Nguyen Khuyen
Nguyen Khuyen is a journalist and the former editor of the largest
English-language newspaper in Viet Nam, Viet Nam News. Khuyen was
born in 1936 in Hai Phong, which before reunification in 1975 was part of
North Viet Nam. The city lived under the control of the Japanese during
World War II, then the Viet Minh and again under the French. In
secondary school Khuyen began studying English and after the French
War ended he studied at the Ha Noi Teachers’ College. After graduation
he got a job at the Viet Nam News Agency. He ended up on the foreign
news desk, translating and writing articles in English about the nascent
American involvement in South Viet Nam.
Khuyen married and had two daughters. During the American
bombing of Ha Noi, his family evacuated to the countryside, but Khuyen
had to stay near the transmitters in Ha Noi, the lifeline to the outside
world. “It was eerie to be here during the bombing. Ha Noi was like a
ghost town. I stayed at work, translating on my typewriter for hours and
hours, waiting for the first siren and then we would duck into the bunker.
I had to shuttle between Ha Noi and wherever my family happened to be
on my bicycle. By the time the third wire service transmission was
finished, it was past midnight. There remained for me only six hours to get
to the countryside to visit my family. Six hours was barely enough time for
me to cover thirty or forty kilometers, riding on bumpy roads with
supplies on my back – my ration of sugar, milk and meat for my
daughters. The aim was to be there before dawn, just to take my
daughters in my arms, cuddle them for a moment, talk to my wife, and
then rush back to Ha Noi before 8 am and then go on until the next night.
Khuyen covered the release of all the American pilots who had been
held captive in North Viet Nam. “Seeing those Americans, some on
crutches, some walking straight and tall, each carrying a little handbag, I
felt happy those people could finally rejoin their families. I wanted them
to be safe again in the folds of their families. But that feeling was not
common in Viet Nam. And, I cannot say for other people. I cannot say
for mothers who lost more than one child.”