Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2016 i Vietnam

A report on the health effects of Agent Orange, released in March by the Institute of Medicine, recommends that the Department of Veterans Affairs give service-related disability designation to veterans who have bladder cancer and hypothyroidism and exhibit “Parkinson’slike symptoms” but do not have Parkinson’s disease. “There is no rational basis for exclusion of individuals with Parkinson’s-like symptoms from the service-related category denoted as Parkinson’s disease,” the report stated. In 2009 Veterans Affairs added Parkinson’s to its list of diseases possibly associated with exposure to the chemical defoliant. VA officials said a working group will study the report and prepare a response to department Secretary Robert McDonald on whether Parkinson’s-like diseases should be added to the 15 diseases that already qualify Vietnam veterans for disability benefits and health care. The…

Jon Provost made his mark on American popular culture at the tender age of 7, when he played Timmy Martin in the classic TV show Lassie. Provost, who had started acting as a toddler in 1953, played Timmy for seven years (1957-64), starring with June Lockhart and Hugh Reilly as his adoptive parents. Provost left showbiz at 18 and moved to Northern California. In 2008 he wrote his autobiography, Timmy’s in the Well. Today Provost still does some acting and is an active supporter of animal rights. He has served on the board of Canine Companions for Independence for more than two decades. The red-checkered sports shirt and blue jeans Timmy wore are in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. Provost’s website is www.jonprovost.com. How he got the…

The Sympathizer, the best-selling debut novel by Vietnamese refugee and University of Southern California professor Viet Thanh Nguyen, was awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The Sympathizer is a tale of a Communist Party spy who escapes Vietnam in 1975 and goes to the United States, where he lives a double existence—as a resident and an informer. Nguyen, who escaped Vietnam in 1975 when he was 4 and grew up in California’s Bay Area, has always been fond of spy novels, he said in an interview with The Guardian. The life of the spy in his novel, who makes his way by duality and subterfuge, resonated with someone who grew up as an immigrant in America, he said. “There’s that experience of feeling between two worlds, seeing things from…

Just weeks before President Barack Obama’s scheduled first visit to Vietnam in May, Secretary of State John Kerry attended a Vietnam War summit at the presidential library for Lyndon B. Johnson in Austin, Texas. Kerry delivered the keynote address on April 27, focusing on the changes in Vietnam and its relationship with the United States. The University of Texas and the Johnson library co-hosted the summit, whose officials said the event was held to offer an honest appraisal of the war and Johnson’s role in the failure. “When the LBJ Presidential Library was first dedicated, President Johnson proclaimed, ‘It’s all here, the story of our time—with the bark off,’” said Mark K. Updegrove, library director. “In keeping with President Johnson’s vision for his library, we will take an unvarnished look…

Plantu, a French political cartoonist whose Brussels tribute went viral on social media after the March 22 attacks in Belgium, made his debut during the Vietnam War. His first published drawing, a dove holding a question mark in its beak, appeared in 1972 in the French newspaper Le Monde, shortly after Plantu, the pen name of Jean Plantureux, had started working there. The peace dove, a commentary on hopes for a resolution of Vietnam War, reflects one of Plantu’s major themes: international violence and corruption, according to France’s English-language newspaper The Connexion. He also does humorous takes on French politics. Plantu’s Brussels cartoon illustrates the solidarity between Belgium and France in the wake of the closely spaced terrorist attacks in both countries. It shows two figures embracing, one wearing France’s…

July 2 Tennis star Billie Jean King wins the first of her six Wimbledon singles championships, putting her on the path to 12 career singles titles in the four major tennis tournaments. July 11 The Newlywed Game, hosted by Bob Eubanks, premieres on ABC. It was a ratings hit with its risqué chatter about “making whoopee.” July 13 Richard Speck, right, breaks into a Chicago townhouse where student nurses are staying and strangles or stabs to death eight women, one of whom is raped. He was arrested July 17 and spent the rest of his life in prison. Aug. 1 Former Marine sniper Charles Whitman, perched atop a 28-story tower at the University of Texas in Austin, begins a shooting spree that kills or wounds more than 40 people. About…

Many Vietnam veterans had their lives and careers shaped by military, political and diplomatic actions during the war, but Colin Powell is the only one who helped shape military, political and diplomatic actions at the highest levels after the war. He served in the office of Defense Secretary Harold Brown during Jimmy Carter’s administration and in the office of Ronald Reagan’s defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger. Reagan made Powell his national security adviser in 1987. Two years later George H.W. Bush appointed him chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a position he continued to hold in Bill Clinton’s presidency until October 1993. He culminated his government career as George W. Bush’s secretary of state from January 2001 to January 2005. Powell, a City College of New York ROTC graduate commissioned…

Philip Jones Griffiths traveled the globe taking pictures, and his photos reflect the universal struggles and emotions of people everywhere. They resonate with conflict, morality, strife and alienation. In the 1960s Griffiths turned his attention to Vietnam. “You didn’t have to be a genius in ’66 to work out that there was something very important happening in Vietnam,” Griffiths said in an interview in 2007, two years before his death. Working for the Magnum photo agency, he showed the harsh realities of war in photographs that were often too controversial for Magnum to sell. Most were not seen until published in his book Vietnam Inc. in 1971. In February 2016 Griffiths’ daughter, Katherine Holden, announced that a foundation set up by Griffiths would establish an award to encourage independent photographers…

A Naval Reserve officer, David Greenway started his career as a Time magazine war correspondent in Indochina in spring 1967. “It was Vietnam that obsessed me then,” Greenway said, and he acquired a reputation for being lucky. His luck ran out in Hue during the Tet fighting in February 1968, when he was hit in the leg while helping to carry a wounded Marine. In spring 1972, Greenway found himself back in Hue during the Easter Offensive. “American combat troops were mostly gone, and it was going to be South Vietnam’s big test to see whether they could hold their own with American air and logistic support,” he said. The North Vietnamese Army launched one of its attacks along the My Chanh River after the fall of Quang Tri City.…

Blood on His Hands: JFK’S Costly Blunders The Lost Mandate of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam by Geoffrey D.T. Shaw, Ignatius Press, 2015 Although Vietnam War historians have been quick to criticize Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon for their errors in strategy, policy and judgment regarding America’s involvement in the war, John F. Kennedy often gets a “pass”—his name seldom appears on the “short list” of presidents who “lost” Vietnam. Geoffrey Shaw’s The Lost Mandate of Heaven, however, makes a solid case that Kennedy and his top advisers—particularly W. Averell Harriman’s influential State Department clique—orchestrated “a political disaster that led America into a protracted and costly war.” Shaw’s book reveals Kennedy’s disastrous blunders that may have lost the…