South Vietnamese soldiers : memories of the Vietnam War and after /

In April 1975, a North Vietnamese victory ended the long, painful struggle that was the Vietnam War. Soon thereafter, the Vietnamese diaspora began. The US public wrongly assumed that most Vietnamese émigrés found homes in the US. In this remarkable account, Nguyen (Monash Univ., Australia), a daughter of a Vietnamese veteran, relives the war through the eyes of 40 Vietnamese veterans. Though the author provides the obligatory analysis of South Vietnam's plight following the US withdrawal, she focuses almost exclusively on the narratives of Vietnamese veterans in Australia and their assimilation into Australian society. Many Vietnamese veterans of that long-forgotten war are nearly invisible in the US, but the same cannot be said about their treatment in Australia. Despite political misgivings concerning Australia's role in the conflict, the government provided service pensions for all allied soldiers who served in Vietnam, including Vietnamese veteran émigrés. Nguyen's remarkable achievement is her ability to allow the veterans to speak for themselves in this groundbreaking study from that tragic conflict. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. --Christopher C. Lovett, Emporia State University