Mother Reads Daughter's Vietnam Diaries... 35 Years Later
A US soldier saved Doctor Dang Thuy Tram's diaries after she was killed in the Vietnam War and, after all these years, her family read them for the first time.
Eighty-two-year-old Doan Ngoc Tram fell to her knees and sobbed Wednesday when for the first time she held all that remains of her daughter's life: two diaries written before she was killed during the Vietnam War.
With hands trembling, the mother of former North Vietnam surgeon Dr. Dang Thuy Tram drew one of the diaries to her heart. Three other daughters stood behind, gently stroking her hair as they dabbed their own tears.
Doan Ngoc Tram read from the diaries but did not speak during a brief ceremony at Texas Tech University, which maintains the largest Vietnam War collection outside government control. The ceremony marked the end of a 35-year effort by a U.S. soldier who now lives in North Carolina to put the diaries into the family's hands – a process that began after he defied orders to destroy them.
"It is a very holy story," Dang Hien Tram, one of Dang Thuy Tram's three younger sisters, said through an interpreter. "This is my sister's spirit, my sister's soul."
Dang Thuy Tram treated soldiers in field hospitals in South Vietnam during the war. She recorded her thoughts on combat, family, politics and other subjects using a blue fountain pen, meticulous cursive and handmade diaries. One was made from a cardboard medical supply carton.
"My dear parents, the daughter that you have loved since she was small has not stopped living, but has a very practical life with many aspects: love, hatred, faith, and sadness," reads an entry from July 6, 1968. "It's a life filled with blood, tears, sweat, and also victory despite the thousands and thousands of hardships. Do you believe that I can get through this?"
She goes on to make a "precious promise" that she will. He final entry comes June 20, 1970. Two days later, she was killed in a gunbattle with U.S. troops, according to a military incident report. She was 27.
Before Wednesday her family had already read the content of the diaries, which have been published in Vietnam and will remain at the Lubbock center, but this was the first opportunity to actually feel the diaries.
The diaries found their way into the hands of Fred Whitehurst, a soldier who during the war destroyed captured items that weren't considered useful to intelligence personnel.
He got the first of the diaries in 1969, a short time after the doctor eluded capture during a raid. The second came to him shortly after her death. The Army interpreter recognized the diaries as written by the same woman, said Whitehurst, now an attorney from Bethel, N.C.
Whitehurst was ordered to burn the diaries, but the interpreter urged him not to.
"He said 'Fred, don't burn these, they've already got fire in them,'" Whitehurst recalled in a telephone interview. "It became obvious that these diaries not be lost, that they get home to her family."
From there Whitehurst set out to find the doctor's family, enlisting the help of other servicemen who helped him check with hospitals the doctor had been associated with.
Years later, Whitehurst finally donated the diaries to the center in March. About a month later, officials at the center located the doctor's mother.
Whitehurst traveled to Vietnam in August to meet the family and was immediately taken in. He was publicly thanked by the prime minister.
"Everywhere we went we were welcomed," Whitehurst said. "We brought a child home. It was surreal how welcomed we were. And it said to Vietnam, 'Americans are not evil.'"
Reuniting the diaries with the family is another step of reconciliation between the two countries, said James Reckner, director of Tech's Vietnam Center that began in 1989 with a handful of letters from U.S. veterans but has grown to 20 million pages of documents.
One of her daughters agreed that Wednesday's ceremony was an important step.
"I am very emotional when I see these diaries," Dang Kim Tram, the youngest daughter, said through an interpreter. "We hope that this occasion will bring us together closer. I hope that the young generation will understand the values of the war era and we try to avoid the next war."
(Source: AP)
Story from Thanh Nien News
Published: 06 October, 2005, 12:48:58 (GMT+7)
Copyright Thanh Nien News
