![]() The following excerpts are published with permission. Pham, with an introduction by the acclaimed Vietnam War journalist Frances FitzGerald. The forthcoming Harmony Books edition, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace, is a translation of the diaries into English by Andrew X. With help from a Quaker group there, he found Tram's family, discovering that her mother and three sisters were all alive, though her father and brother had died. An Air Force veteran they met agreed to take copies of the diaries with him when he went to Hanoi the following month. So Whitehurst's brother, Robert Whitehurst, picked up the ball, arranging for them to take the diaries to a conference on the Vietnam War at Texas Tech University in March 2005. But the war had left psychological scars that flared when he revisited the diaries. Eventually, U.S.-Vietnam relations normalized, and Whitehurst left the FBI. In the years after the war, he had joined the FBI, making contact with an enemy nation problematic. Whitehurst says he often thought about returning the diaries to Tram’s family, but tracking them down eluded him. In 1972 he took both diaries home, after serving three tours in Vietnam. It has fire in it already.” He saved the small diary and later saved a second. In Vietnam in 1970, he was throwing documents into a fire in a 55-gallon drum when his interpreter, who was watching, said, “Don’t burn this one, Fred. military intelligence, found the diaries. ![]() soldiers.įrederic Whitehurst, whose task was to sort through captured documents for U.S. The last entry is June 20, 1970, two days before she is killed by U.S. Her duties also include training new health practitioners. Sometimes she walks for miles through the rugged terrain to care for wounded fighters. The Tet Offensive is raging though her hospital is a civilian clinic, she treats mainly soldiers. ![]() Tram’s diaries begin in April 1968 when she’s 25 and several months into her first post-medical school job, chief physician at a field hospital in central Vietnam. INTERVIEW: School of Medicine’s Paul Costello talks to Robert Whitehurst about his search for Tram’s family (22 minutes). INTERVIEW: Paul Costello talks to Frederic Whitehurst about finding Dang Thuy Tram's diary-and its impact. ![]()
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