Michael Koncewicz is the Michael Nash Research Scholar & Ewen Center Coordinator. This post is a part of a series that showcases different parts of Portable Devices, 1574-1998: Notebooks from NYU Special Collections, an exhibition on display April 14-June 21 at NYU Special Collections.

The notebooks that I selected for Portable Devices, 1574-1998: Notebooks from NYU Special Collections document historian Howard Zinn’s trips to southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. As part of the Howard Zinn Papers, the notebooks provide valuable firsthand accounts of the antiwar movement’s attempts at radical diplomacy.

Zinn traveled with Jesuit priest and antiwar activist Daniel Berrigan to Southeast Asia in February 1968 as part of the American antiwar movement’s broader outreach to the North Vietnamese government during the war. In the midst of the Tet Offensive, Zinn and Berrigan helped negotiate the release of three American pilots in Hanoi, who the North Vietnamese captured after a US bombing raid.

Part of Zinn’s summary of his 1968 Trip to Hanoi.

“I think Father Berrigan and I can report our mission was successful in that the three airmen were released to us in Hanoi,” wrote Zinn in one set of notes from the trip. He also recounted how they were supposed to fly on a commercial flight with the three POWs but were intercepted by the US government in Laos. The two peace activists abruptly wished the POWs good luck, but Zinn believed that the White House’s handling of the exchange had a “dangerous implication for the future.” During a press conference, Zinn told reporters that the release of three American prisoners was a “rare act in the great madness of this war.”

Photograph of Howard Zinn and Daniel Berrigan in Hanoi, February 1968.

The front cover of one of Howard Zinn’s notebooks that he purchased during his 1968 trip. It features a handwritten “IV” and an image from The Lady and the Tramp. It appears that Zinn bought the notebook while traveling through Southeast Asia. 

Four years later, Zinn returned to Hanoi as part of a delegation of antiwar activists who met with eleven American POWs to report on their living conditions. Sponsored by the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice, the group arrived in Hanoi on November 4th, just three days before the 1972 election. The trip took place just as President Nixon’s peace negotiations with North Vietnam had reached a stalemate in the fall of 1972.

Two pages from one of Zinn’s notebooks from his second trip to Hanoi in 1972. One page includes a “to-do list” and a list of the people who were a part of the American peace delegation.

Zinn was joined by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and Indochina Peace Campaign founder Tom Hayden, Susan Miller, representative of the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice, Carolyn Mugar, Indochina Peace Campaign, Fred Branfman, director of Project Air War, Jan Austin of the Asian Information Group, and Rev. David Hunter, deputy general secretary of the National Council of Churches. During their week-long stay, the North Vietnamese brought the group to the rural community of Thuanh Thanh, 30 miles north of Hanoi. An American bombing raid had destroyed most of the village and killed 22 people, including 12 children. The delegation also spoke with 11 American prisoners and brought 150 letters to their families in the United States.

As both a witness of the destruction caused by American bombs and a participant in the antiwar movement’s exchanges with the Vietnamese, Zinn offers researchers a powerful snapshot of unofficial diplomacy in the middle of a war. His notebooks remind readers that American antiwar activists were part of an international movement that sought to promote on the ground reports about the war.