The Dark Journey

Inside the reeducation camps of Vietcong

Non-Fiction - Cultural
246 Pages
Reviewed on 06/13/2011
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    Book Review

Reviewed by Alice DiNizo for Readers' Favorite

Hoa Minh Truong was a lieutenant in the South Vietnam Army when the Vietnam War ended in 1975. At that time the President of South Vietnam ordered his troops to withdraw from major battle areas and turned South Vietnam over to the Communists of North Vietnam. At that point, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese fled their homeland in any means they could, many of them dying at sea in improperly equipped boats or at the hands of pirates. As an officer in the South Vietnamese Army, Mr. Truong suffered terribly and unjustly at the hands of his captors; he was forced to go from camp to camp where he and his companions were forced into heavy labor, while their living conditions were subhuman and their diet less than minimal. What these South Vietnamese Army officers endured was called "reeducation" by their victors.

Mr. Truong recounts in detail the history of Vietnam and the fates of many Vietnamese heroes who died for their country. Often their names will confuse the reader, but the author's message of torturous treatment will not. He writes of the different camps where he and his fellow officers were subjected to brutal treatment and has drawn pictures of each camp so the reader may know what they were like.

Despite the lack of an index which would have been valuable to the text, this is a monumental work that tells what really happened after we "lost" the Vietnam War in 1975. It is well-written and heartbreakingly readable. The Dark Journey belongs on library shelves everywhere.

Richard Adams

Here is the true story as to what became of the people of the south Vietnam when the tank finally drove through the gates of the southern palace. If ever there was true reason for a war - here it is. I* provides the true horror of an evil communist regime, its vidictiveness for the southers, its reign of harsh measures that reduced the entire country under communism to a country of starvation. The irony of it all is brought out in Truong's book. Even many communist, disenchanted as to their promised new dream of prosperity for all, took to old boats to escape. Interesting too, Truong makes the point how English colonies were nurtured to democracy while French colonies revolted and turned communist. A good anology. Too many Vietnamese names, I found. However, the story of his plight following a war we'd had enough of, saw a bitter end for the people we fought for but deserted.