Officers and soldiers they covered. Among the speakers were former abc news nightline anchor ted koppel and yasutsune hirashiki, author of on the frontlines of the Television War a legendary war cameraman in vietnam. This event at the National Archives in washington is about 90 minutes. Now it is time to introduce our moderator terribly irving terry irving. He went into a career in television news, spending for decades covering wartime and political disasters throughout the United States. E has one and number of awards ladies and gentlemen, please welcome terrier thing in our distinguished panelists. Terry irving and our distinguished panelists. [applause] terry good evening. I should explain that none of these people are terry irving, but i am. [laughter] younow, we have here see, this is what you come prepared with everything you have ever written. We have barry who reported on virtually every Major International event, wars, policies of seven u. S. President s. Barry covered the fall of selfie at nam in 1979 where he the fall of South Vietnam in 1979 yasutsaneet hirashiki. After retirement its hard to believe you retire and he was awarded recognition of distinguished reporting on Foreign Policy and diplomacy. Of commentaryr by a former Foreign Correspondent. Former Foreign Correspondent. Next, a man who probably needs no introduction, but im going to do it bac anyway, ted topol, who was my boss back in the 1980s, 1990s. Youngestl became the correspondent ever hired by abc radio news working on the daily flair reports program, including the kennedy assassination in 1963 were he was scheduled to do a short report, but the crisis forced him to adlib for an hour and a half. And if you know ted, that was easy. Ted i have been talking ever since. Terry [laughter] in the following years he covered president ial campaigns, civil rights protests. And beginning in 1966, the vietnam war. You will see him coming up here, questionsare 15yearolds were allowed to write to the tokyo bureau. He was the abc state news correspondent. , her taking a year off became the first host of a new latenight news program nightline. After 25 years as the host of nightline and 42 years with washington,d left d. C. He has written commentary for npr, has been a political analyst for bbc america, a special correspondent for nbc news, a special contributor for cbs sunday morning, and the author lights out a cyberattack, a nation unprepared. He has one far more awards than anyone should receive, but has resolutely remained humble. [laughter] ill will think i have an intro for tony i dont think i have an intro for tony. Yasutsune you became tony because who became tony because they thought it was too long to say in the battlefield. Yasatsune, duck became tony, duck. He was hired by abc permanently and has worked at abc for the and has summarized a determination not to learn english. [laughter] im going to throw a story in here. He had one of the best shots of 9 11. Any video you pull of 9 11 will e the shot of the tower second tower falling. After that, ted came up to do the aftermath, and tony is shooting out of the helicopter. Years, andg 40 im still hanging out Helicopters Holding onto my belt. And has covered everything deserves every award. Because so many of his friends encouraged him, he did not put his material in for every award. And i am you heard about me. Far as i know, the only thing you heard about was me. Ihat happened was tony got a gmail out of the blue. I had never met tony. I had been there for 20 for 25 years. We never met. He writes and email. And email. He says he likes the way i wrote my first novel courier. He liked how the vietnam vet was portrayed. Led toe one thing another in no stretching myself which wass book written in japanese and 2013, but nobody who was in the book could read it. He translated it with a dictionary. Anyone who is ever had a inanese motorcycle, it was this strange netherworld language, and we rewrote it, without ever actually speaking to each other. We did the whole thing by email. We never spoke and we actually never met until about a month after it was on the market. Ted let me interrupt for a moment because you are being too modest. He is absolutely right. Tony wrote this book in japanese. Those of us who are featured in. He book could not read it we do not speak japanese. So tony translated from japanese to english and sent each of us the relevant chapter, and i remember reading that chapter about me and, forgive me, tony, i thought, this book is terrible. [laughter] ted it was awful. But tony has been a dear friend and a comrade in arms, and i did not want to say anything to him. Two years go by. The book won the best Nonfiction Book of the year award in japan. Obviously, in japanese, it was an awful lot better than in english. But the extraordinary job, quite from this tony was flown out to tokyo to receive the award. There was even, i think, a big cash reward. 10,000 award. T is in fact a brilliant book who spoke only english and could not read it in the original had any sense of how good it was, and here is where terry came in, and he is being too modest. Imagine taking a bad translation of the book, and what tony did was to translate i mean, what terry did was to translate it from tony english into real english, and now you begin to a sense of what really is and i hope you get a chance to buy it, by several copies, give it to your friends. It is a wonderful book with a unique respect of of what happened in vietnam because it was written by someone who was not in american. I will stop in a moment, terry. Terry ok. Ted we need to explain there was a reason that so many of the correspondence i mean so many of the camera crews in vietnam were japanese, korean, vietnamese, singaporean, australian. And it had a great deal to do with what is wrong with American Media today. Plain and simple the american outlook. Pay to send want to american crews to vietnam where they would have had to pay insurance, far higher salaries, combat pay on top of those higher salaries. So we all ended up working with comrades over there and became dear, dear friends with men we otherwise would never have met simply because the American Networks were too damn cheap to send american camera crews out there. By the way, what we are seeing here, just so you know, the color pictures, the still photography, these are still single frames, primarily almost exclusively from tony hirashik is 50 the abc tape library did a phenomenal job. You dont ever see what the camera man put into the camera, but that is what is going on behind the scenes. Bookld like to read tonys and not talk anymore if i can help it. This is abut particularly important book for americans to read. We have a national inclination toward solipsism, a notion that tonythose this is what wrote in the intro only those things we personally experience exist. That is how to many of us cover the vietnam war. The vietnamese became almost incidental to the battles being waged by our troops. The demonstrations on our college campuses, the experiences of our diplomats and politicians. An observer ofi with and of the war objectivity and compassion that gave weight to be experienced to thehat you experience. Tony, why dont you go into what you wrote this . Go wherever you want. Book. I wrote this i think two motivation i had. Cameramans a tv news for abc, but 9 years was vietnamethe war in with about 40 correspondents. Of course, they come and go. Including ted, including correspondents. There are lots not fade away. Just war is over. Young correspondents came back. After war is over, i tried to tell how we covered the war, how the correspondents were great, but nobody wants to hear. Nobody wants to hear vietnam stories. After 40 years, japanesei start the people. [indiscernible] those people. Introduce. Introduced to japanese people. They were surprised. Covereder knew how we the war. Other 8 years to make an english book. With this is terrible dictionary. English. Very old andve it to a couple people they say, very good content, but you have to have it written in english. Came and wrote the book. Tried to make it in english the way tony would if it were in japanese. Abc, we lost two great acmeramen. Cameraman. Both came from singapore. This is first abc news towe took the bodies singapore, where they came from. Said howmother, i great your son is. One day i will write about how great your son was and how he reported. I course, by the time finished, his mother was already gone. This is the true motivation i wrote. Terry this is already did it. Terry im going to do another one. He met tony. She was working for canadian tv for a short period, and im going to read from one of his columns in the i love this the r. Mc pelee are times artists. It was now clear to nonwas was going toa nang fall very soon. Fortunately my friend tony hir ashiki came to us the day before. He told me news organizations were taking people out the next day and he would do his best to get us on that flight. He was true to his word. Getting to that plane was another matter. Early in the morning the total panic of perhaps 2 Million People was palpable and contagious. At the airport there were many thousands of South Vietnamese and no commercial flights. Somehow, tony got us through that chaotic maze and aboard the flight to saigon. , people were hanging from the wings of our plane and at least one was seen crawling into a wheel well. There were bumps as we took off that i fear were not people that i hope or not people, but i fear were. Vietnam was a profound. Xperience i have far fewer credentials than the others. Significant period i will back up a little bit. I have worked for abc for 12 years. I was doing that work at that moment and shortly thereafter i return to abc. What that meant to me was there has been a discussion almost that thebeginning United States really did not endede or shouldnt have ,he whole vietnamese exercise and it was largely because the congress of the United States had decided to cut off military after theth vietnam 1973 peace agreement, and it is true that congress did begin to that wason the eta going to the United States, but there was stuff going in. Eyes duringith my nang where theda city of initially, i think, 500,000 had 2 million refugees from the south was in a state of total panic and it was palpable and you could see it in peoples eyes. One little thing that happened to us was we were taking pictures of soviet soldiers taking their uniforms off and throwing them away, throwing their guns into the gutter. Werematter of fact, as we filming, the South Vietnamese contact we had hired in saigon to work with the said, we are out of here. I had been around long enough to know, ok. And me immediately scuttled away. And he looked at me and said anybody should you . Taken,nted their picture and i understand that. That was the sense of panic in the city. That was being on the tarmac in trying to fly out of da nang. Did notetnam in my view lose the war because the United States congress did not continue its aid at the previous level. As a matter of fact, when the communists began their final , the soviet army had more than twice as many tanks as all ofd personnel the forces in North Vietnam, but North Vietnam had 1400 combat almostes, and they had two to three times as many troops that were trained in uniforms. What they didnt have was the spirit to fight any longer. They had lost the will. And that happened over time, and if the United States congress had quadrupled or quintupled or what ever, they were never going to do it if they had done so, that kind of aid or statement would not have made any difference. The die was cast. Da nang fell,at it was not that long after that saigon fell. I am grateful to have been there and to have seen things with my own eyes because it gave me a sense of what was happening there and i came back to work at the state department and ted went away and i ended up working a lot with Henry Kissinger and i remember having debates. Feel ire that he did not had won the argument. This is from tonys description of ted. Every time a new correspondent arrived, the camera crew tried to the euro will kind of person he or she was. We wanted to figure out if they were a good person, if they would take our suggestions for good shots, easy to work with, or a screamer . By the way, this is ted koppel and tony. Would they eat sushi . The new reporter was asking the bureau managers and others the same things about us. These are things you need to know about someone when you live with someone for days and weeks. What was the problem with this koppel guy . He might be one of the test correspondence we have. He is a very independent guy. This did not help a lot. What is an independent guy . Look, this evening should be about tony and there is good reason for that. This wonderful book that tony has written and terry has translated qubes a view of what , totally on in vietnam different from anything perhaps you have seen report before, precisely because he was not upset us with the americans over there. He understood there was a country with a local population. I should add that tony ended up some years later marrying a. Ietnamese lady he kept a wonderful diary during his years in vietnam. What we get from him is a sense of what the vietnamese were thinking and feeling at the time , and it troubles me because makingays we seem to be the same mistakes all over again. We view everything through our own narrow prism. We are not very good at understanding the world as it is seen by the local population. Tony is one of the bravest, most decent and most sensitive men i have ever known, and in righting ais book, he will give you sense of the vietnam war that i promise you you have never had before. That does not mean the other books written about vietnam or the wonderful series can burns has done does not cover an awful lot. It does. But if you want to have the whye of what went wrong and , i recommend this book to you. Terry this is something tony wrote. This is part of chapter one. He wrote that vietnam, most of the journalists were graduates. There was no training for a war likeietnam a vietnam. This is a small unit action. Airborneunit of soldiers. Minutes, they came over our heads. They made an enormous bank. With only a small number of men, the captain was calling in artillery as close as possible to drive back the enemy. It is a dangerous tactic because it depends on everything going precisely as planned. There was an informant noise. I thought i had been struck by lightning. At first, i could not hear anything. ,lowly, my hearing came back and i heard voices screaming, moaning. Everything around me was a cloud of dust. In to the shell had come my hit a tree and impacted where the captain had been talking on the radio. Medic, medic i was operating on reflex. Tapped few minutes, they on my shoulder. Tony, stop filming. Stop and help. I looked at the abc correspondent and he nodded in agreement. I put my camera on the ground and we did what we could for the wounded soldiers. Youve me water, give me a cigarette. Wounded soldiers are just like kids. They want someone to stay beside them and care about them. We could do that. You, what was it like for a japanese raised in pacifist, peacetime japan . Yasutsune those soldiers on that second day that day it was getting low, but many hours together. Coffee. Ning, they share getere not supposed to advantage from soldiers. Food, water, coffee. We had a sort of bonds. The soldier is my best [indiscernible] [indiscernible] i didnt know. Cigarettes. Ers world war i . M terry world war i. Yasutsune [indiscernible] this type of eating i learn. Choose. E, we have to serious. Hing do something. We dont know how to shoot. All we can do is help. Ecially correspondent [indiscernible] soldiers. And those things, we did. I am still checking. The two of them were wounded, so only one medic. Terry he is mad at us because i said their guard dog was a german shepherd. Beyond that, i think they got it mostly right. Betweenry, the conflict new york and the reporters in the field in vietnam, this is a story actually, that you are seeing, a story that you and tony did coming out of dmt. They moved from North Vietnam, but they always hoped to be able to return to their homeland. They found a building inside the demilitarized zone. Now they were being told to move again. Ted decided that following their home was veryther sympathetic. We were very impressed. We were also very weary because this was only 1967 and almost all news reports going back to the United States were about soldiers in action with lots of shots of bang bang. I remember that the Saigon Bureau chief, Elliot Bernstein appeared to be unhappy about , this story and the stand ups specifically and said that ted was a little too emotional and displayed too much sympathy toward the refugees. And this is the new york and the field guys. Cod ted koppel i mean, there to things about that. One, again, it comes back to this notion of solipsism. You know, it only mattered if it involved us, that is, americans, u. S. Troops. And, indeed, its natural in American News agencies would be over there primarily covering what american troops were doing. But we needed to have an understanding of vietnam and of what the vietnamese people were doing and feeling. And how they were responding to things that we may even have believed we were doing for their benefit. There was a picture, actually you see dawn north don north up there right now. I saw a picture a few moments ago of an old friend and colleague, bill brannigan, who tried desperately over the time that he was in vietnam to do stories about vietnamese politics, vietnamese culture, vietnamese people. He couldnt get those stories on the air. All that our bosses back in new york wanted at that time was as much combat footage as they could get. It was very shortsighted. And we havent changed all that much. Incidentally, while youre looking at that picture, thats an aracon 16millimeter camera. How much did it weigh, tony . A lot. Terry 3035 pounds. Ted koppel yeah. So while the rest of us were carrying our backpacks with food and water, tony would be