Vietnam was my generation's war. During my trips there as a journalist, I
wanted to do something for the homeless, orphaned, wounded and Amerasian
children I saw. I could not give them "the stars, the flowers and
butterflies, instead of the war," as the poet Phuong Trieu wanted to do,
but I could try to make them visible. When I met another American
journalist, Thomas C. Fox, we decided to pool our skills and write a book
about the children of South Vietnam.
None of the children we wrote about had ever known peace. We looked for
them throughout the countryside, where most of the war was being fought. We
looked in the refugee camps, the orphanages, the hospitals, and in the
city, where the street children were called "the dust of life." This war
that was the backdrop to the children's lives was unique in that it had no
front lines: anything that moved might be the enemy. And children move.
No one will ever know the exact number of children killed and wounded in this war. Only those who lived to make it to a hospital were counted. There were children who had lost arms and legs when they stepped on mines, who were caught in the crossfire of soldiers fighting to retake a village, who were riding water buffalo when the planes flew overhead. Some did not know what happened. There seemed to be no words to convey the misery of it all. But we hoped that if our book could help young readers reflect on the consequences of war -- what war does to children -- maybe their generation would be inspired to work for a peaceful world.
Children of Vietnam did not end the war - which went on for another three years - but it was nominated for the National Book Award.
The children of Vietnam are said to be descended from a dragon and a fairy who divided their offspring and their country between them. This book is about the children of today who live once again in a divided Vietnam, in historical time. A time of war.
None of the children you will read about has ever known peace. The cycle of their lives is determined by troop movements and air raids, rather than the harvesting of crops. For them hunger, fear, and death are as regular as the seasons.
They are the children of war.
Peace has not come yet in early 1972 as we write. In these pages we hope to communicate some part of what we experienced when we went in search of the children in what is now South Vietnam. We hope we can capture these children: the gaiety they have somehow managed to retain. Their disarming spontaneity balanced by a dignified shyness. Their fantastic courage in the face of hardship and their resultant precociousness.