Phan Nhat Nam

Phan Nhat Nam is a soldier, a renowned writer, and a political commentator. A graduate of Da Lat, South Vietnam's equivalent of West Point, during the Vietnam War he served for eight years as a soldier in the Red Berets, South Vietnam's elite airborne division and after that became the country's most well-known war reporter. Following the Communist takeover in 1975, he was imprisoned in Hanoi's infamous "re-education camps" for fourteen years, eight years of which were spent in solitary confinement. He was allowed to emigrate to the United States in 1993 under the Orderly Departure Program, and has continued to write and speak about the war and its continuing aftermath, remaining one of the most influential voices in the worldwide overseas Vietnamese community.