FULLY IN JAPANESE.
This 2010 published book is the second of 2 books written by the author, Japanese photojournalist Yasutsune Hirashiki, telling his story of experiences in the Vietnam War. The first book was published in 2008. I have both of the books and will be posting them individually. Both of these books were published in Japanese. He published a third book in English in 2017 titled, "On the Frontlines of the Television War: A Legendary War Cameraman in Vietnam".
He shared both of the Japanese language books with fellow journalist and friend, Don North, who also was in Vietnam at the same time. Found folded in this book was a letter typed by Yasutsune Hirashiki to Don North, unfortunately not signed by the author.
The full title in Japanese is, サイゴンハートブレーク・ホテル : 日本人記者たちのベトナム戦争, which Google translates as, Saigon Heartbreak Hotel: Japanese Reporters Vietnam War. The abbreviated title is shown in English on the front cover - that is the only English in the book save for a bit on the colophon at the back of the book. The book was published in 2010 by Kodansha. The book is in NEAR FINE CONDITION. There is a wrap-around the dust jacket, and both are pristine. The boards are pristine and the endpapers are photographs. The book has 484 clean and solidly bound pages, with photos throughout.
Here is a synopsis of the 2017 English language book, which discusses the author and his writings on his experience in Vietnam:
"On the Frontlines of the Television War is the story of Yasutsune "Tony" Hirashiki's 10 years in Vietnam - beginning when he arrived in 1966 as a young freelancer with a 16mm camera but without a job or the slightest grasp of English and ending in the hectic fall of Saigon in 1975 when he was literally thrown on one of the last flights out. His memoir has all the exciting tales of peril, hardship, and close calls as the best of battle memoirs but it is primarily a story of very real and yet remarkable people: the soldiers who fought, bled, and died, and the reporters and photographers who went right to the frontlines to record their stories and memorialize their sacrifice.
The great books about Vietnam journalism have been about print reporters, still photographers, and television correspondents, but if this was truly the first "television war", then it is time to hear the story of the cameramen who shot the pictures and the reporters who wrote the stories that the average American witnessed daily in their living rooms. An award-winning sensation when it was released in Japan in 2008, this book been completely re-created for an international audience.
In 2008, the Japanese edition was published by Kodansha in two hardback volumes and titled I Wanted to Be Capa. It won the 2009 Oya Soichi Nonfiction Award - a prize usually reserved for much younger writers - and Kodansha almost doubled their initial print run to meet the demand. In that period, he was interviewed extensively, a documentary was filmed in which he returned to the people and places of his wartime experience, and a dramatization of his book was written and presented on NHK Radio. A Kodansha paperback was published in 2010 with an initial printing of 17,000 copies and continues to sell at a respectable pace."
On fellow journalist Don North (1938-2019), from an obituary:
"For forty years, Don North was a journalist, film and video producer, cameraman, spokesperson, writer, and trainer in a wide variety of international forums. He began his career in Hong Kong, soon gravitating to the war in Vietnam where he assumed the roles of photojournalist and radio reporter. In 1968 he reported on the attack of the US Embassy by Viet Cong guerrillas during the Tet Offensive. He has been embedded in fifteen wars including reporting from Bosnia, Sarajevo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He worked at the American University in Nigeria where he has witnessed the atrocities of the Boko Haram."
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