Đặng Thùy Trâm

Đặng Thùy Trâm (November 26, 1942 – June 22, 1970) was a Vietnamese doctor. She worked as a battlefield surgeon for the People's Army of Vietnam and Vietcong during the Vietnam War. Her wartime diaries, which chronicle the last two years of her life, attracted international attention following their publication in 2005.

In this Vietnamese name, the surname is Đặng, but is often simplified to Dang in English-language text. In accordance with Vietnamese custom, this person should be referred to by the given name, Trâm.
Memorial statute to Đặng Thùy Trâm.

Early life

Trâm was born on November 26, 1942, in Hanoi, Vietnam, to a family of doctors that had spanned three generations. Her father, Đặng Ngọc Khuê, was a surgeon and her mother, Doãn Ngọc Trâm, was a pharmacist. Trâm was also the eldest of five siblings, which included three other younger sisters and a younger brother.

She went to high school at Chu Văn An High School (Hanoi) and later attended the Hanoi Medical University during college.

On December 23, 1966, Trâm, along with many other civilians, boarded a truck to the Quảng Bình Province and began working as a battlefield surgeon.

Diaries

One of Trâm's handwritten diaries was captured by US forces in December 1969. Following her death in a gun battle on June 22, 1970, a second diary was taken by Frederic (Fred) Whitehurst, a then 22-year-old military intelligence specialist. Whitehurst defied an order to burn the diaries, instead following the advice of a South Vietnamese translator not to destroy them. He kept them for 35 years, with the intention of eventually returning them to Trâm's family.

After returning to the United States, Whitehurst's search for Trâm's family initially proved unsuccessful. After earning a Ph.D. in chemistry he joined the FBI, but was unable to reach anyone from the Vietnamese embassy. In March 2005, he and his brother Robert – another Vietnam veteran – brought the diaries to a conference at Texas Tech University. There, they met photographer Ted Engelmann (also a Vietnam veteran), who offered to look for the family during his trip to Vietnam. With the assistance of Do Xuan Anh, a staff member in the Hanoi Quaker office, Engelmann was able to locate Trâm's mother, Doan Ngoc Tram, and subsequently reached the rest of her family.[1]

In July 2005, Trâm's diaries were published in Vietnam under the title Nhật ký Đặng Thùy Trâm (Đặng Thùy Trâm's Diary (Last Night I Dreamed Of Peace)), which quickly became a bestseller. In less than a year, the volume sold more than 300,000 copies and comparisons were drawn between Trâm's writings and that of Anne Frank.[2][3]

In August 2005, Fred and Robert Whitehurst traveled to Hanoi to meet Trâm's family. In October of that year, Trâm's family visited Lubbock, Texas, to view the diaries archived at Texas Tech University Vietnam Archive,[4] and then visited Fred Whitehurst and his family.

The diaries were translated into English and published in September 2007. They include family photographs and images of Trâm. Translations of the diaries have been published in at least sixteen different languages.

In 2009, a film about Tram by Vietnamese director Đặng Nhật Minh, entitled Đừng Đốt (Do Not Burn It), was released.

Death

Tram was 27 years old when she died on June 22, 1970, in Đức Phổ, Quảng Ngãi Province, Vietnam. She and another colleague were killed by a patrol from the US 4th Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment in a Free-fire zone while traveling on a trail in the Ba Tơ jungle in Quảng Ngãi Province.[5]

Video

References
  1. "Vietnam Investment Review - Timeout". Archived from the original on June 27, 2009. Retrieved December 26, 2010.
  2. "Vietcong Doctor's Diary of War, Sacrifice – OhmyNews International". english.ohmynews.com. Archived from the original on 2011-06-05. Retrieved 2016-05-19.
  3. "Diary of a Vietcong doctor: The Anne Frank of Vietnam - Asia, World - the Independent". Archived from the original on September 6, 2008. Retrieved December 26, 2010.
  4. Vietnam Archive Archived September 30, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  5. Hastings, Max (2018). Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945–1975. Harper. p. 561. ISBN 9780062405661.
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