Interview with David Lamb, author of Vietnam, Now: A Reporter Returns

After six years as a wartime reporter in Vietnam, David Lamb left the country in 1975 just days before the fall of Saigon. He had decided to put the war behind him, but twenty years later when the Los Angeles Times asked him to return to Vietnam to open the paper's first peacetime bureau, he couldn't resist the opportunity to return. The story of Lamb's experiences with two Vietnams-- the embattled and the post-war-- are told in his new book Vietnam, Now: A Reporter Returns.

Lamb's book also coincides with his wife Sandy Northrop's documentary Vietnam Passage: Journeys from War to Peace, which chronicles the stories of six Vietnamese, whose lives took divergent directions both during and after the war. Lamb's on-air narration links the stories together and bring viewers into present-day Vietnam. The documentary premieres nationally on PBS May 23rd at 10pm as part of the Due East series celebrating Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. For more information about the documentary, see PBS's website .

David Lamb's travels as a foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times have taken him to more than 120 countries and to all seven continents. He has covered the Vietnam War, the Iranian revolution, the overthrow of Idi Amin in Uganda, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the African famine and the Rwanda massacres, the Persian Gulf War, the popular uprising in Indonesia in 1998, the anarchy in East Timor in 1999, the war on terror in Afghanistan and many of the other major stories of the past two decades. His reporting has been nominated eight times for a Pulitzer Prize. AsiaSource spoke with David Lamb about his experiences in Vietnam and how he hopes to help change perceptions of the country.

You are the first newspaper reporter who covered the Vietnam War to open a bureau in peacetime Vietnam. Like many Americans, you had bitter memories of your war experience. What made you want to return?

I was never hooked by the war. I left in 1975 when Saigon fell and I really put the war behind me and got on with my life. But I was always intrigued with Southeast Asia and what had happened to Vietnam when the war ended. To go back and to really bookend my career 30 years later was far too tempting and compelling to resist. I was just excited by the idea of going to Vietnam and discovering a country that I had never learned about at my first go around as a war correspondent.

During the war I was stationed south of the DMZ in South Vietnam, but I spent most of time out in the bush as a battle front correspondent. The main office was in Saigon but the greatest part of my time was in the Northern part of South Vietnam. The second time around I was based in Hanoi, which was also an added kick because of the thought of living in "the enemy capital" was very exciting. But in this most recent stint I traveled all over the country both north and south.

Can you tell me about your new book Vietnam, Now: A Reporter Returns? One reviewer says that the book has put a face back on the Vietnamese people. Was that one of your major goals for the book? How do you hope it can help change perceptions of Vietnam?

One of my goals was definitely to write about the human dimension of Vietnam. When I was there the first time during the war I had Vietnamese acquaintances but I never really made Vietnamese friends. I wanted to share with readers what the Vietnamese themselves have gone through because of the war. We [Americans] are so obsessed with our own pain from the war that we have never looked at the suffering of the Vietnamese who lost 3 million people in that war. So part of my intent was to try to humanize the country and I hoped in doing so it would perhaps help Americans put the war behind them and move us toward a process of healing and reconciliation.

You narrate and host the documentary Vietnam Passage: A Journey from War to Peace that airs on PBS this month in honor of Asian Pacific Heritage month. The film examines an interesting and diverse group of Vietnamese citizens before and after the war. How did you and Sandy find the six Vietnamese profiled in the documentary? Was it difficult to access footage and historical records?

The documentary was basically done at the same time as the book. Although Sandy films different people than I wrote about, I think our themes are very similar. The documentary and the book ride each others coat tails because Sandy and I certainly share similar beliefs about what should happen to the American-Vietnamese relationship. Sandy wanted to put a face on Vietnam in film as much as I did in the book.

Sandy gets all the credit for the research. It was strictly because of her gumshoe detective work talking to a lot of people that she got a list of close to 100 potential people to characterize in the film. She narrowed that list down to six people after extensive interviews. She wanted six people whose backgrounds were very diverse. One was a Viet Cong spy, one became a boat person and went to the U.S., one was a woman who had put her children on a plane to the U.S. and had not seen them for 16 years. All of these people were in Saigon in 1975 and they are all back there now. For each of these six people, remarkably enough, Sandy found archival footage and that was a combination of hard research and good luck.

You talk about how you experienced two Vietnams, one during the war and one during peacetime. You had the opportunity to be closely acquainted with Vietnam again while for many Americans the war is the only aspect of Vietnam they know or care about. What do you think of the media's portrayal of Vietnam in American news, movies, and popular culture?

I think generally the portrayal of Vietnam in media, particular as Hollywood has done it, is absolutely dreadful. It is portraying American G.I.s as drug crazed maniacs and Vietnamese as deceitful despicable people, the North Vietnamese at least, and the images are basically disdainful of the South Vietnamese. Hollywood in general has done a great disservice to both the American GI's role in the war as well as the country itself.

But this is changing. When that slew of Vietnamese movies came out, I thought the best movie was Good Morning Vietnam, which was the only one that I thought came close to the heart and soul of what Vietnam was like then. But I thought movies like Platoon were right out of the filmmaker's imagination. As time goes on, the images are changing and with some distance we can look at the country with clearer eyes. My book and Sandy's documentary I hope make a contribution in that direction of portraying Vietnam the country not the war.

Unfortunately in the news there is no coverage of Vietnam. I have been back almost a year now and I can't think of when the last time I saw a staff written Vietnam story in any of the major newspapers. The foreign press corps in Vietnam is very small. I don't think it is more than 15 people now. The only newspaper that has a full-time correspondent there is the San Jose Mercury News, which is the Knight-Ridder paper. When I left Vietnam the L.A. Times moved our Southeast Asia bureau to Jakarta and closed our Hanoi bureau. So the bottom line is with everyone who is covering Southeast Asia being so busy covering Indonesia or being pulled out to go to Afghanistan or Israel, Vietnam is not a newsy place.

How do the Vietnamese perceive Americans? Do they have a similar fixation with its "American War" as the U.S. has with its "Vietnam War"?

The Vietnamese have gotten over what they called the "American War" in a far better way than how we have tried to get over what we call the "Vietnam War." They have really put it behind them while we keep going to the mourning wall, the Vietnam Memorial. They have really moved on and I think a prime reason is that they realized that if they are rooted in the past then it is simply going to retard the economic development that they want so desperately. For the Vietnamese we were really a small blip in their history. They fought the Chinese for thousands of years, the French for over hundred, and they were occupied by the Japanese during World War II. Americans have basically come and gone in a decade. It is interesting that at a time when we are having so many problems in the world, in the Middle East and elsewhere, Vietnam, our former enemy, is truly a country that is reaching out for genuine and legitimate friendship with the United States. It is really a very refreshing change from the attitudes we see in so much of the world.

The U.S. has had a harder time getting over the war for many reasons. The war was such a traumatic experience for the country and it was the age of innocence lost when a whole generation came of age. Many people in the United States cannot stand the idea of a Communist flag flying over Vietnam and it drives them crazy. This is one of the reasons some of the people on Capital Hill and the old GIs can't get over it. If Vietnam had said "We see the light and are now democratic and capitalistic," I think all these hostilities in the United States would be over.

You mention in your book how one of the things that surprised you about Vietnam's first post-war generation was how apolitical and accepting of tradition they are. Can you explain in greater detail your impressions of the younger generation in Vietnam and their attitudes toward their country and toward America?

I was very impressed with this first post-war generation we now see coming of age in Vietnam. These kids in their 20's and early 30's are a whiz kid generation that thirsts for knowledge. They are so industrious and want to know about the world, but they really don't give a hoot about Communism and politics. If you asked them "Are you Communist?" they would probably answer "yes," but what they really mean is that they are nationalists. In Vietnam, nationalism and patriotism are closely allied with the thought of Communism, so much so that the word "Communism" is almost nonpolitical to the younger generation.

They are intrigued with the United States and its culture, educational opportunities, and freedoms but at the same time they are deeply respectful of the country's traditions. If power eventually gets handed over to them, as it must at some point, I think that Vietnam will take off and be one of the mini economic tigers of Southeast Asia.

You mention in your book that you see Vietnam becoming a freer and more open society. What makes you think this? What do you think are the greatest political and economic challenges facing Vietnam now?

It is certainly freer than it was and it is headed in the direction of increased freedoms but the country is certainly not at a point yet where we see total freedom, including freedom of speech and expression of religion. But the government, however timidly, is just not going to be able to turn back. The path has been established. They have so far to go economically. The government is scared to death of relinquishing power and of really turning loose this industrious post-war generation who is inquisitive and asks why things happen. It will probably take another generation before we see really meaningful changes toward what we call freedom in the West being firming rooted in Vietnam, but I am absolutely convinced it is happening.

You have spoken with many Vietnamese during your time in the country as a journalist. Who was your favorite interview with and why?

My favorite interview I did was with one family who had been split by the war. In the mid 1950's, one of the young boys was sent North by his family, who lived in the DMZ in South Vietnam. He stayed in the North and became a member of the Communist party and is a prominent doctor in Hanoi to this day. His two brothers joined the South Vietnamese army and the mother, who is now in her 90's, still lives just south of what was the DMZ. I joined this family for their family reunion. I came down from Hanoi with the doctor as he caught up with his two brothers who had fought for the South and his elderly mother. It was truly a moving experience to be with these people who had been separated by the war and were now reunited by peace, even though they live hundreds of miles away from each other. I think that of all the things I did during my four years in Vietnam that was the one that stands out in my mind because it was the very symbol of what had happened to Vietnam itself, a country divided by war and now reunited by peace.

Interview conducted by Cindy Yoon of AsiaSource.