On February 6, on the occasion of Lunar New Year, US Ambassador to Vietnam Marc Knapper went to Thuong Tin district, Hanoi to directly return the diary to a Vietnamese veteran - Mr. Vu Dac Tuc.
Mr. Tuc's diary was discovered and seized by the US Marines on the battlefield in Thua Thien Hue province in 1967.
Mr. Tuc and his family members received the diary back at their home before Tet. Ambassador Knapper also gave Mr. Tuc a letter signed by President Biden and thanked Mr. Tuc for his efforts to attend a repatriation event at the Vietnamese National Assembly during President Biden’s visit to Hanoi in September 2023.
At the ceremony last September, a veteran friend of Mr. Tuc, Mr. Nguyen Van Thien, also received back his diary that was lost during the war 50 years ago.
The diaries of Mr. Tuc and Mr. Thien were discovered during the implementation of a US Department of Defense program to support National Steering Committee 515 and the Vietnamese Ministry of National Defense in searching for, collecting and identifying martyrs' remains.
In cooperation with the US Department of Defense, a research team from Harvard University's Ash Center identified the owners of these diaries while conducting archival research to support the 515 Command Board.
The US Department of Defense's support for Vietnam's efforts to locate, collect, and identify the remains of fallen soldiers is part of its efforts to address the consequences of war.
This program aims to respond to the support and assistance that the Vietnamese Government has given to the mission of searching for missing American soldiers during the war over the past decades and to help the families of many who are still missing to end their long-standing longing and waiting.
Documents captured on the battlefield, like the diaries of veterans Nguyen Van Thien and Vu Dac Tuc, are often handwritten, not intact or have been stained and damaged by weather and war. Especially after more than half a century, each document has passed through many hands. In addition to the technical challenge of restoring the information, the diaries written on the battlefield also use many dialects across the three regions of North, Central and South Vietnam, which also creates barriers for the expert team.
Experts had to use applied linguistics, military history and interview data to figure out exactly who the diary's true owner was.
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