Making Peace 40 Years Later

Noodling around my local Dollar Store, I found a book that haunts me, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram. In April 1968, when this diary began, Thuy was a 25 year old doctor in a North Vietnamese battle field hospital. In June 1970 the diary ends. Dr. Thuy was killed by a bullet to the forehead by South Vietnamese troops. (See the 2006 New York Times article for the remarkable story of The Diary and Dr. Thuy.)

Thuy's diary was surreptitiously saved (against general orders) by an American soldier who held on to it through 2005. Within a few months of resurfacing it was published in Vietnam and became an extraordinary best seller. It was subsequently translated and published in a 2007 American edition. Obviously its American press run exceeded demand, since I bought a remaindered first edition for a buck only 2 years after publication.

I hadn't heard Thuy Tram's poignant diary, which has been inevitably compared to Anne Frank's rescued words.

In my estimation there's no surprise that the Diary of Dang Thuy Tram languished in the American literary marketplace. It relates the Vietnam War from the perspective of the once-enemy. Perhaps, 40 years later, we don't want to remember. Or more likely we don't want to engage in the humbling process of truth and reconciliation, when we listen without argument and seek to empathize with those who'd been victimized.; and we do so for the sake of justice and peace.

I remember, once again, Santayana's counsel: "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."