Note on Transliteration
The Vietnamese names follow the traditional East Asian practice that the surname is written first, then middle name, and then first name, as in Ngo Dinh Diem and Vo Nguyen Giap. Most people in Vietnam are referred to by their given names, therefore President Diem and General Giap. The exceptions are for a very few particularly illustrious persons, such as Ho Chi Minh, who was called President Ho (or Uncle Ho).
The Vietnamese names of places follow the spellings in two atlases: Tap Ban Do Hanh Chinh, Viet Nam (Vietnam Administrative Atlas) and Michael P. Kelley, Where We Were in Vietnam: A Comprehensive Guide to the Firebases, Military Installations and Naval Vessels of the Vietnam War, 1945-75. For some popular names of places, traditional well-known spellings appear in parentheses after the current spelling, such as Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).
The hanyu pinyin Romanization system is applied to Chinese names of persons, places, and terms. The transliteration is also used for the titles of Chinese publications. Names of individuals are written in the Chinese way, the surname first, such as Mao Zedong. Some popular names have traditional Wade-Giles spellings appearing in parentheses after the first use of the hanyu pinyin, such as Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai), as do popular names of places like Guangzhou (Canton).
Acknowledgments
Many people at the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO), where I have been teaching for the past seventeen years, have contributed to this book and deserve recognition. First, I would like to thank Provost William (Bill) J. Radke, Vice Provost Patricia A. LaGrow, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts Pamela Washington, Dean of the Jackson College of Graduate Studies Richard Bernard, and Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts Gary Steward. They have been very supportive of the project over the past eight years. The faculty merit-credit program sponsored by the Office of Academic Affairs and the Liberal Arts College research grant at UCO provided funding for my research and student assistants.
Special thanks to Stanley J. Adamiak, who proofread most of the chapters. Chen Jian, Richard Peters, Zhang Shuguang, and Xiaoming Zhang made important comments on the early draft. Lt. Col. Terry May worked with me on a couple of chapters before he passed away in 2003. Clary James reproduced all of the photos for the book. Dick Gilbreath, Stephanie Shaw, and Ted Smith at the University of Kentucky Cartography Lab produced the maps. Candace Carollo provided secretarial assistance. Lacey D. Bryant helped with documents processing. Several graduate and undergraduate students at UCO contributed to the book. They traveled with me to meet the veterans, transcribed the interviews, read parts of the manuscript, and sometimes worked on the bibliography. They are Lynn Brown, Maj. Phredd Evans (U.S. Army, ret.), Jonathan Freeman, Sharon Kelting, Hugh Long, Michael Molina, Senior Airman Oliver Pettry (U.S. Air Force), Xiaowei Wang, and Yang Yu.
I also wish to thank the two anonymous readers for the University Press of Kentucky, who offered many valuable suggestions and criticism. Several other reviewers at the early stage of this project, such as John Prados, also provided important suggestions. At the University Press of Kentucky, Stephen M. Wrinn, executive director, and Anne Dean Watkins, acquisitions editor, patiently guided the production of the book. Any remaining errors of facts, language usage, and interpretation are my own.
During the research and writing period over the past eight years, my wife, Tran, encouraged my interest and helped me with the contacts, interviews, and translations in Vietnam. Our two children, Kevin and Christina, got used to my working weekends, and shared with me the burden of overseas travel. I dedicate this book to them.
Introduction
The Long War
Huynh Van No was sweating as he showed us the War Remnants Museum on one of the comfortable spring days in Vietnam. Over sixty and reticent, Mr. No was not a typical tour guide in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). We worried about him after we scrambled into the underground Cu Chi tunnels. “I’m OK,” he said, “I have this problem for years.”1 As a Southerner, Huynh served as a staff sergeant in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) during the Vietnam War. After the Northern victory, the Communist government sent all the former ARVN soldiers and officers to prison or labor camps. Huynh survived seven castigating years, from 1975 to 1982, and lost his health and most everything else: his parents, three brothers, his wife, and two of his three children.2 One thing good came out of the war, Huynh joked with a complacent smile: he had learned how to speak English during his three-month training in the United States as a Battalion