Book Review: Distant War, Recollections of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia by Marc Phillip Yablonka

by Karen St. John, Staff Writer
Like many of us, the Vietnam War became teenager Marc Phillip Yablonka’s war. The son of a holocaust survivor and U.S. WW II veteran, Yablonka watched as the war dragged on and Saigon fell in 1975. For decades falling the collapse, a steady stream of Vietnam refugees poured into California. Yablonka’s role as an English teacher for adults suddenly brought him up close and personal to the war that he had only a vague notion of.
But it wasn’t until all the war films on Vietnam and neighboring Cambodia came to the big screen that he sat up and took notice of what fighting a war in Vietnam might really have meant. The one movie in particular that seared itself into the gentle heart of the English teacher was the 1984 Killing Fields.
The brutal reality of Pol Pot’s genocide during his regime over the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia depicted in Killing Fields, made a profound and poignant impression on Yablonka. He was moved by the deep friendship between Schanberg, a NT Times reporter, and Pran, a Cambodian reporter, and developed a deep respect for all who trekked the jungles of war to write and photograph the events.
Without so much as a backward glance, Yablonka switched gears and began studying journalism. His new career blossomed as a freelance journalist and stringer for wire services, newspapers and travel publications.
The plight of the refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, the topic of his Masters degree thesis, became what Yablonka felt was his true calling: to chronicle war.
He made several trips to the South East Asian countries, but it was his first trip to Saigon that he recalls with clarity: “I looked up at the blue Saigon sky and felt as if I had arrived – truly arrived – in the center of the universe.”
Distant War, Recollections of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia is not a traditional story, with a beginning and end. In fact, it isn’t a story at all, but a collection of Yablonka’s articles written during his frequent trips to these countries. There are little to no dates assigned to his articles, so it is a bit difficult to put them into the historic perspective of the Vietnam War. Occasionally, the same theme (such as the American embargo against Vietnam) will creep into an additional article or two, without an editorial commentary by Yablonka.
All this is a tad frustrating at first, especially if you are seeking another interpretation or judgment of the Vietnam War. Yet Yablonka steadfastly refuses to take a stance. He allows the subjects of his articles to speak for themselves, and this, more than anything, is what makes Yablonka’s assembled collection like no other. Yablonka’s articles are listed as individual chapters and cover a multitude of roles: doctors, pilots, special forces, donut dollies, civilians; he even writes of the dogs that went on military patrols. There are interesting tidbits on the likes of celebrities such as Wheels of Fortune’s Pat Sajack (himself a Vietnam veteran), entertainer Bob Hope, actress Kieu Chinch, filmmaker Oliver Stone, and Perot’s running mate and former Vietnam POW, Vice Admiral James Stockdale.
Not all the articles are about Americans. As the title implies, there are articles on people from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, even France (a newspaper woman captured and held as a POW) and Canada (Vietnam veterans). The photographs Yablonka has included give faces to the names and events, and provide a good balance to his articles.
The subjects in Distant War, especially the articles on refugees, give a new respect for the wide range of fallout from any war. Yablonka’s collection proves that war is not an isolated event, but a large explosion that splits into multiple ripples, crossing many miles of land to the horizon, for many decades after the actual combat has ceased.
In the end, any story you may want to find in Distant War will be in the chaotic realization that perhaps there truly is no beginning or end to war, only recollections of moments, paused and pondered over and over.