Category Archives: Saigon

What Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” Tells Us Now

Posted on February 1, 2021 by 1960s: Days of Rage

“I first read ‘Slaughterhouse-Five‘ in 1972, three years after it was published and three years before I published my own first novel. I was twenty-five years old. 1972 was the year of inching slowly toward the Paris Peace Accords, which … Continue reading →

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Decent interval

Posted on September 24, 2020 by 1960s: Days of Rage

Henry Kissinger and President Richard Nixon discussing the Vietnam situation in Camp David, 1972. “Decent interval is a theory regarding the end of the Vietnam War which argues that from 1971 or 1972, the Nixon Administration abandoned the goal of … Continue reading →

Posted in ARVN, Books, CIA, Henry Kissinger, Nixon, Paris Peace Accords, Peace talks, Saigon, Vietnam War | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Operation Ranch Hand

Posted on July 7, 2020 by 1960s: Days of Rage

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 →

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“The Idiocy of War”

Posted on June 21, 2020 by 1960s: Days of Rage

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 1960s: Days of Rage

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 1960s: Days of Rage

“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 1960s: Days of Rage

“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 1960s: Days of Rage

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 1960s: Days of Rage

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 →

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Vietnam War haunts are now for dong millionaires

Posted on April 17, 2019 by 1960s: Days of Rage

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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