Dang Thuy Tram

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In this Vietnamese name, the family name is Đặng, but is often simplified to Dang in English-language text. According to Vietnamese custom, this person should properly be referred to by the given name Trâm.
Cover of Vietnamese-language edition of Dang Thuy Tram's Diary

Đặng Thùy Trâm (b. Huế, Vietnam, November 26, 1943; d. Đức Phổ, Quảng Ngãi Province, Vietnam, June 22, 1970) was a Vietnamese military doctor who worked as a battlefield surgeon for North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. She was killed, in disputed circumstances, at the age of 27, by United States forces while travelling on a trail in the Ba To jungle in the Quảng Ngãi Province of south-central Vietnam. Her wartime diaries, which chronicle the last three years of her life, attracted international attention following their publication in 2005.

One of Trâm’s handwritten diaries was captured by U.S. forces in December 1969. Following her death in a gun battle on June 22, 1970, a second diary was taken by Frederic (Fred) Whitehurst, then a 22-year-old U.S. military intelligence specialist. Whitehurst defied an order to burn the diaries, instead following the advice of a South Vietnamese translator who advised him not to destroy them. He kept them for 35 years, with the intention of eventually returning them to Trâm's family, if possible.

Whitehurst's search for Trâm’s family initially proved unsuccessful. In March 2005, he and his brother Robert (also a Vietnam War veteran) brought the diaries to a conference on the Vietnam War at Texas Tech University. There they met photographer Ted Engelmann (also a Vietnam veteran), who offered to look for the family during his trip to Vietnam the next month. With the assistance of Do Xuan Anh, a staff member in the Hanoi Quaker office, Engelmann was able to locate Trâm’s mother, Doan Ngoc Tram, and family.[1]

In July 2005, Trâm’s diaries were published in Vietnamese under the title Nhật ký Đặng Thùy Trâm (Đặng Thùy Trâm’s Diary), quickly becoming a bestseller. In less than a year, the volume sold more than 300,000 copies and comparisons were drawn between Trâm’s writing and that of Anne Frank.[2][3]

In August 2005, Fred and Robert Whitehurst traveled to Hanoi, Vietnam, to meet Trâm’s family. In early October of the same year, the family traveled to Lubbock, Texas, to view the diaries, which are archived at Texas Tech University's Vietnam Archive, then visited Fred Whitehurst and his family in his home state of North Carolina.

The diaries have been translated into English and the English version was published in September 2007. Published translations into other languages (including Korean) are forthcoming.

In 2009 a film about Tram by Vietnamese director Đặng Nhật Minh, entitled Đừng Đốt (Do Not Burn), was released.

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