Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Ìý

By David K. ShiplerÌý

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Saigon fellto the North Vietnamese army 50 years ago today, yet “wars never end,â€� saysNguyen Phan Que Mai, an eloquent novelist and poet who has kept alive thebeauty and suffering of her native Vietnam.

She was speaking recently inWashington, DC, alongside the photographer Peter Steinhauer, who was captivatedin childhood by pictures of Vietnam taken by his father, a US Navy oral surgeonstationed in Danang during the war. As an adult, the son traveled there, thenlived there, and has made part of his profession the of thecountry’s landscapes and architecture. Marc Knapper, the current US ambassadorto Vietnam, is the son of a Vietnam War veteran.

And so it goes, through multiplegenerations. Vietnam does not release you easily. For Vietnamese who fled intoexile, the natural pull of the homeland’s culture remains. For many Americans,too: Vietnam is still embedded in their lives, whether they went to fight thewar or to write about it, to profit from it, to study it, or to oppose it bygiving benevolent aid.

I am among those who have carriedVietnam with me all these years. My new novel, ,is inspired by a Vietnamese translator who gave me essential help when Ireported for The New York Times. It is dedicated “to those who interprettheir countries� wars for audiences who watch from safety.� Interpreters,“fixers,� are behind every story you read or hear or see.

Like many interpreters, my semi-fictionalcharacter flies above the political categories imposed by wars. He translateswords and interprets his culture. “I give the words true meaning,� he says. AsNorth Vietnamese tanks approach Saigon, he must choose whether to leave for safetyin the US or stay at risk in his beloved country—a choice made every day by peoplein upheavals across the globe.

My late wife, Debby, used to saythat Vietnam was her favorite of our overseas assignments. Her creation ofEnglish-language classes for children slated for adoption by American familiesbrought her warm friendships with Vietnamese teachers—and with the kidsthemselves. We came to love a nine-year-old boy whose mother wanted him adoptedso he could get an education in America, as she told the adoption agency. Morethan a decade later, when I was asked to give a commencement address atMiddlebury College, I got to hand Jonathan Shipler his diploma. It was a highpoint in my life.

I know an aging ex-Marine in Mainewhom I’ve never seen without his Vietnam Vet baseball cap. At Bangor airport,veterans used to form welcoming lines for troops coming home from Iraq. Theywere not going to let those young Americans be vilified.

But some others who fought inVietnam won’t talk about it. They won’t revive the trauma, drawing a curtain ofsilence across the pain and often through their families. Such an account cameto me some years ago in a stunning vignette composed by a student in a writingworkship I taught in Nebraska. Every Fourth of July, his father and a closebuddy, both veterans of the war, gathered for a barbecue under a big Americanflag. The father wouldn’t tell his son about the war, but he gained solace fromhis friend’s company.

Then his friend committed suicide.After that, the student’s father didn’t fly the flag or do the July 4 barbecueanymore.

War wounds fester or heal invarious ways. The late Senator John McCain, a prisoner of war in Hanoi for fiveand a half years, ultimately pressed for diplomatic relations with CommunistVietnam and visited the “Hanoi Hilton� where he’d been held. President DonaldTrump, who avoided military service because of purported bone spurs in his heels,ridiculed McCain when he was alive and this week ordered senior Americandiplomats to boycott all ceremonies in Vietnam marking the anniversary of thewar’s end. History, too, either heals or festers.

The war was still politically toxicnearly three decades after the North Vietnamese victory, when Republican-fundedads making false damaged the 2004 presidential candidacy of Senator John Kerry. a Navy swiftboatcaptain who became a forceful critic of the war. Claims that he showed poorleadership and did not deserve the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Heartshe was awarded were apparently motivated by ex-servicemen resentful of hisantiwar activity.

For his part, Kerry campaigned moreon his service than his doubts. He forfeited the chance to lead Americans intoa serious discussion about the trap of misguided warfare, although the wars inAfghanistan and Iraq were ongoing at the time. The lessons of the Vietnamdebacle had evidently expired, and Kerry did little to teach them again.Ìý

Correspondents who covered Vietnamshare a continuing bond. We tell war stories over lunches and dinners, and thewar still reverberates into the professional work of some. My brother-in-law,Arnold R. Isaacs of the Baltimore Sun, who was flown out as Saigon wasfalling, has written two of the finest books on the subject: : Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia, and : The War, its Ghosts, and its Legacy. He debunks theMIA/POW myth that Americans are still secretly held prisoner in Vietnam,another legacy of the American trauma.

During the war and for some timelater, the voices we heard were almost entirely American. And they spoke mostlyabout Americans, not Vietnamese. Only gradually did Vietnamese voices breakthrough in the United States to tell the Vietnamese stories of the war: Le LyHayslip in When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, a book made into a filmby Oliver Stone. Nguyen Phan Que Mai, who wrote The Mountains Sing and DustChild, and is out with a new book of poetry, The Color of Peace. VietThanh Nguyen, who won a Pulitzer for The Sympathizer. And others, atlast.

I needed somehow to write about theVietnamese-American interaction between interpreter and correspondent, thatcritical place where the world looks from afar. Important parts of myVietnam story remained mostly untold until now. I was there only a year and ahalf, a young, green reporter with no dreams of writing a book. But as Idiscovered, writing for a newspaper leaves a lot unsaid, even when thenewspaper is as great as The Times. And fiction can reach deep truthsthat are beyond the rigorous precision of nonfiction.

So, I reached as far as I could in TheInterpreter, whose hero’s work I described this way: “He spoke to themgleefully at first, then soberly, delicately, almost tearfully, seducing hisproud and pummeled countrymen to give up their inner torments to theAmericans.�