On Christmas Eve in 1976, at a prison camp in Hóc Môn, authorities removed Võ Văn Tưng from the metal container used for solitary confinement. A follower of the Cao Đài faith who had studied law, he refused to rewrite his “reflection paper” and was locked inside.
In his submitted text, he argued that the detained officers of the Republic of Vietnam should be recognized as prisoners of war, demanding his petition be forwarded to Prime Minister Phạm Văn Đồng and the U.N. secretary-general at the time.
A heated argument with the guards ensued, followed by gunfire. Inside the camp, prisoners heard him cry out, “They’ve shot me dead, brothers!” The next morning, camp officials invoked the incident as a warning, claiming that he was probably dead.
However, Võ Văn Tưng survived. Bullets had shattered both his legs, but doctors and nurses who had formerly served in the South Vietnamese military saved him using makeshift equipment to splint his bones. Fellow prisoners helped by hiding antibiotics in his food and water. As his wounds gradually healed, he still steadfastly refused to write a statement admitting fault.
Historian Tạ Chí Đại Trường recounted this episode in Một khoảnh Việt Nam Cộng hòa nối dài (A Fragment of the Republic of Vietnam Lives On), a memoir completed in 1982 after years in reeducation camps. Friends and supporters arranged its first publication in the United States in 1993 through Thanh Vân Publishing House.
Though Tạ Chí Đại Trường was in another camp and did not witness the shooting firsthand—only seeing Võ Văn Tưng from a distance later—he pieced the story together from accounts by men held at Hóc Môn. The book’s subject grants it a significance far beyond one man’s life story, recounting a historical gray area omitted from official histories. Through careful observation, he transformed the memoir into a repository of collective memory.
The memoir also traces how a citizen of the former republic became a prisoner.
On June 23, 1975, Tạ Chí Đại Trường reported to the communist authorities at Taberd School in Sài Gòn, bringing a piece of bread and paying for 10 days of meals, as instructed for former captains. During the republic’s final weeks, he was still attempting to finish his dissertation while others sought evacuation; he understood that the government was collapsing but could not imagine what its successor would do. By noon that day, an official announced that they would have to remain for study and repentance. What was presented as a 10-day program stretched into nearly six years.
Throughout that period, prisoners anxiously waited to hear their names called on Tết, on April 30, on National Day, or on the birthday of Hồ Chí Minh. Rumors swept through the camp before each holiday, prompting hopeful men to give away their clothes and belongings, only to spend subsequent months in need. Younger prisoners serving criminal sentences understood this longing, spreading word of impending releases in exchange for food and cigarettes.
Perhaps hope was essential for survival. Tạ Chí Đại Trường saved a pack of Ruby cigarettes from the previous year to give to his father upon his return. By one Tết, the pack was crumpled and stained, so he opened it to share with friends. After the meal, one untouched cigarette remained on the plate; the gift meant for a father had reached the end of its life before the son could return.
Eventually, hope gave way to hunger. One day, an older former captain suffering from tuberculosis was forced to help build a fence. The work detail blocked the guards’ view so the captain could secretly pick wild tàu bay greens, brushing off the dust to eat the leaves raw. Tạ Chí Đại Trường wrote that he could still remember the former officer’s hollow cheeks and the sudden happiness in his eyes.
During these starving days, Tạ Chí Đại Trường himself was “fortunate” enough to dig a dried-out cow’s head from a rubbish heap. A friend split it open and scraped out the foul-smelling scraps of sinew and marrow to cook with wild greens and fermented cassava.
Despite the deprivation, humor endured throughout the memoir; when the latrines were moved closer to the prisoner’s quarters and men had to carry out oil drums filled with excrement, they called the work “going Apollo,” dubbing each trip a “mission.”
Behind the barbed wire, people from the former regime did not suddenly unite, bringing their ranks, professions, religions, habits, and old rivalries into the camps.
But why did most prisoners not try to escape? The account of an escape attempt at Gia Trung may offer an answer.
Seven prisoners quietly prepared for two months; they saved dried cassava for provisions and planned to overpower a guard. But when they made their move, the gun’s sling caught, prolonging the struggle and exposing the plan. The leader of the escapees told five men to run while he and his deputy stayed behind. Both were shot dead, their bodies displayed the next day as a warning.
The five who reached the forest were hunted down; three were shot dead, and two were brought back badly wounded.
Here, perhaps, the full meaning of the memoir becomes clear. The republic lived on for a time behind the fences of prisons and reeducation camps, enduring through the courage, arrogance, selfishness, and loyalty of the confined civil servants, professors, artists, and religious figures.
On June 10, 1981, as others completed release paperwork, Tạ Chí Đại Trường was called back and asked if he now recognized that his earlier historical scholarship was wrong.
“No, not in scholarly terms,” he replied.
Though he had sometimes acted out of cowardice to survive, he held firm at that final question, preserving the last measure of his integrity as a historian.
The gates opened, but the prison remained in his mind; he hesitated to hail rides and avoided anyone in uniform.
Written soon after his release in 1981 and 1982, “A Fragment of the Republic of Vietnam Lives On” remains his most distinctive historical work—crafted not from old texts or ancient inscriptions, but from what his generation lived through behind barbed wire.
Thúc Kháng wrote this book review in Vietnamese and published it in Luật Khoa Magazine on September 1, 2026. The Vietnamese Magazine translated it into English.
