, signed by 49 agency members, detailing their criticisms and recommendations.

"It is increasingly difficult for us to quietly pursue our main objective: to help the Vietnamese people," the letter said. "The war as it is now being fought is doomed."

After his resignation, Mr. Luce returned to the United States, where he spent a year as a research associate at Cornell University's Center for International Studies.

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