Category Archives: Saigon

Operation Ranch Hand

Posted on July 7, 2020 by

Four-plane defoliant run, part of Operation Ranch Hand “Operation Ranch Hand was a U.S. military operation during the Vietnam War, lasting from 1962 until 1971. Largely inspired by the British use of 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D (Agent Orange) during the Malayan … Continue reading →

Posted in Agent Orange, CIA, John Kennedy, Lyn. Johnson, Napalm, R. McNamara, Saigon, Viet Cong, Vietnam War | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“The Idiocy of War”

Posted on June 21, 2020 by

Chinook helicopter C.J. Hughes – Aug. 2017: “Long, unpopular and ultimately a failure, the Vietnam War remained so controversial after it ended that many veterans were loath to discuss their combat experiences in the conflict for decades—even among close family … Continue reading →

Posted in Draft board, Ho Chi Minh Trail, Lyn. Johnson, Marijuana, R. McNamara, Saigon, Viet Cong, Vietnam War | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

South Vietnam Had an Antiwar Movement, Too

Posted on February 7, 2020 by

Students marching in an anti-American protest in South Vietnam, in 1965. “The year 1967 was a watershed for antiwar protest in the United States, from bold statements like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Riverside Church speech in April … Continue reading →

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What I Saw in Vietnam – H.d.s. Greenway

Posted on October 10, 2019 by

“They were burning brush, as they always do in the dry season, when my plane came in over the Vietnamese coast at dusk. Descending into Saigon, I could see fires burning below me, and in my naïveté I thought I … Continue reading →

Posted in ARVN, Lyn. Johnson, Michael Herr, R. McNamara, Saigon, Viet Cong, Vietnam War | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Vietnam, Vietnam – Pete Hamill (April 1985)

Posted on September 9, 2019 by

“Sometimes, in odd places, it all comes back. You are walking a summer beach, stepping around oiled bodies, hearing only the steady growl of the sea. Suddenly, from over the horizon, you hear the phwuk-phwuk-phwuk of rotor blades and for … Continue reading →

Posted in Cambodia, CIA, Draft board, Hanoi, Henry Kissinger, John Kennedy, Laos, Lyn. Johnson, Nixon, R. McNamara, Saigon, Vietnam War | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam by Christopher Goscha – review

Posted on September 2, 2019 by

A destroyed French tank and an aircraft propeller that are still kept as war relics in the Dien Bien Phu valley. “In 40 years, the relationship between the United States and Vietnam has swung about as widely as is possible … Continue reading →

Posted in Agent Orange, Books, Cambodia, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, Laos, Lyn. Johnson, My Lai, Napalm, Nixon, R. McNamara, Saigon, Viet Cong, Vietnam War | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How Vietnam Changed Journalism

Posted on June 8, 2019 by

The last journalists leaving Saigon in April 1975. “When I first got to Saigon as a journalist, in 1963, I took it for granted that American policy to counter Communist expansion into the southern part of Vietnam was the right … Continue reading →

Posted in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, Lyn. Johnson, Saigon, Vietnam War | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Vietnam War haunts are now for dong millionaires

Posted on April 17, 2019 by

Hotel Continental “The bars of Saigon were home for two generations of war correspondents, the reporters who covered the French and American conflicts. They offered an essential interlude between forays out of the city to the battlefields of Vietnam. Some … Continue reading →

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Vietnam, Through the Eyes of Artists – Holland Cotter

Posted on April 8, 2019 by

A detail of Leon Golub’s “Vietnam II” (1973), at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “Whatever happened to ‘protest art’ — issue-specific, say-no-to-power-and-say-it-loud art? Here we are, embroiled, as a nation, in what many in the art world regard as a … Continue reading →

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The Largest Military Construction Project in History

Posted on March 6, 2019 by

American contractors building a bridge across the Saigon River during the Vietnam War. “By late 1967, there were 485,600 American troops in South Vietnam; over the course of the war, nearly 2.6 million American service members would serve in country. … Continue reading →

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