Author Description

THE VIETNAM CONFLICT (1945-75) has been variously portrayed by western writers. One might say that it has been covered comprehensively and yet, few of these authors have fully considered the Vietnamese historical perspective. For the French, the emphasis has been on their colonial past and their defeat at Dien Bien Phu and American writers have largely concentrated on the U.S. involvement. Indeed, for many in the U.S.A., it has become a touchstone for national soul-searching. Whence... Whither... Vietnam? attempts to provide a Vietnamese perspective and a deeper insight. As this translator sees it, the Vietnam Conflict was but part of a broader crisis that started some time in the Spring of 1945, when the double yoke of French colonialism and Japanese imperialism during World War II caused the starvation of the first child in the Red River Delta, foreshadowing a famine that would, within months, cost hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives and create a readiness to challenge the status quo. Indeed, in the years that followed, I was to witness many cataclysmic events, including the collapse of the colonial regime, the disintegration of the Imperial administration and its replacement by Ho Chi Minh's revolutionary league, France's futile attempt at reconquest and the redirection of a grubby colonial war into a Communist vs. Nationalist struggle, Vietnam's partition and the ensuing creation of the Viet-cong rebellion by Hanoi, Washington's crude hijacking of the Nationalist cause, the loss of America's innocence and the betrayal of an ally and finally, the Fall of Saigon in 1975. The American phase of the Vietnam War may have ended then and there but the Vietnamese nation's predicament did not. After celebrating victory by sending 2,000,000 Southerners to the Gulag, Ho's heirs broke their promises of national reconciliation and gradual reunification in favour of establishing a Stalinist state. They then installed a client reg