Vietnam

As has been apparent all semester, Vietnam had a profound and individualized effect on vast numbers of people. When you consider the stories we have read do you think these are purely the result of people living through a war, or are there distinctive features of the Vietnam War that shaped their experience?

Dang Thuy Tram's diary Last Night I Dreamed of Peace, offered a view from the opposing side of the Vietnam War that Americans have almost never heard, either during or after the war. Originally from Hanoi, from 1968-70 she worked as a surgeon in South Vietnam where she died in combat with American forces. Military intelligence officers captured her diary and ordered it burned, but Frederic Whitehurst disobeyed this order and kept for 35 years, finally arranging to return it to Tram's family in 2005. Naturally, the Vietnamese government made use of the story of a...
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