The cover of the book Failure to Atone.

Failure to Atone, the latest book on the American war in Vietnam, has just been released to the public in Vietnam. The author of the book, Dr. Allen Hassan, is an American physician who had come to Vietnam to treat the Vietnamese war victims.

"Spread out before me are the writhing, dying forms of approximately 40 very young Vietnamese children. Many are infants, the oldest perhaps five years of age. The children all wear plastic medical armbands. They are struggling to stay alive. Many of the children try to move their arms and legs, but blood spurts from small, round wounds in their heads. Each beautiful little boy or girl has an untreated head wound. They have all been shot through the head. I quickly realize that these young children were probably lined up and shot, execution-style.”

The memoir was begun with such an obsessed tragedy. And the obsession was embedded in Allen Hassan’s memory, the doctor treating civilians of both frontlines, such as Quang Tri, and Quang Ngai, etc.

The obsession and the bitter truth about the consequences of the war he collected have made him “talk” the truth to awaken pepople to unjust wars.

And four years ago, he started writing the memoir Failure to Atone and had it published in 2006.

The heart-rending emotion towards what he witnessed, tears of helplessness shedded on watching civilians died due to the very severe wounds, and the feeling of indignant at the war crime, etc all spoke for the author’s penance and appealed to humankind for fighting against the violence and the war crime.

Out of the unannounced truths about the the Vietnam war in the memoir there are the circumstances of seriously wounded soldiers gathered at Dong Ha’s tents without being taken back to the America or letting die in their homeland, of the American deserted with an illicit life in the tunnel under Saigon city.

Especially, in the Vietnamese version Dr. A.Hassan also supplemented an appendix “The last shadow of the Vietnam war” and “The transcentennial pang” about the Agent Orange used by the American soldiers in the Vietnam war and the consequences which the Vietnamese innocent civilians have incurred.

The author requested the American government started to contribute something to alleviate the Vietnamese’s war pain and the true American soldiers, especially those who joined the war.

• Written by Thach Trung
• Translated by Hong Quang