Here Is Your Enemy: James Cameron's Complete Report From North Vietnam

by James Cameron

Here is Your Enemy by James Cameron is the first, starling report from within North Vietnam. It is also a moving account from a self-avowed political maverick. In December of 1965, a year after applying, James Cameron suddenly became the first Western correspondent to be admitted to Hanoi and allowed into other vulnerable areas of the country. To this day, Cameron does not know why the door was opened - possibly it was because he went as no one's guest and no one's delegate. At the time of Cameron's trip, American bombs were falling on communication and transport systems in North Vietnam with the threat of graver events in the offing. He tells of Hanoi (today almost as inaccessible as Lhasa); of dramatic changes in North Vietnam ( he was there twelve years before); and of long, unprecedented talks with North Vietnamese leaders. One of these took place with the almost legendary Ho Chi Minh, who for years has exerted a curious magic over Asians; and another with Pham Van Dong, North Vietnam's Prime Minister. Cameron reports on all aspects and regions of North Vietnam - its administration, its curious systems of defense (including the sensitive border areas and ports), and its people. Here Is Your Enemy is not a political book, nor an adventure, nor a travel document - but it is, excitingly, all of these. Roughly half its contents appeared in five installments in the New York Times and in the London Evening Standard this last winter. These reports - the first eye-witness account of the effect of U.S. tactical and strategic bombing - created a world-wide sensation.

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

James Cameron was born in London in 1911. After leaving school he worked as an office boy for the Weekly News. He worked for newspapers in Dundee and Glasgow before joining the Daily Express in 1940.

Cameron witnessed atom bomb tests in 1946. Shocked by what he saw he became a strong opponent of the possession of these weapons and later helped form the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

In 1950 Tom Hopkinson sent Cameron and Bert Hardy to report on the Korean War for the Picture Post. While in Korea the two men produced three illustrated stories for Picture Post. This included the landing of General Douglas MacArthur and his troops at Inchon. Cameron also wrote a piece about the way that the South Koreans were treating their political prisoners. Edward G. Hulton, the owner of the magazine, considered the article to be "communist propaganda" and Hopkinson was forced to resign.

Cameron covered world events for the Daily Chronicle (1952-60). He also wrote several books including Men of Our Time (1963), Witness in Vietnam (1966) his autobiography, Point of Departure (1967) and Cameron Country (1984). James Cameron died in 1985.