JarJar Nixon's Blues Kitchen

The 2008 Charles B. Burdick Memorial Military History Symposium
takes place on Wednesday, April 30, at the Engineering Auditorium (ENG
189) at San Jose State University, from 6:30 - 9 p.m. Admission to the
event is free and open to the public.

Panelists: Al Conetto, who served for five months in Vietnam during
1965 as a First Lieutenant with both the First Cavalry Division and the
173rd Airborne Bridage. In 1967, he returned as a Captain in the First
Cavalry for 12 months, in the field, in logistics and in intelligence.
He became the briefing officer to the commander of the division. Mr.
Conetto has just completed a manuscript for a book on Operation Hump,
the first major American battle with the Vietcong, in which he fought.

Quang X. Pham, who is the son of the late Hoa Pham, a South
Vietnamese fighter pilot who rescued his family in the American
evacuation of April, 1975, but stayed behind because of A Sense of Duty
-- the title of his book published by Ballantine Books in 2005
(subtitle: My Father -- My American Journey). Lt. Col. Hoa Pham spent
twelve years in the reeducation camp prisons in Vietnam while his son
was growing up in the USA, making the decision in 1985 to join the U.S.
Marines. Quang X. Pham became the first Vietnamese American marine
aviator, serving in combat in Somalia.

Jerry Underdal joined International Voluntary Services (IVS), a
private organization supporting development in South Vietnam, in 1968.
He taught English for a year in Quang Nam province and spent a second
year on the Saigon staff of IVS as Assistant Team Leader for Education.
After the war, Mr. Underdal taught English to Vietnamese refugees and
was responsible for the first Vietnamese language program in Northern
California.

Moderator: Larry Engelmann, Emeritus Professor in the History Dept.
at SJSU, and author of Tears Before the Rain: An Oral History of the
Fall of South Vietnam published by Oxford University Press in 1990.

Welcoming remarks: Jonathan Roth, chair of the History Dept. at SJSU.

For further information contact Dr. Roth at 408-924-5505 or
jonathanroth@sjsu.edu
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A booksigning by Mr. Pham and Mr. Engelmann will benefit the SJSU
History Dept. It is organized by Jean Libby, editor of VietAm Review

http://vietamreview.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2008/4/16/3641930.html