Lessons from Korea: ‘This Kind of War’

Review by Bill Doughty

The Marines remember Korea.  Lessons learned in frozen battlefields and bloody ridges of Korea influenced a generation of U.S. Marine Corps and other military leaders.

T. R. Fehrenbach’s “This Kind of War” turns 50 years old this year.  Subtitled, “The Classic Korean War History” (and originally subtitled “A Study in Unpreparedness”), the book is a key pick on the Commandant’s reading list.

The book opens with a passage from Sun Tzu, translated from Chinese, from “The Art of War.”

“Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys; look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even into death.  If, however, you are indulgent, but unable to make your authority felt, kind-hearted but unable to enforce your commands; and incapable, moreover, of quelling disorder, then your soldiers must be likened to spoiled children; they are useless for any practical purpose.” -- Sun Tzu

Itself a lesson of warfighting, Sun Tzu’s admonition and description comes to mind throughout Fehrenbach’s book as he describes toughness, will, pride, training and a commitment to fight “on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud.”

That’s especially true for the United States Marines, then and now.

“Except in holy wars, or in defense of their native soil, men fight well only because of pride and training -- pride in themselves and their service, enough training to absorb the rough blows of war and to know what to do.  Few men, of any breed, really prefer to kill or be killed.  These Marines had pride in their service, which had been carefully instilled in them, and they had pride in themselves ... and they had discipline.”

1st Marine Division Marines board a ship in San Diego, heading to Far East.

The author sees the Korean War as an ongoing conflict between two blocs -- Communism and the freedom-loving West, rooted in the past, with Korea, or Chosun, doomed for inevitable continued conflicts.

Because it was written just ten years after the armistice in the midst of the Cold War and just as the Vietnam War was getting started, some of the author’s insights are best appreciated as fresh observations of their time, of the past, but Fehrenbach makes his points with an eye to the future, too, almost predicting drone warfare and radical islamic terrorism:

“Nothing had happened to pushbutton warfare; its emergence was at hand.  Horrible weapons that could destroy every city on earth were at hand -- at too many hands.  But pushbutton warfare meant Armageddon, and Armageddon , hopefully will never be an end of national policy ... There is another kind of conflict -- crusade, jihad, holy war, call it what you choose.  It has been loosed before, with attendant horror but indecisive results.”

U.S. Marine infantrymen in Chosin, Dec. 5, 1950. (USMC photo)

Along with fiery descriptions of Heartbreak Ridge and Pork Chop Hill, among other battles, much of the book focuses on the political and social influences that affected they way the war was prosecuted, especially by the Army.  The author also touches on the Air Force’s role and says this about the Navy:

“It was hard for all the services.  The Navy, forced to blockade and patrol, had lonely cheerless duty in the China seas, unrelieved by much action.  Its carrier pilots flew dangerous patrols, and sometimes its landing parties went ashore on North Korea -- but the rest of the time the Navy sowed mines, or harvested them, and merely stood on station in the gray waters off Korea.  Without its utter control of those seas, there would have been no U.N. stand in Korea ... the Navy was fulfilling its primary mission -- keeping control of the seas, and holding the sea lanes open.”

Fehrenbach sees the Korean War as a bulwark against communism overtaking Asia.  Again, his conclusions have to be appreciated in the time they were made -- when the Soviet Union still existed and before Communist China embraced capitalism.

“The Korean War ended inconclusively on 27 July 1953,” the author writes in his concluding chapter.  “The lesson of Korea is that it happened.”  

He warns against forgetting the lessons of history:  “Aristotle wrote, ‘Almost all things have been found out, but some have been forgotten.’”

Sun Tzu’s “Art of War,” by the way, is listed on the Commandant’s Professional Reading list as “book of the month.”

Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. James F. Amos says "Reading is a critical continuing action ... a critical aspect of our commitment to the profession of arms."

Remembering the Legacy

Today, July 27, 2013, Commander-in-Chief President Barack Obama remembered the veterans who served and preserved freedom for the Republic of Korea 60 years ago.  He put the so-called “forgotten war” in context of its legacy, focusing on some of the reasons it should be remembered.  Here is part of his speech to Korean War veterans and their families at the National Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

“Freedom is not free.  And in Korea, no one paid a heavier price than those who gave all -- 36,574 American patriots, and, among our allies, more than one million of our South Korean friends -- soldiers and civilians.  That July day, when the fighting finally ended, not far from where it began, some suggested this sacrifice had been for naught, and they summed it up with a phrase -- 'die for a tie.' 

“It took many decades for this memorial to gain its rightful place on this great Mall where we tell our American story.  It has, perhaps, taken even longer to see clearly, and understand fully, the true legacy of your service.  But here, today, we can say with confidence that war was no tie.  Korea was a victory.  When 50 million South Koreans live in freedom -- a vibrant democracy, one of the world’s most dynamic economies, in stark contrast to the repression and poverty of the North -- that’s a victory; that’s your legacy.

“When our soldiers stand firm along the DMZ; when our South Korean friends can go about their lives, knowing that the commitment of the United States to the security of the Republic of Korea will never waver -- that is a victory, and that is your legacy.

“When our allies across the Asia Pacific know -- as we have proven in Korea for 60 straight years -- that the United States will remain a force for peace and security and prosperity --that’s a victory; that’s your legacy.

“And for generations to come, when history recalls how free nations banded together in a long Cold War, and how we won that war, let it be said that Korea was the first battle -- where freedom held its ground and free peoples refused to yield, that, too, is your victory, your legacy.” -- President Barack Obama

'Nuclear Showdown' w/ North Korea?

Review by Bill Doughty

Are we headed to a nuclear showdown with North Korea? Should we negotiate with Kim Jong Un, grandson of North Korea's founder Kim Il Sung, son of Kim Jong Il? What's the solution to prevent nuclear conflict?

Perhaps the first step is to try to understand the who, what, when, where and why of the so-called Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Gordon G. Chang's "Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World" (Random House, 2006) was published when Kim Jong Il was still alive and president of the isolated and insulated country.

Chang's book opens with a quote from former Vice President Dan Quayle: "People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have tremendous impact on history."

Although written more than 10 years ago, this book is still remarkably timely, and the years have helped temper Chang's perspective and conclusions. The history of the Korean Peninsula and the creation of the DPRK is particularly enlightening, as are his descriptions of the main characters in the real-life North Korean drama, beginning with the founder. Kim Il Sung developed a concept of socialism – more religion than philosophy, called Juche, ironically calling for self-reliance. He adopted aspects of Confucianism and Christianity and modeled a culture similar to pre-WWII Imperial Japan, according to Chang: "No stranger to the tale of Christ, he simply defied himself" and "appropriated elements of emperor worship from the Japanese."

"Kim Il Sung didn't know much about Marx or Hegel, but he understood the psychology of the Korean people, who were more in tune to medieval times than modern ones. For an ignorant, traditional, and abused citizenry, he harnessed the powerful force of nationalism, retained elements of feudal and Confucian society, and employed Leninist and Stalinist techniques of social mobilization and control. Like Hitler, he knew how to manipulate imagery and stir emotions. The society he created, while unfamiliar to the rest of us, made perfect sense to Koreans of that time because it fit in with their conception of the world. The charismatic Kim Il Sung exploited his people so well they did not feel oppressed."

Cult of Kim: Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un

"Kim, with an obsessive thoroughness, built the most repressive totalitarian system in world history," Chang writes.

The DPRK was created in the aftermath of World War II and expanded in the following decade out of what we Americans call the Korean War, "a stalemate from the weaker perspective but a victory in the eyes of North Koreans."

"Americans, of course, do not subscribe to the DPRK's version of history, yet Kim's fabrication, like all good ones, was formed around a tidbit of truth. The Korean was correct in believing he had dealt a setback to the United States in the war. He had, after all, managed to do something that even Uncle Joe Stalin had not accomplished: at the height of the power of the United States he had dented, if not destroyed, the aura of American military superiority. After a magnificent show of determination in Europe during  the Berlin Airlift of 1948 and 1949. American resolve failed in the mountains of Korea in 1950 to 1953."

North Korea calls that war the Great Fatherland Liberation War, started by the North to reunify the peninsula by force. In the next decade, America plunged headlong into another stalemate war: Vietnam. Chang reminds us of two "barbaric" acts of war committed by North Korea during the conflict in Vietnam, one under President Johnson's watch and the other under President Nixon's. Neither president retaliated.

"In January 1968 North Korea captured the USS Pueblo, a reconnaissance vessel, in international waters in the Sea of Japan. It was the first time that a U.S. Navy ship had been taken on the high seas in peacetime in over 150 years. One crew member was killed and several wounded during the seizure. And during the next eleven months, the North Koreans beat Pueblo crew members with lumber, burned them against radiators, and kicked out their teeth. Some sailors were crippled and others almost blinded. The Johnson administration issued an apology to obtain their release. In April 1969 the North Koreans shot down an unarmed Navy EC-121 reconnaissance plane in international airspace over the Sea of Japan. All thirty-one crew members were killed, resulting in the largest loss off U.S. servicemen in a single incident during the Cold War."

Chang concludes, "Through mismanagement and inattention from the Korean War to today, Americans have allowed (the Kimist Regime) to become a grave threat." And North Korea's leaders embrace the idea of perpetual adversaries.

"Totalitarians need enemies in order to stay in power," Chang writes. "The paradox of power is that the most powerful are the most insecure." Nationalism does not equate to patriotism.

In "Nuclear Showdown" we read the history of Rodong and Taepodong missile development and testing, including the time when debris from a test landed in Alaska. Chang warns of North Korea's "power to put plutonium in the paradise of Hawaii."

We get an insight into the nuances of power based on the Kim family's relationship with the military elite and the "three economies" in North Korea: Palace, military and civilian. Guess which two get the most resources.

Chang also gives us a peek into the sad history of abduction of Japanese citizens such as 13-year-old Megumi Yokota by North Korean agents in the 70s and 80s and how DPRK has attempted to blackmail the former Soviet Union, China, Japan and the United States.

Frank Zappa

We get a Kaplan-like perspective on the relevance of geography in the relationship between North Korea and China, with their common border that "both separates and unites." Chang touches on relationships with Pakistan, Iran and Iraq. He includes eclectic quotes from Henry Kissinger, Woody Allen, Francis Fukuyama, Barbara Tuchman, Shintaro Ishihara, Machiavelli, Fareed Zakariah and Frank Zappa.

Zappa gets a chapter quote at the beginning of Chapter 3, "The Pygmalion of Pyongyang": "Without deviation progress is not possible." 

Another Zappa quote, about the possibility of all-out nuclear war, is actually a found haiku:

There will never be

a nuclear war; there's too much

real estate involved

Gordon G. Chang

Chang's conclusion at the end of "Nuclear Showdown" seems muddy, especially with the longview of a decade since its publication. Earlier in the book he says the people of North Korea are itching to embrace entrepreneurial grassroots capitalism, which may eventually lead to rejection of totalitarianism. But, then he calls repeatedly and in the end for American action against the North Korean regime. "There will soon come a point when time is of the essence."

"So there must be a solution. It need not be American, unilateral, or military, but it needs to be near at hand. We can avoid the horror of armed struggle, but only if the world shows determination. And we have to confront reality. The old diplomatic stratagems no longer work. We cannot endlessly repeat them and expect a different result. Now, more than at any other time in history, we have to steel ourselves for war if we don't take great risks for peace."

No walls: President Reagan makes his mark at the Berlin Wall in 1990.

Chang refers to a quote from former President Ronald Reagan. "Reagan's simple answer was that free people always have to tell the truth."

He recalls the famous proclamation to tear down the Berlin Wall – "tear it all down." 

Reagan called for the wall to be brought down 24 years after President John F. Kennedy, former naval officer and World War II veteran, visited Berlin and called for freedom for all Germans and all people.

Chang ends his book with this Reagan quote: "We have it in our power to begin the world over again."

Some more recent books on North Korea are worth a read, and I'm working through some of these in more depth:

"The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom" by Ralph Hassig and Kongdan Oh (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), which also mentions the USS Pueblo incident as it describes the history of the "country of the three Kims." The authors say the United States should try to connect with the people of North Korea, working around the Kim regime as much as possible. According to the authors, there is "faint light at the end of the tunnel" as they present evidence that what people actually believe may not match the behavior they are forced to show in front of others, especially the authoritarian state. They show how the leader's credibility suffers over the years as promises are unfulfilled.

"My Holiday in North Korea: The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth" by Wendy E. Simmons (RosettaBooks, 2015) is an off-beat collection of photos, insights and quotes from Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." Simmons's immunity from propaganda and manipulation, coupled with her self-aware commitment to children and exploration, makes this a fun book to flip through. Simmons managed to tour the country, go to schools, visit the DMZ and crash a wedding. (She said she got "stink eye" from the bride; see the cover of her book.) "All I know is what I saw, and in North Korea, seeing is not believing." Simmons sees hope in the eyes of children despite the lies, hate and fear they are taught, particularly what the people are told about Americans.

"All Monsters Must Die: An Excursion to North Korea" by Magnus Bartas & Fredrik Ekman (House of Anansi Press, 2011; translation from Swedish by Saskia Vogel, 2015) focuses on the abduction of Hong Kong filmmakers Choi Eun-hee and Shin Sang-ok by North Korea's Kim Jong Il, which they call one of many incidents from a list of crimes against humanity. Focusing on moviemaking, the authors show the integration of Korean and Japanese films, themes and concepts, with a fascinating exploration of Japan's Toho Studios and Eiji Tsuburaya, creator of Godzilla, Mothra, Booska and Ultraman. This book concludes with a mention of the United Nations 372-page report from the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the DPRK on depraved conditions in the North "carried out during the Kim clan's rule."

"The Invitation-Only Zone: The True Story of North Korea's Abduction Project" by Robert S. Boynton (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) is a fascinating book that delves deeper into the evil abduction of Megumi Yokota (and several other Japanese young people, including some from Europe). The authors touch on the bizarre tale of former Army Sgt. (busted down to Private) Charles Robert Jenkins, who while stationed in South Korea defected to the North during the Vietnam War and was paired with one of the Japanese abductees, Hitomi Soga. They had two daughters. Boynton is a good writer who studies politics, race and ethnicity, and makes this insight about how the concept of "race" has been used to alternately unite and divide Japan, Korea and China. "Though 'race' is a biological fiction, its power comes from the stories it enables us to tell about the differences between those over whom we feel superior and those to whom we feel inferior."

How Navy & Marines Reached the Moon 50 Years Ago

Glenn and Armstrong, survival training in Panama, 1963. NASA

Review by Bill Doughty

July 20, 1969: A Sailor (Neil Armstrong) became the first human to step on the moon. 

Earlier in the decade, another Sailor (Alan Shepard) was the first American to travel in space, and a Marine (John Glenn) was the first American to orbit Earth.

A United States president and vice president (both Navy veterans) along with a NASA administrator (a former Marine) provided key leadership so Americans could plant the American flag in the Sea of Tranquility fifty years ago this month.

That flag – once red, white and blue – is now bleached white by UV radiation, according to Douglas Brinkley in "American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race" (HarperCollins, 2019).

From War/Destruction to Peace/Discovery

Writing with a journalist/historian's touch, Brinkley shows how the influence of World War II – and the resultant Cold War – brought about the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was a race that the Soviets proved to dominate – hare to tortoise – in the early 1960s.

"Space was America's Cold War Manifest Destiny," Brinkley writes, "and the Mercury astronauts wore its rough-and-ready trailblazers, following in the footsteps of Kennedy's own World War II Generation and almost two centuries of American adventurers before."

America's moonshot would not have happened in 1969 without JFK's drive.

John F. Kennedy, who had some health issues even as a young man, was at first rejected from service, but he used his father's influence to help him get into the Navy. 

"When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 – 'a date that will live in infamy,' as President Roosevelt termed it – Jack and Joe Kennedy were already in uniform and ready for combat duty. They would never have to scrub off the taint of using their father's influence to avoid military service. Four days after Pearl Harbor, Nazi Germany and the Axis partners declared war on the United States. 'Industrial Mobilization' became an urgent catchphrase across the nation. Military bases were built on empty land. Factories were adapted to switch from manufacturing consumer goods to producing war matériel. Between 1940 and 1943, enlistment in the U.S. 
Armed Forces expanded from fewer than five hundred thousand to more than nine million. Mobilization efforts swelled in every direction, from far-flung Honolulu to the shipyards of Norfolk."

A young JFK.

JFK showed his profile in courage in the War in the Pacific, and was profoundly affected when his big brother, Joseph Jr., was killed on a combat mission. Joe's plane exploded in mid-air in what proved to be an unsuccessful bombing mission against a Nazi missile base.

Brinkley posits that Hitler's missile program laid the foundation for NASA's success, particularly with the help of former Nazi scientist Wernher von Braun. Kennedy was motivated and propelled by a combination of influences, including his father's drive, his brother's death, and a vision of the future for America and the world.

JFK, followed by LBJ and assisted by NASA administrator James Webb, a Marine major in WWII, presented the vision, the mission and the will to reach the Moon, despite other challenges and sea changes in the 60s – including the Cuban Missile Crisis, civil rights movement and Vietnam.

JFK's visionary leadership, combined with the hard work and creative innovation of an elite civilian-military team, the United States discovered a world of innovation in space, including communication, mapping and global positioning satellites; commercial air transport; and the microchip.

Navy veterans/leaders kept space closed to militarization and turned away from nuclear atmospheric testing and proposals to put nuclear weapons in space.

In Kennedy's challenge to go to the Moon, he said – with speechwriter Ted Sorensen's help in balancing optimism with humility – "we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and unforgettable ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds."

Naval Propulsion Into Space

While the sea services were joined by the Army and Air Force and led by civilians in developing the space program, Brinkley reveals various naval ties – Navy and Marine Corps connections – to putting Americans into space:

CNO Adm. Arleigh Burke joins JFK and LBJ to observe the successful mission by Alan Shepard.

• Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal mentored Navy veteran-turned-politician JFK on "post-war national security imperatives," preparing him for his next roles in public service.
• On May 5, 1961 Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke was with JFK and LBJ to observe news coverage Alan Shepard's successful flight into space.
• NASA Administrator James Webb was a major in the Marine Corps in WWII, tasked with running the U.S. radar system for the planned invasion of Japan, ultimately unnecessary after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Imperial Japan's surrender.
• The Naval Research Laboratory announced Sputnik's successful orbit of the Earth on Oct. 4, 1957.
• The Navy led development of the Vanguard satellite, which experienced fits and starts (though former Nazi Wernher von Braun, supported by Senator Barry Goldwater, favored the Army's satellite hardware and development – as well as militarization of space).
• Among the hundreds of U.S. Navy ships involved in the recovery of astronauts and development of the space program were USS Lake Champlain (CV-39), USS Decatur (DD-936), USS Intrepid (CV-11), USS Kearsarge (LHA-3), USS Noa (DD-841) and USS Randolph (CV-15). Navy helos, divers, tracking and personnel were also critical to the success of the program. (Check out the extensive list of recovery ships on NASA's history site.)
• Lt. Cmdr. Victor Prather, a Navy flight surgeon, lost his life testing the full-pressure Mark IV space suit. Other military veterans as well as civilians paid the ultimate price over the years as the space program developed.
• Shepard was a  Navy test pilot and "military aviation superstar" who had served aboard USS Cogswell (DD-651) during WWII and as a squadron operations officer aboard USS Orinsky (CV-34) during the Korean War. He was a leader among astronauts and became the oldest man to walk on the moon, at the age of 47.
• Naval aviator Neil Armstrong "had become one of the most respected jet pilots of the Korean War generation, part of an 'ace club' that also included John Glenn and Wally Schirra."
• Marine John Glenn distinguished himself in World War II and the Korean War. He became a close friend of both President Kennedy and younger brother Robert F. Kennedy. Glenn represented all astronauts at JFK's funeral. After leaving NASA he entered further public service, running for the United States Senate. Jacqueline Kennedy called on Glenn and asked him to comfort her children Caroline and John Jr.  after JFK was killed. Glenn would do the same for RFK's children in 1968 after Bobby Kennedy was murdered.
• Astronaut Scott Carpenter, a Navy test pilot who followed John Glenn into space, had served in the Korean War, flying "numerous reconnaissance and antisubmarine missions along both the Siberian and Chinese coasts."
• Astronaut Wally Schirra served aboard Navy cruiser USS Alaska (CB-1) during WWII. After the war he married the stepdaughter of Adm. James L. Holloway, Jr. (father of a future CNO).
• A big supporter of the Navy in Congress – U.S. Senator John C. Stennis (D-Mississippi) is quoted: "Whoever controls space controls the world." is the namesake for the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74).
• SECNAV Fred North, along with LBJ and SECDEF Robert McNamara, accompanied President Kennedy for a visit to Houston, Sept. 11-12, 1962.
• Although patriarchy and prejudice prevented qualified women (along with non-Christians and non-whites) from becoming astronauts in the early 60s, the Naval School of Aviation Medicine began testing women – seasoned pilots. Dr. William "Randy" Lovelace II, an aeromedical pioneer, "believed that women were better equipped psychologically for NASA space travel because they were, on average, shorter and smaller than men, needed less food and oxygen, and had better blood circulation and fewer cardiac problems." Unfortunately, when NASA and Congress learned about the initiative, the program was shut down, postponing and delaying fulfillment of the promise of equality.

President Kennedy visits Cape Canaveral Nov. 16, 1963.

Cape Kennedy, Vindications, Revelations

Shortly before JFK was killed in Dallas, Texas, he visited Cape Canaveral, Florida, Nov. 16, 1963. "The president's visit to Cape Canaveral had reinforced his faith in exactly what a gargantuan, well-funded, centralized government project could achieve in breakneck time."

Navy, led by USS Wasp (CV-18), recovers Gemini 9 capsule.

Within a week of Kennedy's assassination, LBJ proclaimed a new name for Cape Canaveral: Cape Kennedy.

Interestingly, Brinkley shows how Kennedy was wrong about his claim of a big missile gap with the Soviets, something he proclaimed in what would today be called "fake news." Kennedy made that claim in pointed attacks against President Eisenhower in the late 1950s.

In some ways Ike was vindicated by what Kennedy learned when he came into office (and what was then reported in the New York Times). Eisenhower had quietly kept pace in space in the 50s, deploying reconnaissance and missile-detection satellites.

"All JFK's taunts at Ike had been overdrawn. The fact were that when Eisenhower left the White House, the United States had one hundred sixty operational ICBMs to a paltry four R-7s in the Soviet arsenal. Kennedy now gladly accepted this reality. Later in 1961, Corona satellite intelligence indicated that Khrushchev, expectations aside, had only six ICBMs. Kennedy and Johnson's campaign swipes that Eisenhower and Nixon were the architects of a national security missile strategy of 'drift, delay, and dilution' had clearly been off base. Furthermore, America's three coastal launch sites (Cape Canaveral, Florida; Vandenberg Air Force Base, California; and Wallops Island, Virginia) were already operating around the clock to further spaceflight advancement. Each of these sites had technical facilities, a control center, and the most modern of launchpads. What Kennedy learned was that Eisenhower had actually done an able job of building up U.S. defenses. When Ike was inaugurated for his first term in 1953, the air force still used piston-driven bombers, and navy strategy focused on basing ships around the Pacific. By the time he handed the reins over to JFK, the United States had developed reconnaissance and communication satellite capabilities. And there were nuclear submarines – including the USS George Washington (SSBN-598) – deployed the very month Kennedy was elected and able to carry sixteen nuclear Polaris missiles. Five generations of rockets – starting with the early Vanguard, and then onward with ICBMs like Atlas and Titan – were born in the Eisenhower years. The army had teams designing heavy-launch Saturn rockets, while the air force, not to be outdone, had made headwind with its Space Launching System (SLS), experimenting with a myriad of launch configurations using solid-fuel boosters and hydrogen/oxygen upper states. The Strategic Air Command had more than fifteen hundred jet bombers capable of dropping hydrogen bombs on America's enemies."

Still, JFK was passionate about winning the Space Race for "global prestige" as he fought for peaceful exploration rather than exploitation – for discovery instead of dominance. Already in the 60s there were overtures of joint collaborative missions with the Soviets. But, "For Kennedy, much depended on the United States going to the moon, beating the Soviet Union, being first, winning the Cold War in the name of democracy and freedom, and planting the American Flag on the lunar surface."


Today, as we learned, that flag from 1969 is bleached white. But, rather than being a flag of surrender to the new frontier, perhaps it's a blank slate that could represent a renewable spirit of cooperation and collaboration, reflected in the words of a naval aviator: "one giant leap for mankind."

The American flag planted on the surface of the moon.

Bonus – The U.S. Navy recovers John Glenn:

Hubris, Hiroshima / Memorial Day, Midway

Review by Bill Doughty

During the Cold War U.S. Presidents from Eisenhower to Nixon claimed that the United States had to fight Communism because of the Domino Theory, a principle that said if a country (say, Vietnam) fell to the Communists, other Asian nations would topple, including eventually even Japan and India.

President Obama's visit to Vietnam and Japan this week was a tangible display of American's rebalance to Indo-Asia-Pacific and, some would say, a repudiation of the Domino Theory as it applies to the spread of Communism.

But what if the theory is accurate for some of those nations in a different context.

In Alistair Horne's "Hubris: The Tragedy of War in the Twentieth Century" (HarperCollins, 2015), the venerated historian challenges readers to think of the cause and effect and consequences of unbridled pride – as war begets war.

Perhaps we can see the dominoes not as countries but as battles and wars themselves, one leading to another: Sino-Japanese War, Russo-Japanese War, World War II, Korea, Vietnam. The dominoes are toppled by a type of human behavior identified and named by Aristotle in ancient Greece: hubris.

Horne begins his flowing, connected history in Japan more than a century ago. The U.S. Navy and Commodore Matthew C. Perry opened the country to Western influence and trade in 1853. Drawn to emulate modern nations, the Emperor Meiji committed his people to curiosity, learning and growth.

"A new, compulsory education scheme would create fifty-four thousand primary schools – or one for roughly every six hundred inhabitants; this would eventually lead to the Japanese becoming the most highly literate people in Asia. Within one generation, Japan subjected itself to an astonishing industrial revolution, one designed to catch up with two centuries of Western progress. The mantra for Japanese industry and learning became henceforth, unashamedly, and in general successfully, 'copy, improve, and innovate.'"

Togo

An expansionist Japan, modeling England and other imperialist powers, set its sights on Manchuria and took on the Russian Empire, even though, "As of the turn of the century, tsarist Russia was both the largest and the most aggressively imperialist nation on the globe."

Victory by imperialist Japan, Horne argues, led to hubris and more war.

Horne takes us with Admiral Heihachiro Togo aboard the flagship of Japan's Combined Fleet, Mikasa – last of the pre-Dreadnought-era battleships (now a museum at Yokosuka's Peace Park adjacent to the U.S. naval base).

Using geography, personalities, strategies and tactics, Horne contextualizes history. Readers go with the coal-burning Russian fleet into the South China Sea, Indian Ocean and Cam Rahn Bay in 1905. From Port Arthur and Tsushima readers are taken into North Korea, back into Manchuria and down to Vietnam, still at the beginning of the 20th century.

President Theodore "T.R." Roosevelt, author of "The Naval War of 1812" and father of the "Great White Fleet," played a pivotal role in bringing about, through the Portsmouth Treaty in New Hampshire, what would be temporary peace in the Asia-Pacific region.

In Horne's view, the First World War "began, and was caused by, various sublime practitioners of hubris in conflict with one another." He purposefully refocuses on the Pacific.

When Togo retired from official duties in 1926 he admonished his nation to remember an ancient Japanese saying, "Tighten your helmet strip in the hour of victory." His contemporary, General Maresuke Nogi, committed ritual suicide, seppuku, to atone for his shame at the death of so many Japanese troops in Manchuria. 

Togo's life and Nogi's death further glorified and galvanized a "suicidally dangerous mythology" of a "divine Japan."

Horne writes, "The myth of Japanese invincibility, which had grown up around him, would lie at the heart of the spiraling new militarism."

American codebreakers in Pearl Harbor help turn the tide at Midway.

The Battle of Nomonhan (also known as Khalkhin Gol) in 1939 became a far-reaching domino as General Georgy Zhukov, hardened on the Mongolian battlefield, returned to successfully defend Moscow from Hitler's invading force in December 1941. "As one who would mete out the punishment prescribed by hubris, Zhukov ... would then go on, through the triumph of Stalingrad, to inflict the ultimate destruction of the Führer's evil dreams in the ruins of Berlin."

Meanwhile, hubris led Imperial Japan to move toward Southeast Asia and Indochina for oil and other raw materials, leading to international condemnation, U.S.sanctions and war. Within six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor and other U.S. bases on Oahu, Admiral Chester Nimitz and planners in Hawaii launched an ambush against Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto and the Japanese fleet at Midway.

"In terms of the history of naval warfare, June 4, 1942, was a stunning vindication of the pioneers' belief in the carrier and its aircraft as the future queen of the oceans. Midway saw the eclipse of the mighty Dreadnought class as the capital ship of navies; both the super-battleships Musashi and Yamato would be sunk by carrier planes, having scarcely fired a shot from their gigantic guns. From Midway on, the line would run directly to Hiroshima in 1945 – and beyond that to the establishment of the United States as the world's naval superpower."

Nimitz inspects the damage after the Battle of Midway.

Nimitz is profiled as combining "the attributes of both boldness and caution" "who listened to his advisors, delegated authority and was immune to panic." Nimitz trusted his codebreakers and other intelligence personnel. And he respected the chain of command, including civilian oversight of the military. He stands in sharp contrast to "The American Caesar," Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who "preferred his own counsel" as a "vainglorious ... actor and egoist," according to Horne. 

Truman's MacArthur was Lincoln's McClelland. When the two met for the first time it was on MacArthur's terms and was "a true dialog of the deaf," one eventually leading to MacArthur's open defiance, hubris, and more toppling of prideful dominoes.

"Few acts of hubris in the twentieth century were punished more savagely or more swiftly than MacArthur's, after that remarkable triumph at Inchon went so catastrophically to his head. Thrusting on to the Yalu in pursuit of total victory was a huge risk, which proved to be a frontier too far, a risk that was unjustified, the costs to world equilibrium unwarranted. Its consequences were legion, casting long shadows beyond the actual conflict of the Korean War. Korea was the first war fought by the United States that did not end in a clear-cut American victory. As far as it had involved a United Nations commitment, this proved an experience unlikely to be repeated. When it came to the Vietnam War in the 1960s, the British prime minister Harold Wilson swiftly made it clear that British troops were not going to help out this time. Rather, and similar to President Johnson in 1968, as a consequence of the unpopularity that the war, and specifically the sacking of MacArthur had brought him, Truman declined to run for the White House again. He would be succeeded by another great Second Word War warlord, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. 

"Henceforth, at least until Iraq and Afghanistan came along, the United States would confine itself to waging wars with limited objectives only. As the First Gulf War of 1991 would demonstrate, its leaders would pay fastidious attention to not transgressing national borders. There would be no pursuit of the Iraqi Republican Guard over the Kuwaiti border. Probably the unyielding ferocity with which the Korean War was waged led to a hardening and a prolongation of the Cold War; to a worsening of the split with China, which would not begin to heal until the Nixon-Kissinger initiative of the early 1970s; and to a consolidation of Maoism and all its attendant evils. the spectacle of a modern Western army fleeing before Mao's cotton-clad divisions was not likely to be forgotten in East Asia, no more than had been that of the destruction of tsarist forces in 1905 Manchuria. in the eyes of much of the world, it was Korea 1951 that made a great power of Mao's China."

Horne says it remains a question as to whether a more satisfying outcome could have been achieved leading to a "peacefully reunited Korea, if MacArthur had stopped on the Thirty-Eighth Parallel."

The author takes us into Vietnam via France and writes of the "incredible heroism" of the French and Foreign Legion at Dien Bien Phu in the mid 1950s, noting the defeat at the siege there "cost France not only Indo-China but the rest of its empire as well." He contends, "The imbalance left behind in Vietnam was to lead directly to the American intervention."

Horne's book ends on the cusp of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, but he brings up other examples of domino hubris in his epilogue, including "various Middle Eastern flareups" such as the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

Can the human condition of vainglorious pride be recognized and controlled without more dominoes toppling?

"If hubris is part of the human condition – deep-seated, lingering, pervasive, and potentially lethal – what can we do to avoid it? If, as these chapters have shown, it is not just our leaders who ignore history and their own experience, we might conclude that we all have something to learn."

Battleship Mikasa Museum in the Peace Park next to Fleet Activities Yokosuka.

In Hiroshima this week Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in translated remarks, said:

"Last year, at the 70th anniversary of the end of war, I visited the United States and made a speech as Prime Minister of Japan at a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.  That war deprived many American youngsters of their dreams and futures. Reflecting upon such harsh history, I offered my eternal condolences to all the American souls that were lost during World War II. I expressed gratitude and respect for all the people in both Japan and the United States who have been committed to reconciliation for the past 70 years. Seventy years later, enemies who fought each other so fiercely have become friends, bonded in spirit, and have become allies, bound in trust and friendship, deep between us. The Japan-U.S. alliance, which came into the world this way, has to be an alliance of hope for the world..."

President Obama asks all of us to think about the deep roots of war and peace, common humanity and shared hopes for the future. The Commander In Chief concluded his remarks in Hiroshima this way: 

"The world was forever changed here.  But today, the children of this city will go through their day in peace. What a precious thing that is. It is worth protecting, and then extending to every child. That is the future we can choose -– a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare, but as the start of our own moral awakening."



Obama hugs Hiroshima survivor Shigeaki Mori this week. Mori was 8 when the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, leading to the end of the Pacific War.

'50 for 50' Vietnam Reading List

By Bill Doughty

Seventy-five years ago we were in the middle of a war that changed the world for good, bringing democracy and freedom to most of the Pacific and Europe. For the United States the Second World War lasted just over 3 1/2 years. Today, thinking people know WWII was necessary (just as America's Civil War was regrettable but necessary to end slavery).

Then, 25 years later and 50 years ago, the United States fought in a war that, at the time, we weren't supposed to call "war." The "Vietnam Conflict" lasted for more than a decade. Now that half a century has passed since the height of the conflict, is it possible to evaluate the war and confront the reality of its aftermath? In "The Vietnam Reader" (Routledge, 1991) editor Walter Capps recounts:

"More than 58,000 Americans died as a result of the military hostilities. Hundreds of thousands more were wounded. Approximately twenty percent of those who serve have experienced deep and persistent emotional distress and psychological trauma. More than twice the number of those who lost lives there have taken their own lives since returning home. Huge percentages of America's homeless are veterans of the war. And when the Vietnamese people are included in these demographics, the statistics are even more alarming. Approximately 2 million Indochinese lost their lives from 1961 to 1975, and millions more were victims from the carnage that followed, principally, in Cambodia. The more we learn of the war, the heavier the burden becomes."

Was the Vietnam War necessary? How did it start? Why didn't it end sooner? What were the effects on the world, nation and the young Americans who served? The following list of 50 books for 50 years – remembering the Vietnam War – is not meant to be all-inclusive or in any perfect order, but many of these titles are listed in the top books to read on the subject.

If readers have recommended additions to this list, please feel free to send suggestions via "comments." There are reportedly already more than 30,000 books published, and new books will continue to be published about the Vietnam War. That's especially true in the next several years as we continue to commemorate the sacrifice, remember the tragedy, and understand how and why it all happened 50 years ago.

Broad Sweep

"A Bright and Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam" by Neil Sheehan. Random House, 1988. Opens with a funeral for one of the architects of the war, John Vann, and the book follows his involvement in perpetuating the war until his death in a helicopter crash. "Good intentions gone awry."

"In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam" by Robert S. McNamara with Brian VanDeMarr. Times Books, Random House, 1995. "Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why."

"Vietnam: A History" by Stanley Karnow. The Viking Press, 1983, 1991. "The names of the dead engraved on the granite record more than lives lost in battle: they represent a sacrifice to a failed crusade, however noble or illusory its motives."

"A Rumor of War" by Philip Caputo. Henry Holt and Company, 1977, 1996. "This book does not pretend to be history. It has nothing to do with politics, power, strategy, influence, national interests, or foreign policy; nor is an indictment of the great men who led us into Indochina and whose mistakes were paid for with the blood of some quite ordinary men."

"The Best and the Brightest" by David Halberstam. Ballantine Books, 1972. "They had turned to the bombing out of their own desperation, because what they were doing no longer worked and because bombing was the easiest thing.  It was the kind of power which America wielded most easily, the greatest technological superpower poised against this preposterously small and weak country."

"America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975" by George C. Herring. Temple University Press, 1979. "The tonnage of bombs dropped on Indochina during the Nixon era exceeded that of the Johnson years, wreaking untold devastation, causing permanent ecological damage to the countryside, and leaving millions of civilians homeless... The war polarized the American people as had no issue since slavery a century before."

"About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior" by Col. David H. Hackworth and Julie Sherman. Touchstone, Simon & Shuster, 1989. "The United States ... is a great country with a great heritage; it has set a good example in the past and it can do so in the future, if only it begins to choose its battles carefully and makes sure its causes are right."

"The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War" by E.W. Kenworthy, Fox Butterfield, Hedrick Smith and Neil Sheehan. New York Times, Quadrangle Books, 1971. "The Pentagon papers, despite shortcomings and gaps, form a great archive of government decision-making on Indochina over three decades. The papers tell what decisions were made, how and why they were made and who made them."

"The World Almanac of the Vietnam War" edited by John S. Bowman, introduction by Fox Butterfield. "It was the first war the United States lost, though because of superior U.S. firepower and mobility it won virtually every battle... For the soldiers who fought it, it was a war maddeningly without front lines, against an enemy who often wore civilian clothes, and had no clear objective other than 'body count.'"

New, Fresh Insights

"Vietnam: A New History" by Christopher Goscha. Basic Books, 2016. Sweeping in scope. "The United States was hardly the first 'great power' to send their warships into the waters off Vietnam's coastline. Indeed, if Vietnam is recognizable to so many today, it is largely because this small country is located in one of those coveted parts of the world where the 'treat powers' repeatedly collide."

"Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and Its War" by James Wright. Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press, 2017. "Absent tangible military goals, it was hard to produce tangible military results."

"Vietnam: A History of the War" by Russell Freedman. Holiday House, 2016. A young adult book that synthesizes in words and pictures a wide swath of history, with chapters including "Ho Chi Minh: The Making of a Revolutionary," "The French War in Vietnam: The Elephant and the Tiger," "Tumbling Dominoes," "From the Tonkin Gulf to Rolling Thunder," "The TET Offensive," "The Fall of Saigon," and "Reconciliation."

"Walking Point: From the Ashes of the Vietnam War," a memoir by Perry A. Ulander. North Atlantic Books, 2016. "I would like to dedicate this book to all the people who, having put their faith and trust in social, political, or religious institutions, discovered that their faith had been misplaced and their trust betrayed."

"Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War" by Viet Than Nguyen. Harvard University Press, 2016. "Perhaps some things will never be remembered, and yet also never forgotten. Perhaps some things will remain unspoken and yet always heard... This is the paradox of the past, of trauma, of loss, of war, a true war story where there is no ending but the unknown, no conversation except that which cannot be finished."

"By Honor Bound: Two Navy Seals, The Medal of Honor, and a Story of Extraordinary Courage" by Tom Norris and Mike Thornton with Dick Couch and a foreword by Bob Kerrey, Medal of Honor recipient. St. Martin's Press, 2016. "This is the incredible story of two Navy SEALs who went back. One for a buddy, the other for a brother warrior he had never met. The actions of both represent the pinnacle of courage and selfless service."

More History

"Hunters and Shooters: An Oral History of the U.S. Navy SEALs in Vietnam" edited by Bill Fawcett. William and Company, 1995. "Though numbering less than 150 men in-country at any one time, the SEALs had an effect on the enemy far out of proportion to their numbers. Using the most conservative numbers, the SEALs accounted for 50 enemy dead for each SEAL lost."

"We Were Soldiers Once... and Young: Ia Drang – the Battle that Changed the War in Vietnam" by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (Ret.) and Joseph L. Galloway. Random House, 1992. "So this is the story about ... the first American combat troops, who boarded World War II-era troopships, sailed to that little-known place, and fought the first major battle of a conflict that would drag on for ten long years and come as near to destroying America as it did to destroying Vietnam."

"Brown Water, Black Berets" by Thomas J. Cutler. Naval Institute Press, 1988. "In proportion to the other services, the in-country participation of the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard was very small: a peak strength of 38,000 Navy men compared with more than half a million total American servicemen in Vietnam at the height of the war. But those 38,000 grow to 1,842,000 when stretched over the years of the war, and those Navy and Coast Guard men [and women] who served do not deserve to be forgotten."

"Vietnam: The Naval History" by Frank Uhlig Jr. Naval Institute Press, 1986. "Before we engage in any similar war we must be sure, among other things that we can use our sea power properly. If for any reason we find that we will be unable to do that, or even are in doubt about it, we owe it to ourselves to find a solution to our problem other than war."

"The Vietnam Wars: 1945-1990" by Marilyn Young. HarperCollins, 1991. "Veterans felt spat upon, stigmatized, contaminated. In television dramas, veterans were not heroes welcomed back into the bosom of loving families, admiring neighborhoods, and the arms of girls who loved uniforms; they were psychotic killers, crazies with automatic weapons. It was as if the country assumed that anyone coming back from Vietnam would, even should, feel a murderous rage against the society that had sent him there. The actual veteran – tired, confused, jet-propelled from combat to domestic airport – disappeared."

"They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967" by David Maraniss. Simon & Schuster, 1999. "Soldiers in Southeast Asia, student protesters in the United States, President Johnson and his advisers at the White House – they lived in markedly different worlds that were nonetheless dominated by the same overriding issue, and they all, in their own ways, seemed to be marching toward ambushes in those bright autumn days of 1967."

"The Nightingale's Song" by Robert Timberg. Simon & Schuster, 1995. Profiles the "ascent" of five U.S. Naval Academy graduates: "madcap midshipman who rises to the U.S. Senate" John McCain, "Marine who becomes the kickass troubadour for a generation of Vietnam veterans" James Webb, "brave, resourceful but flawed Marine" Oliver North, "introverted foreign-policy intellectual": Marine Bud McFarlane and "model midshipman" John Poindexter. "Crucial to their ascent is Ronald Reagan, who called Vietnam 'a noble cause.'"

"Where the Domino Fell: America and Vietnam, 1945-1990" by James S. Olson and Randy Roberts. St. Martin's Press, 1991. "Even when American policymakers began to see Vietnam for the quagmire it was, disengagement was excruciatingly difficult... The war was a colossal blunder born of an odd mixture of paranoia and arrogance."

"Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam." HarperCollins,1997. (Please see recent Navy Reads review for excerpts.)

"The Ten Thousand Day War: Vietnam: 1945-1975" by Michael Maclear. St. Martin's Press, 1981. "The Vietnamese, South and North, had against all odds endured and fought the century's longest war, and before that a century of foreign rule – and history must judge them foremost in terms of human fortitude and courage..."

First Person

"Everything We had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Thirty-Three American Soldiers Who Fought It" compiled by Al Santoli. Random House, 1981. "This is a book by thirty-three veterans of the Vietnam War. We have tried to put into honest words the raw experience of what happened to us... Until the broader public fully comprehends the nameless soldier, once an image on your television screen, the nation's resolution of the experience called Vietnam will be less than adequate."

"Dispatches" by Michael Herr. Everyman's Library, Alfred A. Knopf, 1968, 2009. "There were times when the whole war itself seemed tapped of its vitality: epic enervation, the machine running half-assed and depressed, fueled on the watery residue of last year's war-making energy. Entire divisions would function in a bad dream state, acting out a weird set of moves without any connection to their source. Once I talked for maybe five minutes with a sergeant who had just brought his squad in from a long patrol before I realized that the dopey-dummy film over his eyes and the fly abstraction of his words were coming from deep sleep."

"Beyond Survival: Building on the Hard Times – A POW's Inspiring Story" by Gerald Coffee. G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1990. (For excerpt, please read the Navy Reads review.)

"Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War" by Wallace Terry. Random House, 1984. "For me the thought of being killed in the Black Panther Party by the police and the thought of being killed by Vietnamese was just a qualitative difference. I had left one war and came back and go into another one. Most of the Panthers then were veterans... We had already fought for the white man in Vietnam. It was clearly his war. If it wasn't, you wouldn't have seen as many Confederate flags as you saw. And the Confederate flags was an insult to any person that's of color on this planet."

"Legend" by Eric Blehm. Crown Publishers, 2015. The story of Green Beret Staff Sergeant Roy Benavidez's rescue of a special forces team behind enemy lines. "His body – a torn-up canvas of bullet holes, shrapnel wounds, bayonet lacerations, punctures, burns, and bruises – painted a bloody portrait of his valor that day."

"Steinbeck in Vietnam: Dispatches from the War" edited by Thomas E. Barden. "I had always thought of East Asia as old, old in the sense of being tired and worn out, and second of being unbearably overpopulated. Neither preconception is true. The people are young and fresh and inventive, the lands are huge ... Conquest is no longer possible or desirable but cooperation is not only necessary but inevitable."

"In Love & War: The story of a family's ordeal and sacrifice during the Vietnam Years" by Jim and Sybil Stockdale. Harper & Row, 1984. "Washington's second thoughts, the guilt, the remorse the tentativeness, the changes of heart, the backout. And a generation of young Americans would get left holding the bag."

"The Soldiers' Story: Vietnam in Their Own Words" by Ron Steinman. TV Books, 1999. "One marine says he and his buddies lived only for 'Semper Fi,' always faithful to the basic precept of one for all, all for one. Every man in the book echoes that thought. Soldiers helped each other because they knew they could get help in return."

"...And a Hard Rain Fell: A GI's true story of the war in Vietnam" by John Ketwig. Source Books, 2002. "I love to go to the Vietnam Memorial on the mall in Washington, D.C., and I believe I can 'read the writing on the wall.' I find it difficult to assimilate the realities of Vietnam with the American 'truths we hold to be self-evident.'"

Aftermath

"American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity" by Christian G. Appy. Viking, 2015. "It was still unimaginable to most Americans that their own nation would wage aggressive war and justify it with unfounded claims, that it would support antidemocratic governments reviled by their own people, and that American troops would be sent to fight in countries where they were widely regarded not as liberators, but as imperialist invaders."

"Last Men Out: The True Story of America's Heroic Final Hours in Vietnam" by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin. Free Press, Simon & Schuster, 2011. "The long Vietnam War was over. There was a sadness to the moment, a sense of loss. Yet at the time, each Saigon MSG (Marine Corps Security Guard) felt buoyed by the knowledge that he had helped to secure one small triumph in the war's final crucible. Their country may have lost something that it might never recover. But they had persevered with dignity and courage. It was all the Marine Corps could have asked of them. It was all that they could have asked of themselves."

"Chickenhawk Back in the World: Life After Vietnam" by Robert Mason. Viking Penguin, 1993. "Finally, I have come to realize that the most significant thing I lost in that war was peace. When Polynesian sailors sail their canoes for weeks at a time on boundless seas without charts or compasses, they believe that they are sitting still, on a vacant earth, and that by moving their paddles correctly, by setting their sails properly, an island, their destination will arrive on the horizon and come to them." Mason is author of the classic work of "fiction," "Chickenhawk," his personal narrative.

"The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam" by Tom Bissell. Pantheon Books, 2007. "War is a force of influence above all else – the most purely distilled form of partisanship ever devised. Yet war's energies and dark matter are too complicated to allow anyone the certain physics of right and wrong."

"Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and its History" by B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley. Verity Press, 1998. "Still, the popular perception of Vietnam veterans as victims tortured by memories – drug abusers, criminals, homeless bums, or psychotic losers – did not fit me or anybody I knew who had served in Vietnam."

"The Perfect War: Technowar in Vietnam" by James William Gibson. Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986. "A new war will not redeem U.S. defeat in Vietnam. There is no such thing as 'new, improved' technowar that will produce more value for the investment... Instead, another major war against a popular insurgency only offers the prospect of more death and destruction. The insurgents will suffer the most, but American soldiers will die, too... To finally understand the American defeat in Vietnam is to understand how the United States both created and became entrapped by a mythology and a war-production system."

Northern Exposure

"Fire In the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam" by Frances FitzGerald. Atlantic Monthly Press; Little, Brown and Company, 1972. "For the Americans in Vietnam it would be difficult to make this leap of perspective, difficult to understand that while they saw themselves as building world order, many Vietnamese saw them merely as the producers of garbage from which they could build houses."

"The Girl in the Picture: The Story of Kim Phuc, the Photograph and the Vietnam War" by Denise Chong. Viking, 20000. "In the voiceless cry of the girl in the picture is the silence of guilt, of public and private flaws. War, any war, not just the Vietnam war, has dimensions of moral ambiguity."

"Ho Chi Minh: A Life" by William J. Duiker. Hyperion, 2000. "For Americans, the debate over Ho Chi Minh arouses passions over a war that is now past. For Vietnamese, it conjures up questions of more fundamental importance, since it defines one of the central issues in the Vietnamese revolution – the relationship between human freedom and economic equality in the emerging postwar Vietnam."

"PAVN: People's Army of Vietnam" by Douglas Pike. Presidio Press, 1986. "The Vietnam War represented something new on the world scene, a different concept of war, one involving a radically new grand strategy... That perhaps is the moral to be drawn: we must disenthrall ourselves about Vietnam. We must look anew and come to see clearly what happened to us there and what that means for our future."

"Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered From All Sides" by Christian G. Appy. Viking, 2003. "What might happen to our conception of the Vietnam War if we simply began to hear the accounts of American veterans alongside the memories of the Vietnamese who fought with and against them? What if we witnessed those distant jungle firefights through the eyes of the people who regarded the battlefield as home and called this epic struggle 'The American War'?"

Fiction

"The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. Broadway Books,1990; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. Unabridged audiobook read by Bryan Cranston; Audible, 2013. The weight of Vietnam. "They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing." O'Brien is also the author of the acclaimed novel "Going After Cacciato."

"Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War" by Karl Marlantes. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010. "The light died. Voices were silenced. Darkness and fear replaced light and reason. The whisper of a leaf scraping on bark would make heads turn involuntarily and hearts gallop. The surrounding blackness and the unseen wall of dripping growth left no place to run. In that black wet nothingness the perimeter became just a memory. Only imagination gave it form." Marlantes is also author of "What It Is Like to Go to War."
"Fields of Fire" by James Webb. Prentice-Hall, 1978. "Hodges sat against a wet, grassy paddy dike and lazily stirred a can of Beef and Potatoes with a dirty plastic spoon. Raindrops popped and sizzled as they pelted the tiny stove in front of him, which he had made by punching holes in another C-ration tin. His eyes were sunken, his face gaunt and bearded. He dragged mechanically on a muddy cigarette, mindless of the stream of water that was pouring off his helmet down the back of his neck. There was no way to avoid the rain. His body was crinkly from it and he didn't care anymore."

"Close Quarters" by Larry Heinemann. Penguin, 1977. "The war works on you until you become part of it, and then you start working on it instead of it working on you, and you get deep-down mean. Not just kidding mean; not movie-style John Wayne mean, you get mean for real."

"The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam" by Bao Ninh. Riverhead Books, 1991, 1993. "My life seems little different from that of a sampan pushed upstream towards the past. There is no new life,no new era, nor is it hope for a beautiful future that now drives me on, but rather the opposite. The hope is contained in the beautiful prewar past."

Bogged down: Marine PFC J.L. Collins keeps a battery pack dry as he wades through a muddy hole while on a search mission with "I" Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 12 miles south-southwest of DaNang Vietnam, ca 1968. (Photo by USMC, courtesy National Archives)

Missing in this list are the books about the French experience in Vietnam in the 1950s, which is connected to the war in the 1960s and early 70s. Historians and writers like Fredrick Logevall, author of "Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam," show a thread from WWI through WWII through the Korean War through The Cold War that leads to the war in the 60s and early 70s. Another book from that era is frequently cited as a top read: Graham Greene's "Quiet American."
As a Navy read, "From Pearl Harbor to Vietnam: The Memoirs of Admiral Arthur W. Radford,"edited by Stephen Jurika, Jr, is indispensable. Radford's memoirs were published by Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, in 1980 (with excerpts printed as early as 1949 by various publishers).  Radford's memoirs gives a first-person account and insight on how Indochina continued to be a glowing ember after WWII and through the early 70s.
Another candidate for the "50 for 50" is J. Craig Venter's biography, "A Life Decoded - My Genome: My Life," reviewed previously on Navy Reads. And for a far-out future perspective based on his Vietnam experience, read Joe Haldeman's highly recommended "The Forever War."