Vietnam

Forests and folklore during the Vietnam War

October 31, 2020 / Asia, Folklore / , ,
Vietnam’s Central Highlands. Dr. Blofeld / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

I love folklore and mysteries, which led me to write a book about an evil spirit in Indigenous belief in Canada and the United States. After many years of reading about folklore from the Amazon to Hong Kong, I thought that I had heard about every mythical being. And then I came across this brief, carefully-researched video by Mark Felton on Vietnam’s legendary rock apes: “Vietnam War Rock Apes – Bigfoot or Big Fraud?” Since Mark Felton is best known for carefully researched histories of military events during World War Two, this YouTube video surprised me. But if you’re curious to hear the stories American GI’s told about encountering strange animals during the Vietnam War, this might be the video for you.

If you are curious, you can find my own posts about Japanese demons, British ghosts, and a Canadian mystery ship here. Lastly, if you haven’t heard the podcast Death in Ice Valley, about a woman’s strange death in Norway, I highly recommend it.

I know that this Halloween most families in both Canada and the United States won’t be trick-or-treating, given the pandemic. Whatever you and your family do to celebrate Halloween, stay well and have fun.

Shawn Smallman

Intelligence failures and Vietnam

August 2, 2016 / Asia, espionage / , ,

Marine gets his wounds treated during operations in Huế City, 1968. By Undetermined U.S military photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons . By Undetermined U.S military photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Marine gets his wounds treated during operations in Huế City, 1968. By Undetermined U.S military photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons . By Undetermined U.S military photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Author Malcom Gladwell has a new podcast titled “Revisionist History,” which had a recent episode titled “Saigon: 1965.” The podcast tells the story of the Rand Corporation’s efforts to collect intelligence on North Vietnamese morale through interviews with captured soldiers and guerrillas. In particular, it examines the history of three people deeply involved in the program, who brought their own biases and beliefs to the data that they collected. Gladwell’s point in telling this story is that often the challenge is not to collect the information, but rather to interpret it accurately. Each of the three people had access to an overwhelming amount of information. Still, their vision of the war was shaped less by the the interviews themselves, than by their own biases. In an age of big data, NSA and cyber-espionage, the challenge of how to correctly interpret overwhelming amounts of data remains critical to global intelligence services.

Shawn Smallman, 2016

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