Where can I find Vietnam War primary sources from the Vietnamese perspective?

by jeff744

I have been working on the research for an essay on pacification in the Vietnam war for a while now and have yet to find any online sources that show the Vietnamese perspective. I have been able to find primary sources for the CIA and the US government but when I found Vietnamese sources they were all in book form which I cannot access (it was something called "RAND Interviews Vietnam").

Any help would be appreciated as I have enough to write the essay now but really want to be able to use at least one or two Vietnamese sources as well.

thenewstampede

This might not be the answer that you're looking for but hopefully it can be of some help. This is a book about the Vietnam war written from the Vietnamese perspective. But a few caveats, firstly I never finished reading it (like most book on my desk). Secondly, (from what I remember) a large bulk of it focused on one General (Le Duan?) that the author felt had not been given the credit he deserved by most historians. However, the book begins with an explanation of why it is so hard for western scholars to get primary documents about the war written by the Vietnamese. Unfortunately many of them have been in archives under the lock and key of the Vietnamese government, who have been reluctant to share them.

I'll post more sources if I can find any. I spent many years trying to find any books written from the Vietnamese perspective. Unfortunately in America, these books are very few and far between. 90% of books about the Vietnam war are paperbacks written about a specific American unit, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a fair amount of embellishment as well. Growing up watching the history channel (when they did broadcast documentaries about history) I distinctly remember hour-long documentaries about the war where a single Vietnamese name was not mentioned. I think at the time, and even now to some extent, people don't realize that portraying/studying the war from only one side presents a very one-sided view.