Gulf Of Tonkin

Fifty years ago, on August 4, 1964, an event happened that turned my life inside-out, upside down (or so I thought at the time; in retrospect it was turned right-side-up), and 180 degrees from what it had been. As I came to deal with it, I would question everything I thought I knew about the history of my country, and my relationship to that country. History knows the event as the “Tonkin Gulf Incident,” the beginning of formal American combat involvement in the war in Vietnam, that would spread to Southeast Asia, the causus belli that would send half a million of my fellow Americans into combat, leading to the death of more than 58,000 of them over the next nine years. More than a million Asians would die as a result. The United States would nearly be torn asunder, its future changed irrevocably. I was a fly on the wall at that momentous event. At the time, I was a member of the staff of Commander, Patrol Forces, U.S. 7th Fleet (COMPATFOR7FLT), the operational command under whose authority the destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy would enter the history books.