Arnett Features in New AP Vietnam War Book

Distinguished New Zealand war correspondent, Pulitzer Prize-winning Peter Arnett is one of a number of well-known journalists whose text will be included in Vietnam: The Real War, a photographic history by the Associated Press, to be published in the United States on 1 October.

From 1950 to 1975, nonprofit news cooperative Associated Press, founded during the Mexican War in 1846, fielded Saigon’s largest, most battle-hardened cadre of war correspondents and photographers, including several women. Four died.

The A.P. bureau’s ranks began to grow with the arrival, in late 1961, of Malcolm W. Browne, a Korean War veteran, followed the next year by Arnett, a New Zealander, and Faas, a German: “the Basie band of Vietnam coverage,” as the A.P. book puts it.

“What we did, we told the accurate story,” said Arnett, one of the last surviving members of the 1960s bureau, who was once berated by the United States Pacific commander, Admiral Harry D. Felt: “Get on the team.”

An exhibition at the Steven Kasher Gallery in Manhattan will coincide with the book’s publication.

Arnett worked for National Geographic magazine, and later for various television networks, most notably CNN. Arnett lives in Los Angeles and teaches journalism at Shantou University in China.