Traveling to Vietnam: American Peace Activists and the War (Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution)

Traveling to Vietnam is the first book to document the activities of the more than 200 American peace activists who traveled to Hanoi during the war in Southeast Asia. Eager to meet with representatives of the government of North Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government, these Americans came from backgrounds such as international peace organizations, the civil rights movement, and academic institutions. They usually traveled in small groups of three or four at a time and by 1969 averaged about one group a month. Their personal contacts with the Vietnamese later spurred them to organize humanitarian aid for North Vietnam, an activity that Washington strongly opposed. After visiting American POWs in Hanoi prisons, these Americans then tried to facilitate improved mail delivery between the prisoners and their families. And many of the activists attempted to, and succeeded in, arranging early releases for some American prisoners. Traveling to Vietnam is also an account of how Washington officials resisted these activists' efforts at every turn, seizing their passports and bank accounts and sabotaging their efforts to release American POWs. After the war was over, Hershberger writes, many of the travelers continued their ties to the Vietnamese and worked successfully to lift the American embargo against Vietnam.