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The My Viet Nam War: Oral History Project at UC Irvine exhibits oral history interviews with individuals of the Viet Nam War generation. These interviews were conducted by students at UCI as part of the upper-division history course “The Viet Nam War Seen Through Oral History” taught by Professor of History Dịu-Hương Nguyễn.
Working from spoken testimonies of those who participated in or witnessed historical events, the course attempts to illuminate the lives of individuals and communities whose voices and perspectives may be marginalized or neglected in conventional interpretations of the war. By examining the war at the personal level, the course emphasizes profound social and cultural changes and lasting political, economic, moral, and intellectual legacies that the war brought about in the postwar era.
In pairs, the students conducted research and oral history interviews with individuals who had first-hand experience of living through the war era. Those interviewed consisted of veterans involved in the conflict as well as citizens who experienced violence on their soil with their own eyes. The stories of both the Vietnamese and American veterans include descriptions of their arduous training before deployment, a shared sense of duty to their country, and adjusting to civilian life after the war ended. The stories of the Vietnamese civilians demonstrate a great change in social norms and cultural standards as a result of the war, and how these fluctuations affected their lives both before and after the Fall of Sài Gòn in April 30th, 1975.
The interviews serve as a basis for these digital exhibits which expand on the themes from the interviews using scholarly sources, comparing the personal experiences of the narrators to what historians have written and documented about the war.
The students learned about the history of the Viet Nam War and conducted their research through a multitude of mediums. After learning about the Viet Nam war, each student received training on oral history theory and methods alongside the best practices on interviewing. They visited the Orange County and Southeast Asian Archive at the libraries of the University of California, Irvine where they accessed a plethora of primary and secondary sources pertaining to the Viet Nam war. Guest speakers were invited to the campus to elaborate upon the war experience from both the Vietnamese and American perspective. Finally, the students visited the Museum of the Republic of Vietnam, as well as attended the flag salute ceremony at the Viet Nam War Memorial in Little Sài Gòn in Orange County to understand how the war permanently changed those affected by it in the present.
The project sought to include all viewpoints of the Viet Nam war era out of courtesy for those affected by the war. We hope that these exhibits highlight the voices of those who lived through this time. Under the Interviews tab, you can find pages dedicated to each interviewee’s unique story. These interviews along with other related materials such as the transcript and field notes will be housed at the UCI libraries and can also be accessed through the Calisphere.
If you are interested in sharing your story of your life in Viet Nam during the war, please feel free to contact Professor Nguyễn at diuhuong@uci.edu.
Class visit to the Orange County & Southeast Asian Archive Center with Dr. Thuy Vo Dang on November 3rd, 2021.
Class visit to the Museum of the Republic of Vietnam with the narrators on December 11th, 2021.