From msmagazine.com
By Ava Slocum
In her book Those Who Stayed, Claudia Krich revisits her 1975 diary and reclaims the story of Vietnam’s aftermath
American humanitarian worker Claudia Krich—co-director of the American Friends Service Committee medical relief program from 1973 to 1975—was one of only a handful of Americans who stayed in Vietnam past April, 30, 1975, after the war ended. (She and her husband finally left in July 1975.)
Krich kept a daily journal recording her life in Saigon watching the collapse of the South Vietnamese government and the transition from war to peace. In the July 1976 print issue, Ms. published an excerpt of her Vietnam War diary.
Fifty years later, in April 2025, Krich published her full journal from those months in Vietnam. Those Who Stayed: A Vietnam Diary, now available from the University of Virginia Press, combines Krich’s 1975 diary—including the sections published in Ms.—with extra historical content and some first-person accounts by people mentioned in or relevant to the book.
To celebrate the book’s release earlier this year, Claudia Krich communicated with Ms. about her book and her experiences as an American woman living and working in Vietnam during this historic moment.
Ava Slocum: This book is unique because it covers a time period that almost no Americans, even Americans who were in Vietnam during the war, have any context for. How did you start keeping this record? Did you always know you were going to publish it?
Claudia Krich: We ran a large civilian physical rehabilitation centre in a town called Quảng Ngãi, making and fitting patients with artificial legs and arms, wheelchairs, crutches and so on. We also hosted visiting journalists, politicians and historians. Part of my job [as co-director of the American Friends Service Committee relief program] during the more than two years I was there was to keep in touch with our main office in Philadelphia and to keep them informed. We wrote lengthy, detailed letters regularly.
Toward the end of the war, there was beginning to be panic in Quảng Ngãi, and all communication had broken down. The town had one phone, in the post office, and it wasn’t working, and the mail service stopped, and telexes and telegrams couldn’t be sent or received.
We went to Saigon, where we had similar communication problems. I thought that in addition to writing letters I should start keeping a diary to record what was going on, because I realized it could be momentous and historic. I was certainly not thinking about a book. I was just thinking about documenting what we thought would be the end of the war, and it was.
Slocum: How did the book come about so many years later?
Krich: The specific reason I finally turned my journal into my book was really the Ken Burns-Lynn Novick documentary. It left in place the idea that there was a violent communist bloodbath and that millions of people were murdered after the war ended. But that simply was not true. They unfortunately neglected to interview any of us Americans who stayed, or even any French or Italians or Indians who also stayed. I wish they had.
I originally thought my journal alone was enough to publish as a book, but for a university press (University of Virginia) I also needed to have historical annotations, a complete index, a glossary, table of contents, etc. It was a lot more work, but I am glad I added those, because I think it is much more interesting, and more useful for students of history.
Slocum: What do most people not understand about the war? Are there any assumptions you’re hoping to challenge with this book?
Krich: People think that the war was North Vietnam versus South Vietnam, but that’s not true. The war in the south, where our troops were, was the U.S.-supported South Vietnamese government versus the North Vietnam-supported National Liberation Front, also called the Provisional Revolutionary Government.
There were actually four main political groups: South, North, Liberation Front (in the south), and the Third Force (also in the south) which was an informal coalition of anti-war people. Those last three groups viewed the American military as invaders and wanted them out. They wanted the country reunified. Vietnam was one country until 1954 when it was temporarily divided by the Geneva Accords. There was supposed to be an election in 1956 but we got involved and prevented it.
The Provisional Revolutionary Government was the official government of South Vietnam for about a year after the war ended and the country was officially unified.
Slocum: In your book, you write about your experiences as a woman aid worker, including losing a pregnancy and getting medical care. How do you think being a woman affected your time in Vietnam?
Krich: I never really thought about being a woman and how it might have been different from being a man. Vietnamese culturally are respectful to strangers, and they were respectful to me as a woman. I was never harassed or “eyed” by Vietnamese men as I’ve been by Americans and others.
One of my personal tragedies was losing a pregnancy at six months. I’d been with one of our patients and her sweet little daughter who was sick with a very high fever and a rash. Then she died. A few days later, I developed the same symptoms, which led to me losing my unborn boy. It wasn’t until later that testing showed the cause was German measles. There was no vaccine then. I don’t understand people who fear immunizations over the illnesses they protect against.
Our Vietnamese friends and staff were very caring and sympathetic. Everyone had experienced pain and suffering and loss. There’s a term in Vietnamese, “chia buồng,” that means “share sadness.” In our town, everyone was familiar with chia buồng.
Another experience I had was that despite birth control I got pregnant too soon after that loss. I still had a serious infection and thought the best plan was to have an abortion. I went to see a male, French doctor in Saigon. He was furious at me and refused, while at the same time, he confirmed that I still had the serious infection that needed treatment with antibiotics, but he wouldn’t prescribe antibiotics, because I was pregnant. He saw no irony in that. And now we’ve lost our right to abortion in our own country.
Slocum: You recount in your book an incident where you were injured after stopping your motorcycle to avoid a toddler in the road. Local women thanked you for your restraint—saying (male) soldiers wouldn’t have done the same. What did you take away from that experience?
Krich: Unfortunately, the local population had many negative experiences with American soldiers, including this incident the women told me about as they helped me up and treated the cut on my leg with their little bottles of mercurochrome [an antiseptic]. There were many incidents of men soldiers harming civilians during this war. American soldiers often couldn’t distinguish Vietnamese allies from enemies.
The entire province of Quảng Ngãi was designated by the U.S. a “free fire zone,” meaning everyone in it was considered a possible enemy and could be killed without any repercussions. We lived near Mỹ Lai, the site of the “Mỹ Lai Massacre,” where in 1968 American troops killed hundreds of innocent people and threw their bodies into a ditch.
I myself never saw American soldiers because when I arrived in Vietnam all U.S. troops had been withdrawn after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973. In fact, the U.S. had declared the war over before I went to Vietnam, so I did not expect to be in the middle of a war.
Slocum: You were in Vietnam with the American Friends Service Committee, which is a Quaker group. You mentioned that a Mennonite group was there too. What was it like to work with Quaker aid workers?
Krich: Our American Friends Service Committee program was a Quaker program by definition, although not all of us were Quakers. People referred to us in general as “the Quakers.” Quakers are pacifists who are definitely not passive. They believe in non-violent solutions, non-violent resistance and non-violent protest. They are against war, but they set up programs in war zones to help the victims and people suffering from war.
One of my five teammates in Quảng Ngãi, Rick Thompson, was a Quaker and could have gotten out of the draft as a conscientious objector, but instead he burned his draft card as a moral and political statement and then came to Vietnam as a humanitarian aid worker. He died in a plane crash in Vietnam in 1973. Other American men, as you know, claimed they had bone spurs to get out of the draft.
My husband Keith Brinton, was with our program in Vietnam for over five years, the first two years as a conscientious objector doing what’s called “alternative service,” and then he stayed on.
The Mennonites who were there when I was were doing similar work, had similar beliefs, and were our close friends.
Slocum: What are you hoping people will take away from this book?
Krich: I would like my book’s readers to recognize the adventure as much as the risk of what I did. It was exciting as well as meaningful. It was also mundane, because in any war situation, people try to carry on with their lives as best they can. I hope readers will see the bravery of the Vietnamese, and I don’t mean only those who stayed. Those who left, for whatever reasons, were also personally very brave. War had disrupted the lives of everyone. I hope my book motivates more people to travel, to take risks, to be outspoken, to record what they experience, to defend our rights, and when necessary, to protest and resist. It’s a lot to hope for, but maybe my book will make a small difference. https://msmagazine.com/2025/10/16/vietnam-war-women-workers-humanitarian-aid/
No comments:
Post a Comment