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TI: I'm going to, there was something you mentioned earlier about your public service, and how the reason you did this was to serve the public. And in particular, during the '68-'70 time period, Vietnam, there were probably ways for you to avoid having a tour of duty in Vietnam.

LH: Oh, yes.

TI: But you decided to go forward. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

LH: Of course. Well, you know, the war dragged on for so long that, for instance, in the military, they just couldn't fill the positions there, so the soldiers were going back for a second or third tour. Well, the same with the Department of State. They not only had the large embassy in Saigon, hundreds of officers, and then generally you might have a consulate generalship or a consulate in two or three other places in a country like that, but no, we had, in essence, a consulate or a consulate generalship in every province of Vietnam. I don't remember the number, thirty-eight, forty-five, I don't know. So they would reach out to everybody and his brother and say, "Oh, you haven't served in Vietnam, you're going to Vietnam." Then, of course, any number of my old friends heard this, and a couple of ambassadors, one in Europe, one in South America, wrote me and said, "If you don't want to go, I can use you here. Just let me know, and I'll pull the right strings." And I'd consult with Maynard, and being a good Navy Junior, she said, "Well, you may not want to go, and I really don't want you to go, but if you're asked to go, you should go." And that's exactly the way I felt. I never volunteered, they were asking for volunteers while I was still in the Philippines, messages going around the world, "We need more diplomats in Vietnam." I didn't volunteer. But once I was asked... I would say that I hated to leave the family, but I wanted to get into the thick of things. Any full-blooded 100% American wants to get involved in where the action is.

TI: And what was it like when you got there?

LH: Oh, it was, there was a lot of action. And though I never fired at the enemy, I was involved in a couple of firefights up in the provinces. And we had machine guns in our cars, we had AK-47s in our home, we always carried a 9-mm pistol. And there were bombs being fired into Saigon every day, so it was a bit scary in that sense. But it was also very exciting, very challenging. I'll throw out something about Maynard's younger brother, Charlie (Cooke). He visited me there, while I was there a couple of times, twice as a presidential envoy of Nixon's, and he fought the ambassador. And I remember actually that, 'cause he told me how he had these meetings with the Chief of Station of the Central Intelligence Agency, and they were all playing the game with Johnson. "How we're winning the war." "We see the light at the end of the tunnel." And people like Charlie and a few others would call it as they saw it, and they rubbed against everybody completely. And he says, "I know it didn't help your career," and it may not have. But I don't think it harmed me in any real way. But he, I think, ended up in his career, somewhat shy of his ambitions, in part because he was accused of leaking the Pentagon Papers, and he hadn't, to Ellsberg. Ellsberg was actually part of the group that created the Pentagon Papers. And it actually ended up -- it's the same old story -- you tell a lie, everybody believes the lie. You feed in a correction or you then rebut it, people only remember the initial lie. And so even President Nixon, we have it in writing that he told Haldeman, (President Nixon's Chief of Staff), "Kill Cooke." Literally, that's what he said. But you know, Nixon said any number of things he didn't really mean, and those around him knew when he meant it.

TI: Going back to Vietnam, over the course of several years, I've interviewed men who served in the MIS who became career military. And by the time the Vietnam War started, these Niseis had advanced to a fairly high rank of colonels and things like that. When you were in Vietnam, did you ever come across other Niseis in the military or other positions like that?

LH: I ran into any number of MIS, former MIS or MIS officers in Japan, one or two in Vietnam. Why, I don't know. I really don't think there were that many there. Most of them were, by then, had either retired or no longer interested in serving in war zones.

TI: Okay. Yeah, I was just curious.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.