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An Nguyen

Mr. Gango

AP Literature

9 November 2017

The Missing Pages of History

A person just witnessed a crime, and an investigator is questioning them.

Everything is going fine and dandy until eventually, their memory becomes faded, maybe

because of trauma, maybe because of exhaustion. Panic-stricken, the authorities intensify their

questioning. Pretty soon the witness feels pressured, they start spitting out half-truths, maybe at

times outright lies. Eventually, the police receive an account of the event that is questionable,

and when compared to other testimonies, is wildly inaccurate. The authorities now must sift

through what is the truth, and what are the lies. This is the challenge that many, if not all

historians must go through when making secondary sources. Their challenges are compounded

by time (when they must have the entire publication developed) and funding. These challenges

combined with personal opinions of both the historian, and the public, creates historical

narratives that are often skewed to one belief or one point of view. This, in turn leads to a narrow

point of view in education, and eventually, within personal and political life. To solve this

problem, funding must be distributed to historians with varying points of view, and then publish

them with equal exposure, providing an overall encompassing view of all perspectives.
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The problem is not more apparent than in the teaching of the Vietnam War. The Vietnam

War is the most controversial topic within the American sphere of influence. Many people were

often left wondering, even to today, what exactly happened thousands of miles across the ocean?

Many people have made various books based on accounts, interviews, and documents to analyze

and explain why the U.S. was in Vietnam, and why did it lose? Quite recently as a matter of fact,

a documentary series had hit PBS and had received massive attention.

The Vietnam War, produced by Ken Burns, a man synonymous with the historical

documentary, his previous works included the Civil War. The eighteen-hour, ten-episode

documentary has received praise for uncovering perspectives not usually covered by the media,

nor any previous documentaries. And, is also praised for its in-depth work, combined with its

broad range of interviews, and the time it took to produce the documentary, some staggering ten

years. To its credit, the series has brought the Vietnam War up to discussion in the wake of forty

years. In addition, they’ve covered subjects not previously mentioned, such as the uncovering of

thousands of massacre victims found in a mass grave in Hue (Burns). Despite the positive

criticism it received from many people, the series had faced massive criticism from veterans and

more dedicated historians alike, who were concerned with historical flaws.

One such example of these flaws was the depiction of the Saigon Execution during the

1968 Tet Offensive. In the sixth episode in the series, Burns briefly shows the footage of the

execution of a Viet Cong prisoner by South Vietnamese Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan. He

only mentions that “Loan ordered another officer to shoot the captive, when he hesitated Luong

did the job himself.” Then, several minutes after that, shows separate footage of him smiling

with his fellow police officers. The event is barely glossed over, and fails to mention the context

of the film, or the guilt felt by Eddie Adams, the photographer who took the iconic photo. Adams
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stated in his eulogy, “What the photograph didn't say was, 'What would you do if you were the

general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew

away one, two or three American people?” (Adams) The documentary, though mentioning the

use of death squads to kill enemies during the offensive, didn’t mention that the person executed

was found at the scene of a mass murder, a mass murder in which some of the police chief’s

friends were victims. This lack of explanation doesn’t deviate from the general American view

of the photo, and thus, doesn’t change the viewpoint of South Vietnam being an oppressive

regime compared to North Vietnam. Funding for a documentary maker to only focus on the

American perspective, and little investment to develop other viewpoints in turn, caused a crucial

fact to go missing, in this case, again.

Another example is the depiction of Nixon within the series, particularly, from 1969 to

his impeachment and resignation in 1974. By 1972, Nixon had established a plan to get out of

the war with the policy of Vietnamization, slowly handing over operations to the ARVN for the

war. According to the documentary, Nixon had received a document called National Security

Study Memorandum 1 (NSSM1) in 1969. The document combined the opinions of the State

Department, the Joint Chiefs of staff, the secretary of defense, and the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.

NSSM1 stated that they had little doubt that the South Vietnamese forces cannot stand up to the

communist forces. Thus, as Burns concluded, Nixon created the plan of Vietnamization as a

political move to keep up a positive image for the then upcoming 1972 election. However,

according to Brian Robertson, one of the people responsible for writing Nixon: a Life Nixon

didn’t receive a revised version of NSSM1 until March of 1969, the plan of Vietnamization was

announced on December of that year, nine months after NSSM1’s receiving (Robertson). Thus, it

can be said that Nixon didn’t solely rely on this document when creating the plan of
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Vietnamization. In fact, in those nine months, he had devised the plan of Vietnamization to

bolster South Vietnam’s strength to prepare them for when they leave, and spared no expense in

doing so. This therefore paints a picture of a man who prolonged the war for political gain, and

only truly left under the order of peace accords in 1973. This again, upholds common belief, and

therefore puts opinion over historical fact, and oversimplifies Nixon’s plans to get out of

Vietnam, in that it depicts Nixon as cold and calculating while, in reality, he was excessively

caring to the South Vietnamese. Had he been cold and calculating, and political, he would’ve

followed the opinions of the people and abruptly pull out his forces from Vietnam with no plan

whatsoever.

These mistakes are only the tip of the iceberg. Other discrepancies include the prevalence

of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong interviews over South Vietnamese interviews, certain praise

for Ho Chi Minh and the peace movement without any kind of detraction for their actions, and so

on and so forth that the list might last for hours. But as noted before, there are reasons for these

discrepancies. The documentary was eighteen hours, and research had been conducted for ten

years, the war lasted for over twenty years, thirty if one counted the French-Indochina War. The

limited time, combined with limited funding, had made Burns make the same mistake as many

other historians did when covering the Vietnam War. He covered a limited perspective. Though

that cannot be a major flaw, he knew his audience was American. The fact his audience was

American created a need to appeal to the general narrative of the Vietnam War. A story of how

the establishment wrongfully entered the war, to support an abusive government, then tried its

best to get out of the war. This also meant with such limited time and resources, he glossed over

research, such as the millions of ARVN veterans that were available for him to interview, and

countless books by ARVN veterans that though may not be largely distributed, were heavily
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available among the Vietnamese diaspora in the United States, to both fit his narrative, and to

save money.

Though in the short run it may generate profits and keep people satisfied. It leaves a

gaping problem in education. As one viewpoint is expressed, with such a relied source as Ken

Burns, that narrative might be the only source of information that viewers rely on as reference on

the subject. The simplification leads to misjudgment, which leads to a view that may be

misconstrued and may affect how others view the world, and decide their part in it. In terms of

historical teaching, the solution to this problem of the prevalence of a single narrative in history,

it may be difficult. The solution for such a problem involves the funding of not one, but multiple

historians to tackle large events in documentaries, and the increase of. Ken Burns had one other

historian to help him cover Vietnam, had he partnered with more diverse historians, more

perspectives would be covered. The increased funding, and time to both research and feature

such works would expose multiple narratives and in great detail that would’ve otherwise been

skimmed through. History is a crime scene, and like a crime scene, one must look at all aspects

of the crime to come to the right conclusion. This is the duty of the historian, to provide the

public with all narratives, for them to come to their own conclusion. Lest we learn the wrong

lessons, and in turn, repeat the same mistakes.

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Works Cited

Adams, Eddie. “Eulogy: General Nguyen Ngoc Loan.” Time, 27 July. 1998,

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,988783,00.html. Accessed 9

November 2017

Burns, Ken and Lynn Novick, creators. The Vietnam War. Public Broadcasting Service, 2017.

Robertson, Brian. “Ken Burns’s big blunder on Vietnam-and why it matters.” The Washington

Post, 19 October. 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-

history/wp/2017/10/19/ken-burnss-big-blunder-on-vietnam-and-why-it-matters/