But to Kim’s great disappointment, the meetings with Western journalists did not stop. During her first week of medical school, she was summoned from her classroom once per week for interviews in Tay Ninh, a province northwest of Ho Chi Minh City. The man who initiated these interviews was a Communist official in his late 50s named Hai Tam. He was undereducated, with only two years of formal schooling, but had been rewarded for his loyal support of the Communist cause during the war with this high-level job.
Each week Tam would invite Western journalists to his office, where he would lecture them on Socialism before allowing them to interview Kim. After each reception, Tam took Kim aside and angrily corrected her on whatever he believed she had said incorrectly. He told her she could say anything about her napalm wounds but nothing that might be perceived as negative about Vietnam’s current government.
After each session, Kim had to find her own transportation from Tay Ninh back to Ho Chi Minh City. Once she asked Tam if she could hitch a ride with the foreign journalists. Tam refused, and Kim knew better than to ask again.
By November, the interviews had increased to twice per week. The minders—that is, the men in charge of collecting Kim for the interviews—were rude and inconsiderate. Sometimes they made her sleep on a cot outside Tam’s office the night before an interview. Kim became increasingly anxious about all the classes she was missing. She did her best to borrow notes from fellow students, but she couldn’t make up necessary hours spent in the laboratory, clinics, and hospitals.
She tried to protest, but it did no good. She asked one journalist why they were all so interested in her story. “You are ‘hot’ news,” he said.
Finally, the inevitable happened. The dean of the medical school told her she would have to drop out.
Heartbroken, Kim pleaded with him to change his mind.
It was impossible. The officials in Tay Minh claimed Kim had become too important and that Ho Chi Minh City was no longer safe for her, he said.
Kim went to see Tam, and he confirmed her suspicions: he had been behind the dean’s decision.
“You cannot go to Ho Chi Minh City to study,” he said. “You are an important victim of the war. I want you here. Your job is to answer the telephone and type for me.”
Kim tried to run away, but when Tam threatened to harm her parents, she went along with his wishes. Interested in learning English, she signed up for a language course in Ho Chi Minh City, but her parents, sinking under ever-growing taxes, couldn’t afford to pay her tuition.
The interviews became more frequent. One of the journalists who came to see her was Perry Kretz. Kim was glad to see him again, but she lied about what she was doing, as she did to all the journalists. Tam had ordered her to pretend she was still a medical student. A Dutch film made at the time actually showed her in a classroom with other medical students. In reality, Kim avoided her fellow students as much as possible; they were now beginning their second year of studies, and she didn’t want to be overwhelmed with jealously.
They have destroyed my life. Why do they do this to me? Why? Kim asked herself one day.
Her physical and emotional health were both deteriorating, but she couldn’t receive the specialized care related to her scar tissue—which still caused intense intermittent pain and exhaustion—because her family wasn’t Communist. But perhaps she could do something about her growing depression, she thought. Longing to feel happy again, she tried to seek a oneness with God through a renewed devotion to the faith she was raised in—Caodai, a Vietnamese religion that combines elements of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. But her acceptance of her current situation—perhaps the result of sins in her past lives, she thought—and her intense prayers did nothing to alleviate the downward spiral of her emotions. So she went to her library and carefully studied a variety of texts from different religions. She eventually converted to Christianity, discovering in it the inner peace she had been craving. Then she prayed for someone to rescue her. Perry Kretz came immediately to mind.
She wrote him a letter asking for help, knowing very well that if the letter fell into the wrong hands, she and her whole family might be arrested.
Perry received her letter and said to his publishers, “We’ve run her picture and done stories on her many times. Why don’t we do something for her?”
The Vietnamese government allowed him to take Kim to Germany, where she received several operations that greatly eased the pain from her scar tissue.
During this visit, Kim became famous all over again. At a reception at the Vietnamese embassy in Germany, she trusted a kind-looking official with her story, how she was being forced to live a lie. He put her in touch with Vietnam’s prime minister, Pham Van Dong, a kind man, he said, who had been a personal friend of Ho Chi Minh.
When Kim returned to Vietnam and met Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, he took pity on her and had the government pay her tuition to study English in Cuba. While there Kim fell in love with another Vietnamese student, Bui Huy Toan. They married in 1992 and planned to spend their honeymoon in the Soviet Union. But when their plane stopped in Canada to refuel, Kim and Toan remained behind, seeking—and gaining—asylum in that country.
Kim was finally free.
In 1997 she was named a goodwill ambassador for UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. That same year, she created the Kim Foundation International, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide medical and psychological care to children in war situations.
LEARN MORE
Fire Road: The Napalm Girl’s Journey Through the Horrors of War to Faith, Forgiveness & Peace by Kim Phuc Phan Thi (Tyndale Momentum, 2017).
“The Girl in the Picture: Kim Phuc’s Journey from War to Forgiveness” by Paula Newton, CNN, June 25, 2015, www.cnn.com/2015/06/22/world/kim-phuc-where-is-she-now/index.html.
The Girl in the Picture: The Story of Kim Phuc, the Photograph, and the Vietnam War by Denise Chong (Penguin Books, 2001).
Kim Phuc Foundation website, www.kimfoundation.com.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
IT WAS THRILLING TO WRITE a book that put me in direct contact with so many history makers. My gratitude to the following women for our clarifying and rewarding communications: Geneviève de Galard de Heaulme, Le Ly Hayslip, LCDR (Ret.) Bobbi Hovis, Jurate Kazickas, Anne Koch Voigt, Xuan Phuong, Kay Wilhelmy Bauer, and Tracy Wood. Many thanks to the Buckley family for providing the images of Lynda Van Devanter and to the Vietnam Women’s Museum in Hanoi for providing images of Dang Thuy Tram.
I was completely overwhelmed when Diane Carlson Evans agreed to write the foreword, and I get chills every time I read it. Thank you, ma’am, for your wartime service and all you’ve done for women veterans since.
The following people—all cognizant adults during the Vietnam War—were kind enough to offer me their valuable time, answering a multitude of questions and reading portions of the book: the brilliant and well-read Bob Blomquist, who reviewed the general introduction; Brian Flora, Vietnam veteran and retired diplomat, who read all the introductory materials; and Dr. Robert Messer, associate professor emeritus of 20th-century history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who reviewed the entire manuscript and who, I’m very proud to say, pronounced it an A– before his corrections.
Chicago Review Press, thank you for your enthusiastic green light. Specific gratitude to: Lisa Reardon, for skillfully helping me launch the proposal; Lindsey Schauer and Ellen Hornor, for their brilliant editorial suggestions; and Sarah Olson, for her beautiful cover design.
GLOSSARY
Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) The fighting force allied with the Americans against the Vietnamese Communists, who were waging guerrilla warfare in the South against them.
Democratic Republic of Vietnam The name Ho Chi Minh gave to Vietnam when he declared its independence from France on September 2, 1945. When the nation split in two, this is what the Northern half was called until 1976, when the North and South were of
ficially united under the name the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
Indochina A term created in the early 19th century to describe a geographic location later referred to collectively as Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
National Liberation Front (NLF) A political organization founded in 1960 to overthrow the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) and its allies in order to unify the nation.
North Vietnamese Army (NVA) A term created by the Americans to distinguish these Northern soldiers from the People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF), known to their enemies in the South as the Vietcong (VC). The actual term for the NVA was Quain Doi Nhan Dan Viet or the People’s Army of Vietnam, the same term used to refer to the army of present-day Vietnam.
People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) or Quain Doi Nhan Dan Viet Nam The name of the army of present-day Vietnam. During the First (French) Indochina War, it was referred to by outsiders as the Vietminh. During the Second (American) Indochina War, it was referred to by the Americans as the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).
People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF) The fighting force of the National Liberation Front (NLF), this was the official name of the Vietnamese Communists in the South who were fighting against the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and their American allies.
Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) The government created by the National Liberation Front on June 8, 1969, in order to provide Southern Communists with a diplomatic presence at the peace talks. When the Vietnamese Communists defeated the Army of the Republic of Vietnam on April 30, 1975, the PRG became the provisional government of South Vietnam until it merged with North Vietnam the following year to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
Republic of Vietnam The state that existed south of the 17th parallel in Vietnam from 1955 to 1975.
Socialist Republic of Vietnam The name of united Vietnam since 1976.
Vietcong (VC) Short for Viet Nam Cong San, or Vietnamese Communist, this was a derogatory name for the soldiers of the People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF). The term was created by their enemies in the Southern government, the Republic of Vietnam, to distinguish them from the Vietminh, who were respected by the Vietnamese people for defeating the French during the First Indochina War.
Vietminh An abbreviation of Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh, the Vietnam Independence League, a fighting force that existed briefly in the 1930s but was revived in 1941 to organize resistance to the French and Japanese occupiers.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
“I want to rail”: Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History—the First Complete Account of Vietnam at War (New York: Viking, 1983), 100.
1.1 million Communist combatants: Encyclopedia Britannica, s.v. “Vietnam War,” www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War.
2.5 million Vietnam veterans: Tom Valentine, “Vietnam War Veterans,” the Vietnam War, April 7, 2014, http://thevietnamwar.info/vietnam-war-veterans/.
58,000 American Vietnam War veterans: Encyclopedia Britannica, s.v. “Vietnam War,” www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War.
PART I: 1945-1956
“All men are created equal”: “Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam,” History Matters, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5139/.
“will of heaven”: Frances Fitzgerald, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), 24.
“twice sold our country”: “Declaration.”
“You can kill”: Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History—the First Complete Account of Vietnam at War (New York: Viking, 1983), 183.
Ninety thousand French soldiers: Karnow, Vietnam, 188.
XUAN PHUONG
“The Japanese have”: Phuong Xuan and Danièle Mazingarbe, Ao Dai: My War, My Country, My Vietnam (New York: EMQUAD International, 2004), 50.
“From this day”: Xuan and Mazingarbe, Ao Dai, 53–54.
“French soldiers”: Xuan and Mazingarbe, Ao Dai, 58.
“Why are you crying?”: Xuan and Mazingarbe, Ao Dai, 106.
“Nothing we had heard”: Xuan and Mazingarbe, Ao Dai, 129.
“The atmosphere”: Xuan and Mazingarbe, Ao Dai, 131.
“We work one”: Xuan and Mazingarbe, Ao Dai, 134.
“Why are you living” … “Phuong, why don’t you”: Xuan and Mazingarbe, Ao Dai, 142.
“I never could”: Xuan and Mazingarbe, Ao Dai, 148.
“You people have”: Xuan and Mazingarbe, Ao Dai, 163.
“No, I want to look” … “What have all”: Xuan and Mazingarbe, Ao Dai, 167.
“for the good”: Xuan and Mazingarbe, Ao Dai, 174.
“I had spent”: Xuan and Mazingarbe, Ao Dai, 237.
GENEVIÈVE DE GALARD
“From the air”: Geneviève de Galard, The Angel of Dien Bien Phu: The Sole French Woman at the Decisive Battle in Vietnam (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2010), 39.
“I felt as if” … “The shelling lasted”: Galard, Angel, 56.
“care for and stay”: Galard, Angel, 57.
“performed miracles”: Galard, Angel, 61.
“What do you know?”: Galard, Angel, 76.
“when wounded, the toughest”: Galard, Angel, 62.
“Every time you walk”: Galard, Angel, 63.
“the soul and mind” … “that astonishing offer”: Galard, Angel, 78.
“Geneviève has earned”: Galard, Angel, 80.
“terrifying noise” … “The battle was now”: Galard, Angel, 82.
“I shared with” … “The fighting would cease”: Galard, Angel, 83.
“were all close to tears” … “strange silence”: Galard, Angel, 84.
“columns of French prisoners”: Galard, Angel, 85.
approximately 9,000: Martin Windrow, The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2006), 624.
300 miles away, the other 450: Windrow, Last Valley, 638.
3,900 of the original 9,000: Windrow, Last Valley, 647.
“Since you speak”: Galard, Angel, 86.
“Were you scared?”: Galard, Angel, 111.
“I haven’t earned this honor”: Galard, Angel, 119.
“have suffered so much”: Galard, Angel, 141.
Excerpts from Geneviève de Galard, The Angel of Dien Bien Phu: The Sole French Woman at the Decisive Battle in Vietnam (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2010) used by permission of Naval Institute Press.
PART II: 1957-1964
90 percent: Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History—the First Complete Account of Vietnam at War (New York: Viking, 1983), 227.
1,500 US military personnel: George G. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996), 62.
“barbeques”: Herring, America’s Longest War, 106.
LE LY HAYSLIP
“French come”: Le Ly Hayslip with Jay Wurts, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman’s Journey from War to Peace (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 3.
“even the friendly”: Hayslip, Heaven and Earth, 3.
“Freedom is never”: Hayslip, Heaven and Earth, 30.
“Do these things”: Hayslip, Heaven and Earth, 33.
“Your children need”: Hayslip, Heaven and Earth, 37.
“that traitor”: Hayslip, Heaven and Earth, 35.
“We are the soldiers”: Hayslip, Heaven and Earth, 37.
“whining and flapping” … “The may bay chuong-chuong”: Hayslip, Heaven and Earth, 43.
“After a while”: Hayslip, Heaven and Earth, 69.
“Where did you”: Hayslip, Heaven and Earth, 77.
“Didn’t we arrest”: Hayslip, Heaven and Earth, 80.
“Are you so smart”: Hayslip, Heaven and Earth, 201.
Excerpts from Le Ly Hayslip with Jay Wurts, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman’s Journey from War to Peace (New York: Doubleday, 1989) copyright © 1989 by Le Ly Hayslip and Charles Jay Wurts. Used by permission of Doubl
eday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved.
BOBBI HOVIS
“[The] waterways appeared”: Bobbi Hovis, Station Hospital Saigon: A Navy Nurse in Vietnam, 1963–1964 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1992), 14.
“anti-American feelings”: Hovis, Station Hospital, 15.
DUONG DUONG: Hovis, Station Hospital, 33.
“From the day”: Hovis, Station Hospital, 32.
“The demand for”: Hovis, Station Hospital, 40.
“At intersections”: Hovis, Station Hospital, 58.
“I have never”: Hovis, Station Hospital, 61.
“He proceeded to”: Hovis, Station Hospital, 64.
“The abnormal was”: Hovis, Station Hospital, 65.
“There’s all kinds”: “Coup in Saigon: A Nurse Remembers,” Navy Medicine 88, no. 6 (November–December 1977): 16.
“tree limbs snapping”: Hovis, Station Hospital, 78.
“uneasy” … “could explode”: Hovis, Station Hospital, 83.
“The hourly news”: Hovis, Station Hospital, 83.
“showered with flying”: Hovis, Station Hospital, 84.
“Ironically”: Hovis, Station Hospital, 84.
“the clank, clank, clank”: “Coup,” 20.
“were blackened” … “pounding headaches”: Hovis, Station Hospital, 86.
“had holes”: Hovis, Station Hospital, 86.
“assassination”: Hovis, Station Hospital, 91.
“the war effort”: Hovis, Station Hospital, 93.
Courageous Women of the Vietnam War Page 17