A Companion to the Vietnam War

Marilyn B. Young is Professor of History at New York University. She is the author of Rhetoric of Empire: American China Policy (1969) and The Vietnam Wars (1991), winner of the Berkshire Women’s History Prize. She is the co-author of Transforming Russia and China: Revolutionary Struggle in the 20th Century (with William Rosenberg, 1980), Promissory Notes: Women and the Transition to Socialism (with Rayna Rapp and Sonia Kruks, 1983), and Vietnam and America (with Marvin Gettleman, Jane Franklin, and Bruce Franklin, 1995), and is the co-editor of Human Rights and Revolutions (with Lynn Hunt and Jeffrey Wasserstrom, 2000). Robert Buzzanco is Associate Professor of History at the University of Houston. He is the author of Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era (1996), winner of the Stuart L. Bernath Prize, and Vietnam and the Transformation of American Life (Blackwell, 1999).

About the Contributors viii

Introduction xi

1 Hanoi’s Long Century 1
Stein Tonnesson

PART 1 THE VIETNAMESE IN CONTEXT 17

2 In Search of Ho Chi Minh 19
William Duiker

3 Belated Asian Allies: The Technical and Military Contributions of Japanese Deserters (1945-50) 37
Christopher E. Goscha

4 The Realities and Consequences of War in a Northern Vietnamese Commune 65
Shaun Malarney

5 The My Tho Grapevine and the Sino-Soviet Split 79
David Hunt

6 “Vietnam” as a Women’s War 93
Karen G. Turner

PART 11 THE AMERICANS  IN SOUTHEAST ASIAN CONTEXT 113

7 Before the War: Legacies from the Early Twentieth Century in United States-Vietnam Relations 115
Anne Foster

8 Franklin Roosevelt, Trusteeship, and US Exceptionalism: Reconsidering the American Vision of Postcolonial Vietnam 130
Mark Bradley

9 Dreaming Different Dreams: The United States and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam 146
Robert K. Bridham

10 JFK and the Myth of Withdrawal 162
Edwin E. Moise

11 The Politics of Escalation in Vietnam During the Johnson Years 174
Robert Buzzanco

12 A Casualty of War: The Break in American Relations with Cambodia, 1965 198
Kenton Clymer

13 The Last Casualty? Richard Nixon and the End of the Vietnam War, 1969-75 229
Lloyd Gardner

14 Remembering Nixon’s War 260
Carolyn Eisenberg

15 America’s Secret War in Laos, 1955-75 283
Alfred W McCoy

PART 111 AMERICANS AT HOME AND ABROAD 315

16 Missing in Action in the Twenty-First Century 317
Bruce Franklin

17 African Americans and the Vietnam War 333
James Westheider

18 Mexican Americans and the Viet Nam War 348
George Mariscal

19 “They’ll Forgive You for Anything Except Being Weak”: Gender and US Escalation in Vietnam 1961-65 367
Robert Dean

20 The Antiwar Movement 384
Barbara Tischler

21 The Veterans Antiwar Movement in Fact and Memory 403
John Prados

22 Sanctuary!: A Bridge Between Civilian and GI Protest Against the Vietnam War 416
Michael S. Foley

23 Knowledge at War: American Social Science and Vietnam 434
Michael E. Latham

24 The War on Television: TV News, the Johnson Administration, and Vietnam 450
Chester J Pach, Jr.

Select Bibliography 470
Compiled by Amy E. Blackwell

Index 491