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Bảo La wrote this article in Vietnamese and published it in Luat Khoa Magazine on August 5, 2025.

While the Vietnam War may have passed for many, its echoes remain lodged in the lives of countless individuals. It is these quiet, personal stories—the ones that fall through the cracks of official history—that form the heart for Những Ngày Tháng Năm (Through the Days, Months, and Years), the 2025 book by Sơn Khê (the pen name of Phan Thúy Hà).

Born from the fragmented confidences of both Vietnamese and foreigners whose lives were entwined with the war and its aftermath, the book gives voice to the overlooked. Sơn Khê acts as a gentle observer, allowing her subjects to narrate their own tales. Divided into stories from the war and the post-war years, the book focuses on "unwilling migrants"—individuals displaced by conflict, each carrying their own private sorrows.

A Stolen Future, An Unbroken Will The book opens with the story of a lawyer’s family in South Việt Nam on the eve of reunification in 1975. In a moment of despair, the father—having served the Sài Gòn regime—attempted to end his life, stopped only by the shocked cry of his son, the story's protagonist.

That cry saved the father's life, but the family could not escape the tragedies of the new era. Due to the father's past, their family was classified as "Category 14," and for years, his children were barred from enrolling in schools or obtaining jobs, despite having excellent academic records. They were stripped of the right to be treated as ordinary human beings, scorned and discriminated against even by relatives on the victorious side.

Amidst the harsh and twisted times, the protagonist chose to persist. He learned in secret, studying anything he could, driven by a clear goal: to assume an identity other than that of a “ ngụy’s child ” that society had stamped upon him. ( Ngụy is the category that characterizes all of the military officers and government officials of the former Republic of Việt Nam after 1975 under the new regime.) After 20 years of waiting, he finally entered university and graduated at the age of 37.

When Tears Became a Crime The book then tells the story of a young violinist from the South whose life was upended after April 30, 1975. When Northern cadres took over the Sài Gòn Conservatory, she was stripped of her right to study, and the future for a young woman whose life had revolved solely around music suddenly turned bleak.

She was later fortunate enough to be hired to play at a hotel serving foreign guests, and through her music, she became her family's main breadwinner. It was this income that made it possible to undertake the arduous journey to visit her father and brother, who were imprisoned in a re-education camp.

The journey itself was an ordeal—an entire week of travel for a single hour with their loved ones. Seeing her father toiling in the harsh conditions of the camp, she wanted to cry. But she had to hold it in, because, as she knew, “If the child cries, the father’s studies will be affected, and he’ll be criticized for his thinking.”

In the logic of the new regime, shedding tears for one’s own family had, somehow, become a crime.

The Long Walk Home Another story recounts the journey of a highly trained South Vietnamese officer, educated in the United States, who worked at Đà Nẵng Airport. As Southern Việt Nam collapsed in the days before Sài Gòn fell, he was forced to make the long journey south on foot, as flights were prioritized for women and children. Along the way, he witnessed the deaths of comrades, slept among graveyards, and survived by begging for food.

After enduring such hardships, he eventually reached Sài Gòn and resettled in Belgium as a political refugee. For years, he refused to take Belgian citizenship, holding on to an unshakable longing for his homeland and the hope of returning. It was only when all hope had vanished that he was compelled to become a citizen. Even then, though he missed Việt Nam deeply, he rarely spoke of it to his children and did not wish for them to visit.

In a poignant twist of fate, after the soldier’s death, his son unknowingly retraced his father’s arduous path, walking the 1,000 kilometers from Đà Nẵng to Sài Gòn.

A Humanitarian Journey Phan Thúy Hà's tapestry of lives also includes compassionate hearts not born on Vietnamese soil—foreigners whose destinies became entwined with the country’s upheavals. One such story is the humanitarian journey of German journalist and philanthropist Rupert Neudeck, told through the words of his wife, Christel.

His connection to Việt Nam began after he witnessed Parisians, led by figures like the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, organizing rescue missions for refugees in the South China Sea. Though Neudeck had once supported North Việt Nam’s government, he was moved to launch a similar rescue plan in his own country, despite objections from many German politicians. Accompanied by the renowned writer Heinrich Böll, Neudeck’s ship ultimately rescued 357 Vietnamese boat people.

Even after Germany decided in 1987 to stop accepting Vietnamese refugees, he continued to quietly devise ways to bring more people ashore, risking confrontation with the authorities to continue his mission.

A Legacy That Endured The book also tells the multi-generational story of a French family—that of botanist Eugene Poilane. Though they came to Việt Nam during the French colonial era, they were, as the author notes, not colonizers.

Driven by his passion for plants, Poilane discovered that the red-soil plateau of Khe Sanh was perfectly suited for coffee cultivation. He and his family devoted their lives not only to building a plantation but also to helping the local Bru ethnic community by introducing a new livelihood and teaching basic self-care in the absence of access to modern medicine.

While the fierce wars that followed erased all physical traces of their presence in Khe Sanh, their legacy could not be wiped away. The memory of the Poilane family and what they built was preserved by both the local Vietnamese community and by American veterans who remembered the beauty of what once existed there.

The Hope for a Last War The book is a tapestry of many other lives, faces, and fates, emerging through the author’s quiet presence.

There is the family reunited after decades of separation, only to find themselves divided by ideology—a revolutionary father from the North and a son raised in the South.

There are the women forced to remarry, the people compelled to trample over the bodies of the dead, the marriages of convenience born of wartime uncertainty, and the hearts that remained faithful to a wartime love. And, woven throughout, are the candid confessions of ordinary people from both sides who cared little for victory and simply hoped for the war to end.

These small, human stories find no place in heroic official histories. They reveal the psychological scars that are passed down through generations. To finish this book is to feel a deep ache for the wounds that, despite all the days, months, and years, still refuse to fade. Yet, it also offers a measure of hope—knowing that there are people who bravely listen to and record these stories for the generations to come.

A final, bittersweet moment comes with the author’s note on the cover: this is her last book on war. The decision is understandable, even as the reader is left with the knowledge that countless stories of nameless people remain untold.

In stepping away, the author leaves behind a shared, necessary belief: that this must be the last war.

“Through Days, Months, and Years”: Lives Erased from the Pages of History

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