Vietnam Spring 2023

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Regarding “The Day America Lost the War” [Winter 2023]: in about 1651 Father Alexandre de Rhodes, a Catholic missionary, developed Quoc Ngu, an alphabet using Roman characters and accent marks to convert more Vietnamese. Traditionally the Vietnamese used the Chinese writing system. France colonized “French Indochina” in the 19th century and reformed the local education system, imposing Quoc Ngu by decree early in the 20th century. We arrived in the mid-1950s trying to communicate with people utilizing a 17th-century version of French phonetic spelling! Examples are too numerous to mention. However, the mid-1960s prime minister’s name probably should have been spelled Win Cow Key but was spelled Nguyen Cao Ky. In the immortal words of Strother Martin, “What we have here is a failure to communicate!” How can anyone ascribe…

A new memorial to honor the members of the Laotian Hmong community who fought and died for the U.S. in the Vietnam War is being planned for Westminster, Colo., a suburb of Denver. The National Lao-Hmong Memorial will commemorate the tens of thousands of ethnic Hmong in Laos recruited by the CIA who fought alongside the United States in its “Secret War” against communist North Vietnam from 1961-1975. The Hmong Special Guerrilla Group (SGU) first served as foot soldiers in the early 1960s as part of the U.S. effort to disrupt the flow of communist soldiers and arms along the Ho Chi Minh Trail into South Vietnam. In 1967, select SGU fighters trained under CIA guidance in Thailand as pilots on single-propeller T-28 fighter-bombers within the Royal Lao Air Force,…

On Oct. 26, 1971, U.S. Army Pfc. Thomas F. Green and nine others took off in a CH-47B Chinook helicopter, call sign Warrior 143, from Tuy Hoa, South Vietnam, on a supply mission to Cam Rahn Bay. The weather was expected to be bad en route, and the pilot was cautioned to stay in touch for weather updates. Ninety minutes after Warrior 143 failed to arrive at its scheduled time in Cam Rahn, search and rescue was initiated. In the week that followed, debris and four bodies washed ashore near Nha Trang, directly along Warrior 143’s flight path. It was clear the Chinook has crashed into the South China Sea with the loss of all 10 on board. Green, the Chinook’s door gunner, was not among the four bodies discovered.…

The first day of The Monterey International Pop Festival opens with The Association, a Los Angeles-based musical group known for their intricate vocal harmonies. Fellow “Sunshine Pop” band The Mamas & the Papas—members John Phillips, Michelle Phillips, Cass Elliot, and Denny Doherty, shown above—close the three-day event on June 18. The festival launches Janis Joplin to stardom, and formally introduces Jimi Hendrix to America—who is welcomed onstage by Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones as the “most exciting performer [he had] ever heard.” Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway (left) star in Bonnie and Clyde—with a distinct uptick in graphic violence, the film marks a shift in American cinema, influencing later directors such as Francis Ford Coppola and Quentin Tarantino. McDonald’s Big Mac sandwich arrives after two previous launches had failed—during…

This bowl and spoon were among the few personal items that POWs taken captive by North Vietnam were allowed to keep. No forks or knives were given to the men. POWs were malnourished and deprived of food. The food they did receive was most often putrid and dirty. According to former POW Everett Alvarez, some examples of food served to prisoners included dead birds with feathers still on, chicken heads, animal hooves in drain water, and greens drawn from the river where locals disposed of wastewater. Needless to say, the POWs became ill, either vomiting from trying to eat the so-called food or from not eating it. Many POWs lost their lives as they were starved and subjected to torture.…