Who is Mike Hastie?
Mike Hastie is an American photojournalist campaigning against war. He is a Vietnam War veteran and a retired registered nurse from Portland, Oregon, United States.
Hastie was born to a military family in Washington, D.C., USA, where his parents met. His father, a U.S. Army officer stationed mostly in Virginia, USA, retired in June 1956.
Upon arriving in the Vietnam War, Hastie witnessed homicides, suicides and heroin addiction within his own unit. He later regretted joining the military.
After the Vietnam War, Hastie became an antiwar activist and a veteran member of Veterans for Peace‘s Chapter 72 in Portland. He has spoken for the group all over the U.S.
On July 26, 2020, Hastie was one of the thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters who gathered in Portland. Before dawn, he confronted heavily armed U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents wearing camouflaged military gear and lined up outside the federal courthouse in downtown Portland.
While Hastie was sharing his views on law enforcement in front of the agents, one federal officer suddenly approached him and dispensed pepper spray into his face.
Hastie was on the first Veterans For Peace delegation that got sent back to the U.S. after trying to enter Jeju island, South Korea with a goal to stand with the people of Gangjeong village against the construction of the Jeju Navy base, which currently serves as a port-of-call for U.S. warships. Here are 10 more things about him:
- He was born in 1945.
- From February 1947 to May 1949, he, his older sister and their parents lived in Yokohama, Japan.
- From 1953 to 1955, he and his family lived in Heidelberg, Germany.
- In 1969, he joined the U.S. Army.
- In 1970, he was deployed to Vietnam where he served as an army medic for the 1st Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment.
- In February 2015, he wrote about the film “American Sniper” on the Veteran’s For Peace website.
- In March 2017, he wrote about the 49th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre in Quang Ngai Province, Vietnam on Counter Punch.
- In January 2019, he was part of a video series called “Ask a Vietnam Veteran Anything,” which was published on We Are Not Your Soldiers. His photo essay “Lying is the Most Powerful Weapon in War” was published on Vietnam Full Disclosure.
- On July 26, 2020, after being pepper-sprayed in Portland, he told the agents that he confronted, “We committed atrocities every single day in Vietnam. I stood next to a ditch in Vietnam and we murdered 170 Vietnamese people and you guys don’t know that.”
- On July 27, 2020, he told Oregon Live, “There is no rest for the messenger until the message has been delivered. That is my task as a Vietnam veteran who knows the truth about what the United States did.”
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