VIETNAM AFTER THE WAR: VIETNAM PASSAGE CHRONICLES SIX DRAMATIC JOURNEYS FROM WAR TO PEACE THURSDAY, MAY 23 on PBS

-World Premiere begins where most Vietnam films end ö with the warâs final days-

For America, the Vietnam War officially ended in April 1975. But what happened to the Vietnam that America left behind? How did the Vietnamese reunite and recover from a war that claimed more than 3 million of its own? VIETNAM PASSAGE: Journeys from War to Peace chronicles the stories of six Vietnamese, whose lives took divergent directions both during and after the devastating war, which they call ãthe American War.ä

Among them, a South Vietnamese pilot trained in the United States who was actually a Viet Cong spy; a freedom fighter imprisoned and tortured in the infamous Tiger Cages of South Vietnam after a bombing plot was discovered; a young widow who was separated from her children during the panicked final evacuation of Saigon. Each story is told using interviews, photographs and war footage unearthed from the U.S. National Film Archive and the Vietnam National Film Archive, much of it never before viewed publicly in the United States.

The stories are linked by on-air narrator and host, the distinguished Los Angeles Times journalist, David Lamb. Mr. Lamb covered the Vietnam War in 1968 and 1975; in 1997, he became the first newspaperman who had covered the war to open a bureau in peacetime Vietnam. His assignments have also taken him to the battlefronts of Beirut, the Persian Gulf, Rwanda, and most recently, Afghanistan.

VIETNAM PASSAGE: Journeys from War to Peace premieres on PBS on Thursday, May 23 from 10-11 PM (ET) [check local listings]. The filmâs premiere coincides with the release of Mr. Lambâs latest book, ãVietnam Now: A Reporter Returns.ä Published by Public Affairs, the book is a rich portrait of post-war Vietnam that will alter perceptions about the country, and perhaps the war as well.

VIETNAM PASSAGE: Journeys from War to Peace begins with the warâs final days and recounts Vietnamâs isolation during the post-war years, when nearly 400,000 people were sent to ãre-education camps.ä Through each characterâs story, the film brings viewers into present-day Vietnam, a country that is now thriving and moving slowly towards a free-market economy.

VIETNAM PASSAGE: Journeys from War to Peace profiles the following, often heartbreaking, stories:

• A 13-year old Vietnamese translator who was ãadoptedä by a U.S. Marine Colonel and escaped to America in the warâs final days. He vowed to return to Vietnam and he did, in 1994, as the Director of FedExâs Southeast Asia corporation.
  
• A teenager who led a Viet Cong commando unit and was tortured and held as a political prisoner for six years. While imprisoned, she and her sister smuggled out the names of all political prisoners being held in South Vietnam, for which they gained worldwide recognition. Although still a strong adherent to the values of Ho Chi Minh, today she is frustrated with the slowness of reform and the hardships it has brought to the shrimp farmers she assists in the Mekong Delta.
  
• The ãBob Dylan of Vietnam,ä the countryâs most popular composer who died last year and appears here in his last filmed interview. One of the Vietnamese courageous enough to openly protest the war, his songs were banned by both the North and South.
  
• A Viet Cong spy who joined the South Vietnamese Air Force and trained as a fighter pilot in Texas to avenge his fatherâs brutal death at the hands of the South Vietnamese. In April 1975, he bombed Saigonâs Presidential Palace and its major airfield ö attacks that hastened the warâs end. Today, he is a senior pilot for Vietnam Airlines, flying tourists to the same airport he once bombed.
  
• A UPI photographer who could have escaped Saigon but chose to stay on to cover the warâs end and help rebuild his country. For that decision, he spent seven years in a re-education camp. Today, he runs a small antique shop in Ho Chi Minh City and remains embittered.
  
• A young widow who sent her sons out of Saigon on an American transport plane in the warâs last days. She too planned to be airlifted out of the country, but was unable to escape. With Vietnam cutoff diplomatically, she did not locate her sons for 16 years. She now runs a successful travel agency in Ho Chi Minh City with her oldest son, with whom she was reunited in 1991.
  

VIETNAM PASSAGE: Journeys from War to Peace was executive produced by Sandy Northrop of Wind & Stars Production Group. Ms. Northrop also produced the critically-acclaimed PBS documentary, Pete Peterson: Assignment Hanoi, which premiered in September 1999 and chronicled the extraordinary odyssey of Americaâs first post-war Ambassador to Vietnam.

This program has been made possible by grants from: The Atlantic Philanthropies; Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc.; The Albert Kunstadter Family Foundation; Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation; and Friends of Vietnam Passage.

###