WISCONSIN VIETNAM WAR STORIES: RESOURCES
Reel to Real
Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories:
Discussion Guide (PDF)
Reel to Real provides tools supporting local screenings and discussion events. Three part PDF discussion guide includes: Introduction and Guidelines, Segment Guide and Booklist.
Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs
The Wisconsin Veterans Museum offers a number of educational resources for classroom use, including travel trunks of historical artifacts, the Veterans in the Classroom program, scavenger hunt booklets and tour opportunities.
Teacher's
Companion to
Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories:
Our Veterans Remember (PDF)
In this guide, teachers will find map activities, discussion opportunities, further resources and other in-depth activities for use with the Wisconsin Historical Press's Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories: Our Veterans Remember book.
Vietnam War Maps
Explore eight maps created for Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories: Our Veterans Remember. Check the Wisconsin Historical Society's Teacher's Companion for related map activities.
Honor
Roll (PDF)
Download a single-format list of all 1,244 deaths of Wisconsin Vietnam servicemen and women, representing all branches of the armed forces. The Honor Roll was created and compiled by the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Library of Congress: Veteran's History Project
Searchable collection of first-hand accounts of U.S. Veterans from 20th Century wars.
Oral Interview Training for the Hmong Oral History Project
Find research and instruction for conducting oral history interviews. This lesson plan is based on a project that captured the oral histories of several Central Wisconsin Hmong residents.
1975-1990: Accommodating New Immigrants
Help students explore the experiences of Wisconsin's Hmong immigrants after the Vietnam War.
Helping Hands
This plan invites students to create a handbook about Wisconsin to aid new immigrants to the state.
Hmong Struggle
Students learn to understand the struggle of Homong immigration after their experiences in the Vietnam War.
The Power of "Un" — Unpopular, Unrest, Unsuccessful
Students gain an understanding of the controversy surrounding the Vietnam War in the American public.
Online Discussions
POV: Regarding War Project
Regarding War is a place for citizens
and soldiers to share stories about past and current conflicts, and to discuss
the realities of war, both on the home front and the battlefield. In the Conversations
section of the site, veterans, their families and other experts will blog on
topics — such as Coming
Home: Veterans Readjusting to Civilian Life — that will change on a bimonthly
basis. The Stories section features first person accounts of the effects of
war. Web site visitors are also encouraged to submit their own stories, photos
and videos. Finally, POV will be streaming a number of related films in their
entirety online in the Watch Video section of Regarding War.
Watch Online
POV: A Thousand Words
A Vietnam veteran who has suffered a stroke, shares his war experience with his
children. (8:37)
POV: Regret to Inform
Interviews with Vietnamese and American widows underscore the chilling legacy
of war. (1:12:41)
Bill Moyers | The Journal: LBJ's Road to War
Bill Moyers covers president Lyndon Johnson and the decisions that escalated America's involvement in Vietnam.
(53:57)
Frontline/World:
Vietnam - Looking for Home
Vietnamese-born journalist Nguyen Qui Duc returns home looking for "for home, for a bit of myself, for a country that always exists in my memory." (18:38)
Remembering Vietnam:
An Online NewsHour Special Report
Explore a collection of in-depth reports made in 2000, 25 years after the war's
end. Subjects include lessons of combat, war protests, how the war was covered
and life in Vietnam today.
Melvin Laird in
War, Peace and Politics
This UW-Madison symposium explores the career of Melvin Laird, a longtime Wisconsin
congressman who served as Richard Nixon's Secretary of Defence from 1969-1973.
The symposium marks the publication of "With Honor," the first-ever
biography of Laird, by Dale Van Atta. (98:22)
Public Media for Purchase
The following documentaries are available for purchase from shopPBS, Amazon.com
and other vendors. Most have supporting online classroom materials.
The Way of the Warrior
This one-hour documentary about the warrior ethic explores how Native communities
have traditionally viewed their warriors and why - during the 20th century -
Native men and women have signed up for military service at a rate three times
higher than non-Indians. The Way of the Warrior documentary was produced by
Wisconsin Public Television and presented by Native American Public Telecommunications. Watch
excerpts at the WPT Media Library. Purchase the DVD here.
American Experience | Vietnam:
A Television History
This 11-hour series provides a detailed visual
and oral account of the war that changed a generation and continues to color
American thinking on many military and foreign policy issues.
American Experience: Two Days in October
Based on the book They Marched Into Sunlight by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Maraniss, Two Days in October tells the story of two turbulent days in October 1967 when history turned a corner.
American Experience: Return With Honor
The story of American fighter pilots held as prisoners of war in North Vietnam,
told by the men themselves.
American Experience: Daughter
from Danang
In 1975, with the end of the war in Vietnam imminent, Mai
Thi Kim, a poor, young Vietnamese woman, sent her seven-year-old daughter
to America as part of a controversial evacuation program known as Operation
Babylift. The parting was devastating to both mother and child, but Kim believed
her Amerasian daughter -- the product of a brief love affair with an American
Navy officer -- would be in danger in Vietnam. The little girl was adopted
by a single woman, renamed Heidi and brought up in Tennessee, where she concealed
her Asian past and became "101%" American. Twenty-two years later, Heidi
tracked down her birth mother and visited Danang. The reunion that had raised
so many hopes and expectations for Heidi and Kim quickly became rife with
tension and misunderstanding as the cultural gulf between Heidi and her Vietnamese
family grew larger and larger.
Independent Lens: Be Good, Smile Pretty
This film documents Tracy Droz Tragos's struggle to know and grieve for her
father, who died in Vietnam when she was three months old.
Independent Lens: Vietnam:The Next Generation
Meet the people of Vietnam's new generation - reaping newfound opportunities while reshaping their country's future.
PBS | Battlefield: Vietnam
This online resource includes battlefield timelines, guerrilla tactics, the air war, the seige of Khe Sanh.
Pete Peterson: Assignment Hanoi
In 1997, a former POW returns to Vietnam as the first U.S. ambassador on a mission
of reconciliation.
POV: The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)
Weaving ancient prophecy with personal testimony and stunning imagery, The Betrayal
is a story of survival and the resilient bonds of family.
POV | Soldados: Chicanos in Vietnam
Based on the 1991 American Book Award winner of the same name, Vietnam War veteran
Charley Trujillo and producer Sonya Rhee's document the harrowing experience
of a generation of Mexican-American boys who fought in Vietnam.
The Sixties: The Years That Shaped
a Generation
The 1960s was a decade of change and hope that transformed America. Trace the events of one of the most turbulent and influential periods of political and cultural change in the 20th century and the powerful impact forced on an entire generation. Experience the '60s through revealing interviews with the prominent figures of the era, including: Daniel Ellsberg, Jesse Jackson, Tom Hayden, Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara, Bobby Seale and others.
Vietnam Passage: Journeys
from War to Peace
This film chronicles the stories of six Vietnamese, whose lives took divergent
directions both during and after what they call the "American War." Purchase
the DVD here.
