Brian Douglas Roesch

The author grew up in farming and ranching country in Southeastern Washington. Drafted in 1970, he trained as a helicopter gunship pilot with orders to Viet Nam in 1972. As the war was ending in 1972, he was reassigned to Thailand during 1974–1975 as a rescue helicopter pilot, not in combat. He believed the government’s statements that the US was in Southeast Asia to fight communism. In Thailand he learned, however, that a French colonial invasion had brutalized Viet Nam for decades. What else hadn’t the US government told?

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

He also worked as a criminal defense lawyer for many years, while singing as one of three white members in a 40-member African American choir, and taking trips to Viet Nam. He believes that well-intentioned white people should step across the artificial color line that was set up by white racists. Otherwise, white people accept the restriction imposed by bad people. Crossing the line, white people find solid friendships.

Through the years, he continued researching on Viet Nam, in the Viet, French, and English languages. The University of Washington library maintained thousands of volumes printed in Viet Nam. Pursuing whatever the truth might be, he wrote to the Viet Nam government in 1990 and then traveled there in 1990 and 1991. This produced insights into ancient village life and other matters.

In 2003, in the US, he discovered a reference to a US business consul in Viet Nam in 1905. Such a presence had never been mentioned by the government, not even during the agonized questioning during the 1960s and early 1970s. The discovery led him to the National Archives. This visit uncovered thousands of declassified consular reports, which placed the US in Viet Nam from 1889 into the 1950s, enabled by invasion force,. This is now history.