Assignment Viet Nam

Opening with a passing mention of the South Vietnamese government troops firing upon unarmed Buddhist protestors in the central city of Hue in May 1963, Ceylonese journalist J. F. Samaranayake recounts his first-hand experiences and exchanges (1959-1963) with the Viet Nam Press and other Vietnamese interlocutors in Saigon and from Colombo, Ceylon. This zenith of his journalistic career began spiraling downhill even as the November 1963 coup leading to the arrest and assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem occurred. Dejected and disillusioned, he retrospectively laments that, perhaps, he may have acted as if he "were more Vietnamese than the Vietnamese people."