Today, we are happy to bring you our conversation with Claudia Krich, author of Those Who Stayed: A Vietnam Diary

What inspired you to write this book? 

When I watched the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick Viet Nam documentary I was surprised and upset that it ended without telling what happened in Viet Nam after the Americans left. They had no interviews with any of the dozen or so of us Americans who stayed. It left viewers with the impression that the prediction by the US and South Vietnamese government that there would be a bloodbath in Viet Nam was true. I decided to finally turn my Viet Nam diary from 1975 into the book I’d planned for nearly 50 years, to set the record straight about what really happened.

What did you learn and what are you hoping readers will learn from your book? 

I hope readers will enjoy learning about the very tense reality of being in Saigon during the American evacuation at the end of the war, with fighting on the ground and helicopters taking off from the US Embassy to land on carriers at sea, and what it was like during the months after the war ended as Viet Nam began to rebuild and reorganize. The intense propaganda campaign that there would be a bloodbath destroyed many lives and tore apart many families. Wars need justification and that often comes in the form of disinformation, another word for propaganda.

What surprised you the most in the process of writing your book? 

What has surprised me a lot is the high level of interest in a war that ended fifty years ago. We continue to threaten and engage in wars, and the human, day-to-day reality and suffering of living in a war is a picture clearly painted in my book. I’ve found a lot of interest in the fact that I kept a diary covering the momentous and historic American withdrawal and the end of the war, and what happened next.

What’s your favorite anecdote from your book?

I like the short vignettes in my book by other people, including my Vietnamese friend whose legs were blown off by an American landmine, and another Vietnamese friend who was stranded in the US when the war ended. It was wonderful to visit Congressmember Pete McCloskey after I met him nearly 50 years ago in Viet Nam. He helped end the funding that finally ended the war. My friend Don Luce helped US Congress members locate the cruel US-made “Tiger Cages” where political prisoners were kept and tortured. My friend Bob Chenoweth describes five years he spent as a POW in North Viet Nam. Craig McNamara discusses his famous father, Robert McNamara, and a visit with the son of his father’s counterpart in Viet Nam.

What’s next? 

My focus is on promoting facts and honest, real history, and calling out propaganda and lies. We must protect human and environmental rights and defend the communities that are being attacked, including LGBTQ+ people, refugees, students, professors, workers, minorities and majorities, women, older people, children, visitors, in any order. This is really all of us, our country and our rules and laws. As for war, we should learn from the past and not start another one.