Tuc’s diary was discovered by the US Marine Corps in the battlefield in Thua Thien - Hue in 1967.

Knapper also gave Tuc a letter from US President Joe Biden and expressed his thanks to Tuc for his attendance at Vietnam’s National Assembly during Biden’s visit to Hanoi in September 2023. 

At the event, a veteran and friend of Tuc – Nguyen Van Thien - received his diary lost during the war 50 years ago.

Tuc and Thien’s diaries were discovered during the deployment of the US Department of Defense’s program to support the Ministry of National Defence and the National Steering Committee No 515 to search, gather and identify soldiers' remains.

When cooperating with the US Department of Defense, the research team of the Ash Center of Harvard Center identified the owners of the diaries when analyzing the archival records.

The US Department of Defense’s program to search, gather and identify Vietnamese martyrs’ remains is a part of its effort to handle the consequences of the war.

The program responds to support from the Government of Vietnam to the mission of searching for American soldiers lost in war over the past decades and to help families who do not have information about their relatives.

The documents found in battlefields, like the diaries of veterans Nguyen Van Thien and Vu Dac Tuc, were written by hand and were not in good condition, damaged by weather and the war. After more than half a century, the documents were passed through many hands. 

In addition to technical challenges to restore information, the diaries were written in the dialects of different regions in Vietnam, which were barriers for the research team. Experts had to use applied linguistics, knowledge about military history, and data from interviews to find the diaries' true owners.

It was also difficult to confirm the information in diaries. The owners of the diaries did not specify names and localities for security reasons.

Researchers realized that it was Thien’s diary because he had written about losing a close friend whose hometown he mentioned.

Tran Thuong