Could you describe the events of the night of December 22, 1972?

On that day the United States used all kinds of airplanes, especially B-52s, in order to bomb Hanoi. Among the targets was Bach Mai Hospital.

Could you describe the events of the night of December 22, 1972?

The United States used all kinds of airplanes, including B-52s, to attack Hanoi. Among the targets was Bach Mai Hospital which had many patients of all ages, including children and babies. I am both a surgeon and a professor at the Medical School in Hanoi. During the days when the American planes dropped bombs on Hanoi, medical doctors and medical students all remained at the hospital in order to treat the victims of the bombing as well as other patients brought to us from the areas surrounding Hanoi.

On the night of the 22nd the United States sent waves after waves of B-52s to attack Bach Mai Hospital directly. It was nighttime then, and all of us medical doctors and students as well as patients were hiding in the bomb shelters under the hospital. We were all too familiar with the thundering roars of the B-52s which vibrated in the air for an extended period. When the, bombs dropped directly on us, we charged out and gathered all our students to go to the two bomb shelters outside to treat the wounded. The spot which you are standing on now used to have a bomb shelter which was hit directly by a bomb.

There were thirty persons in the shelter at the time, most of them women and children. Cries and moans filled the dark night. We had to use knives, hammers and shovels to break through the concrete walls in order to get to the victims who got caught in there. I can never forget the cry of a woman who said: "Brothers and Sisters, please help me. I still have four young children." As a surgeon who specialized on operating on people to save them, this time I used my surgical knife not to save people but to cut out parts of the bodies of the people who got stuck in that bomb shelter in order to gain entry into the shelter to rescue those who were still alive.

It was a sight which I will never forget. The United States was extremely barbaric. It would be a normal thing to drop bombs on the battlefields. But on this hospital the United States employed special weapons to drop bombs over the heads of doctors in their white uniforms and on children and babies lying in their sick beds. Now, and perhaps forever in the future, doctors like me will not only have to tell their students to love their patients but also to remind them of the destructive acts of the United States on this hospital.

How did you feel at the time of the bombing when you were actually digging the people out? What were your feelings?

When I stepped out of the bomb shelter I saw that the main building of the hospital, which included my operating room, had been destroyed by the bombs. Personally, the hospital was a place where I had lived in for a much longer period than in my actual home. I felt that I was confronted by an immense difficulty.

As a doctor and a surgeon whose operating room and all the equipment therein destroyed, whose sick ward and all the beds bombed to pieces and whose friends and patients had been buried under the concrete slabs, I was left with a very deep imprint. But the terrifying cries and moans increased my love as a doctor and made me forget all my fatigue. I ran in and out all night and all day trying to rescue those who were still alive and also to bring out the corpses of those who got buried in the bomb shelters so that their loved ones could claim them. I regarded this as a very necessary thing for a doctor to do.