Perhaps more than any other publication, the Life magazine that went to war in the 1940s helped mold Americans’ opinions of a global conflict that ultimately would propel the United States to superpower status during the Cold War years that followed. A pioneer in photojournalism, Life also helped to solidify the “good war” narrative in the American mindset. It aided in establishing the framework for a mythical, if not fictional, storyline that would endure for decades to come. For example, the week after the attack on Pearl Harbor, more than 3.4 million copies of the December 15th, 1941 issue went into circulation.
Of course, lasting peace did not follow World War II. When Life went off to war in the late 1950s and early 1960s, this time in Southeast Asia, the magazine would attempt to replicate another “good war” tale. It achieved far less success, in large part because the journalists and photographers themselves had the unenviable task of making sense of an incredibly complex, even convoluted, political-military conflict.
Yet far from manipulating public attitudes against American Cold War objectives, or undermining policymakers and military leaders in Washington and Saigon, Life did its best to share a view of the U.S. war in Vietnam that was at once as honest as it was troubling. In many ways, reviewing the magazine today reveals how Life reflected rather than shaped the American narrative arc of war in Vietnam—from wonder to hope; from disillusionment to anger; and finally, from despair to defeat.
Articles in the 1950s sought to uncover what many Americans thought of as an exotic yet vulnerable Asian country, a “traditional” society caught in a struggle between communist forces and French colonialists intent on maintaining their empire. In August 1953, for example, the magazine positioned French war weariness against “Ho Chi Minh’s Reds” who were “building up” for a major offensive. Yet it was clear the war was taking its toll on all sides. Photographer David Douglas Duncan offered readers glimpses of wounded Vietnamese staring into the camera from their hospital beds, Saigon opium dens, and U.S. military vehicles crowding transport depots. Duncan also foresaw what Americans might soon be up against. As a Vietnamese bookseller warned him, “When our people are aware that they are fighting for their own interests, they will be willing to make more of the sacrifices that seem to be necessary for freedom’s birth.”