This Day in History! | Hollywood On The Potomac

“There were all sorts of great writers in Vietnam, but I want to introduce you to [photographic artist] Dorothy Fall who wrote the brilliant biography of Bernard Fall – a French journalist who was killed in Vietnam and who wrote these brilliant books about these people without joy,” said journalist Myra MacPherson at a joint authors party at her home. Bernard’s book, Street without Joy, was originally published in 1961 before the United States escalated its involvement in South Vietnam and was required reading for policymakers. It is now considered a classic. Myra’s own book, Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation is also a classic and is required reading in most universities.

On This Day in History, December 30th, 1970, the U.S. Navy transferred some responsibility to the South Vietnamese as part of President Nixon’s Vietnamization program so US troops could be withdrawn. The Vietnam War was the longest in American history and the most unpopular.

Don Blackburn was one of the authors present. All You Have Given: Meditations on War, Peace & Reconciliation is about what is possible, about looking forward, without forgetting the past. Blackburn returned to Vietnam after 37 years, as so many have. He read a passage from his book on the tragedy of war, Agent Orange and the lingering suffering: “Her name is a homeland. Her name is a river. Her name is a flower. Her name is a song. Her name is a memory. A love which parents have given her a shape, but the dioxin has robbed it. Parents have given her an intelligence, but the dioxin has robbed it. Her country is in freedom, but the dioxin still imprisons her. She lives in pain. She lives in hope. She lives in a dream. She lives in anxiety. Let us erase her pain with love. Replace her pain with happiness. Bring her a belief. Show her a future. Because she is not only the past, but also the future.”

Don Blackburn

“He covered the war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia for the AP and has written a book about a helicopter commander and his crew,” said MacPherson when introducing Michael Putzel who wrote The Price They Paid: Enduring Wounds Of War. “We were talking about the survivor guilt feeling that so many veterans feel.” She also acknowledged the authors of The People Make the Peace who as young adults in the 1960s and 1970s along with nine others worked to end the U.S. war in Vietnam.

“Independently of each other, while the United States was still at war, nearly all of them traveled to North Vietnam, risking physical harm and charges of treason back home. In 2013, they all revisited Vietnam in a trip organized by the editors of this book. The People Make the Peace presents their reflections on those experiences, providing thoughtful and well informed reflections on a war and an era that deeply affected the United States and the world.” Publishers Notes