Those Who Stayed: A Vietnam Diary
Claudia Krich
University of Virginia Press: 2025
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People come to see very quickly that they were fed a lot of propaganda over twenty-five years, and now they’re looking at the reality and the truth. Living it, in fact.” Prescient words from Claudia Krich regarding the Vietnamese and their communist revolution. One could be forgiven for thinking she uttered these words in the twenty-first century, but they were actually written in her diary on 7 May 1975, one week after the demise of anti-communist South Vietnam.

Spanning 8 April to 8 July 1975, Krich’s Those Who Stayed: A Vietnam Diary is an invaluable primary source for those studying regime change, documenting firsthand the disintegration of the South Vietnamese government and the coalescence of a byzantine military administration in its wake. A staunchly anti-war American Quaker fluent in Vietnamese, Krich records in breathless detail the anxious zeitgeist, divergent conversations, and mixed joys of negative peace as Saigon changed hands.

Krich’s diary is, understandably, far from objective, and she expresses palpable disdain for anti-communist propaganda, the American presence, and the South Vietnamese who desired to leave with it. Her commentary on the actions of ordinary Vietnamese around her often betrays the privilege of her American citizenship. She was never subject to the communist revolution, but she welcomed it with open arms regardless, red armband and all.

• Tags: Claudia Krich, Issue 41, Vietnam, Will Nguyen