Interview with Le Lam, 1981

Ellison, Richard · February 17, 1981

Artist Le Lam was a student who left the North for the South in 1965. He describes the trip south, painting the troops he saw. When called upon, he says, he would fight with guerilla troops. He describes the American pacification program of bombing rural areas in the south during 1967 and 1968. Everywhere he went, he says, he exhibited his paintings, sometimes 200 or 300 at a time. He considered it a duty to make propaganda posters in order to convince the American troops to refuse to fight. He describes the joy of returning to the north, to Hanoi, in 1974.