Brian Douglas Roesch

The author grew up in farming country in the US. Drafted in 1970, he trained as a helicopter gunship pilot, then served in Thailand during 1974–1975 as a rescue helicopter pilot, not in combat. He believed the government’s claim that the US was in Viet Nam to fight communism. In Thailand he learned, however, that a French colonial invasion had brutalized Viet Nam for decades. He returned to the US with lifelong questions: Had the US, a longtime friend and ally of France, had any role in that French colony? What hadn’t the US government told?

Having grown up among farmers, he believed that most of them would fight back if invaded. Most of Viet Nam’s people were farmers and other countryside people. Were they fighting against the US because of a Western invasion? In the US, Brian began digging.

He also worked as a criminal defense lawyer for many years, learning to dig for the real facts in each case that made the controversy happen.

Applying that method to search for the real reason for the US-Viet Nam War, he traveled to Viet Nam beginning in 1990, as well as studying in the US. Through the years, he returned to Viet Nam on about nine trips. He visited sites and interviewed some participants, who described their views from childhood on up. He was able to visit libraries, the Viet Nam National Archives, and museums rich in facts. In the US, he also spent extensive time reading among about 5,000 books in the Viet language, which were published in Viet Nam and maintained in the University of Washington Library.

In the U.S. National Archives, he discovered thousands of declassified reports by US consuls in Viet Nam from 1889 into the 1950s. The Archives also contained other related materials. The consular reports detailed much about US business in Viet Nam under the French colonial brutality. This is part of history. But it does not appear in the US in high schools, colleges, universities, webinars, videos, or books for the public.