To Pledge Allegiance
The Vietnam War was a pivotal moment in the evolution of patriotism, producing a range of parts that citizens could play as the conflict dragged on: activist, Navy pilot, war hero, journalist, and more. Hear their oral accounts—which range from spending more than eight years as a prisoner-of-war to fleeing Saigon as it fell—and their perspectives on patriotism.
Illustrations: GREG BETZA
Photos: EDWIN TSE

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To Pledge Allegiance
Laura Palmer is a Vietnam War correspondent who went on to write about the families torn apart by the war.
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Laura's Bio
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Laura Palmer
On January 20, 1961, Laura Palmer was allowed to stay home from school to watch John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech on her family’s black-and-white television. More than 50 years later, she can still hear his famous instruction: ”Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
She followed a surprising path to realize what that statement really meant to her, from protesting the Vietnam War in school to becoming a freelance journalist in Vietnam in 1972 (which she documented in War Torn) and later, traveling across America to document the experiences of those who lost loved ones in the war in Shrapnel in the Heart. At the heart of all those experiences is a genuine and deep desire to help people tell their stories, and a persistent empathy for those who lived on after the war but lost so much because of it.
To Pledge Allegiance
Everett Alvarez, Jr. is a Navy pilot, Vietnam veteran, and POW held in the “Hanoi Hilton” for eight years.
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Everett's Bio
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Everett Alvarez, Jr.
When Everett Alvarez, Jr. enlisted in the United States Navy in 1960, he did so because he felt it was his duty. He didn’t expect, as he jokes, to “start the Vietnam War” when his plane, flying in the retaliation to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, was gunned down on August 5th, 1964, effectively making him the first American pilot to be taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese. He would ultimately spend eight years and six months in captivity.
During those long years, he would suffer physical and emotional torture, debilitating sickness, solitary confinement, and isolation from his family and loved ones at home. He attributes his survival to the hope and faith he cultivated, with the help of other American soldiers at the “Hanoi Hilton” that he would see home again. Every Sunday, he recalls, he and his fellow soldiers would stand and silently recite both the Lord’s prayer and the pledge of allegiance in their heads in solidarity and in loyalty.
To Pledge Allegiance
Andrew Lam is the son of a South Vietnamese general whose family fled to America during the fall of Saigon.
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Andrew's Bio
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Andrew Lam
Acclaimed writer and journalist Andrew Lam fled Saigon in 1975, when he was only 11 years old. The son of a prominent South Vietnamese general, he and his family settled in the United States, but he would come to realize that “becoming American” would be a process that took years—a process that is still ongoing.
Andrew has had to confront his identity as a Vietnamese-American many times over the course of his life, but he has come to realize that his two identities live together as integrated parts of a whole. Though he originally studied medicine, he turned his focus to writing—from the reflective essays in Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora to the vivid short stories in Birds of Paradise Lost—when he realized that the act made him feel closer to his family and father, his Vietnamese roots, and himself. He hopes that his work does the same for his readers: For Andrew, there is no act more patriotic than producing something that bridges divides and cures grief.
To Pledge Allegiance
Tomás Summers Sandoval is a scholar and historian documenting the Latino experience during the war.
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Tomás's Bio
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Tomás Summers Sandoval
As far as Tomás Summers Sandoval remembers, most of the men in his early life were Vietnam War veterans, including his father and uncle. The Vietnam War was a childhood presence, one that Tomás took for granted as part of his world until he was old enough to realize its historical significance.
As an associate professor of history and Chicana/o and Latina/o studies at Pomona College, Tomás is dedicated to the study of the Latino experience in the United States. The Vietnam War was a fundamental part of that experience, Tomás believes, because so many Latino men joined the service despite the demographic’s historic invisibility.
Tomás decided to change that, starting an oral history project that documents the wartime experiences of Latino men and women and the effect that the war had on an entire generation of Latino immigrants. In the process, he has nurtured an appreciation for both patriotism and a more global humanism that allows for an endless variety of experiences.
To Pledge Allegiance
Eva Jefferson Paterson is a civil rights lawyer who debated the war with Vice President Spiro Agnew as a student.
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Eva's Bio
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Eva Jefferson Paterson
Eva Jefferson Paterson, a renowned civil rights lawyer and president and co-founder of the Equal Justice Society, made a career out of speaking up. As a 20-year-old student, she debated Vice President Spiro Agnew on national television, defending students’ rights following the 1970 shootings of students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State and Jackson State Universities.
After earning her law degree, Eva went on to work at Legal Aid and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, co-found and chair the California Coalition for Civil Rights, and serve as Vice President of the ACLU. She has been a voice for battered women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community, and helped bring the concept of implicit bias into mainstream discourse.
She has seen firsthand the injustices that this country has produced. But it also produced Eva, a defiantly vocal advocate whose patriotism lives in her drive to hold her country true to its Constitution.
To Pledge Allegiance
Todd Gitlin is a writer and activist who helped organize the first national anti-war demonstration in D.C.
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Todd's Bio
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Todd Gitlin
Todd Gitlin remembers growing up with both pride and anxiety: pride that his country had defeated the “bad guys” in World War II, and then, after he entered college in 1959, anxiety about the growing threat of nuclear war and ever-larger moral grey areas in international policy as he attended college in the 1960s. At first, he and his fellow students advocated against nuclear armament by vigorously educating themselves about the science and policy and engaging their government representatives. Soon he realized that there are moments in history when protest and political participation are the only options.
That culminated in 1965, when Todd helped organize the first national protest against the Vietnam War in Washington, D.C., and continued to help anti-war projects for years thereafter. In his decades-long career as a sociologist and writer, he has developed a deep understanding of what has moved the country forward—and backwards—but has never wavered in his commitment to hold it true to its core values.
To Pledge Allegiance
Phil Gioia was an Army officer during the Tet Offensive who discovered one of the first mass graves of Vietnamese civilians.
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Phil's Bio
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Phil Gioia
In 1968, Phil Gioia led a platoon of American soldiers that discovered a mass grave of South Vietnamese civilians just outside the city of Hue, the site of one of the bloodiest battles in the Vietnam War. North Vietnamese troops, during their occupation of the city, had executed South Vietnamese soldiers, professors, doctors, students, and their families: an act of terror meant to send a message to any anti-communist thought to be in the region. For Phil, it was a moment that reminded him why he was fighting.
Every American soldier he fought with was another reminder. Even though he realized, both during the war and years after it, that the broader strategy and objective of the war might have been flawed, he was determined to lead and protect his fellow soldiers. In his one recurring dream about Vietnam, Phil is asked, years after the war ended, to return to combat, but the most frightening part is that the soldiers he fought with are all gone.
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To Pledge Allegiance
Listen to their stories →
Click a portrait to hear from those affected by the events of the Vietnam War era, and how it shaped their definitions of patriotism.
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“There are some events that overwhelm destiny.”
Laura Palmer
Vietnam War correspondent who went on to write about the families torn apart by the war
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“We endured because we had unity.”
Everett Alvarez, Jr.
Navy pilot, Vietnam veteran, and POW held in the “Hanoi Hilton” for eight years
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“I am gazing towards civility.”
Andrew Lam
Son of a South Vietnamese general whose family fled to America
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“We all have to make lives of meaning.”
Tomás Summers Sandoval
Scholar and historian documenting the Latino experience during the war
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“I don’t feel I have the right to give in to despair.”
Eva Jefferson Paterson
Civil rights lawyer who debated the war with Vice President Spiro Agnew as a student
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“We were trying to find levers of change.”
Todd Gitlin
Writer and activist who helped organize the first national anti-war demonstration in D.C.
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“We try, as a people, I think. We try.”
Phil Gioia
Army officer during the Tet Offensive, discovered one of the first mass graves of Vietnamese civilians
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What makes a patriot?
Over the past few decades, the concept of patriotism has become increasingly personal, and less political. Love of country does not preclude criticism or protest; being a new arrival doesn’t make it more difficult to appreciate a nation’s values. There is no single way to think about it.
Laura Palmer’s kindness and compassion fostered an all-encompassing love for every community in her country: a love she brought to Vietnam and back from it when she dedicated years to telling the stories of those who lost loved ones in the war. Everett Alvarez, Jr. held fast to solidarity with his fellow countrymen through years of mental and physical torture. Andrew Lam discovered a creative liberation that stemmed from a realization about his Vietnamese-American identity. Tomas Sandoval is wary of nations but open to a patriotism that allows for a plurality of experiences, while Eva Jefferson Paterson aspires to hold her country true to its values. And while Todd Gitlin knew he had to protest an immoral war, he has immense respect for the veterans who fought it, like Phil Gioia, who felt it was his patriotic duty to lead and protect his troops in Vietnam.
For more perspectives, tune into The Vietnam War, a new documentary series by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, premiering September 17 at 8/7c on PBS.