The Journalist: Life and Loss in America's Secret War

Jerry Rose, a young journalist and photographer in Vietnam, exposed the secret beginnings of America’s Vietnam War in the early 1960s. Putting his life in danger, he interviewed Vietnamese villagers in a countryside riddled by a war of terror and intimidation and embedded himself with soldiers on the ground, experiences that he distilled into the first major article to be written about American troops fighting in Vietnam. His writing was acclaimed as “war reporting that ranks with the best of Ernest Hemingway and Ernie Pyle,” and in the years to follow, Time, The New York Times, The Reporter, New Republic, and The Saturday Evening Post regularly published his stories and photographs.

In spring 1965, Jerry’s friend and former doctor, Phan Huy Quat, became the new Prime Minister of Vietnam, and he invited Jerry to become an advisor to his government. Jerry agreed, hoping to use his deep knowledge of the country to help Vietnam. In September 1965, while on a trip to investigate corruption in the provinces of Vietnam, he died in a plane crash in Vietnam, leaving behind a treasure trove of journals, letters, stories, and a partially completed novel. The Journalist is the result of his sister, Lucy Rose Fischer, taking those writings and crafting a memoir in “collaboration” with her late brother—giving the term “ghostwritten” a whole new meaning.

Jerry Rose published feature articles and photographs in Time, The New York Times, The Saturday Evening Post, New Republic, The Reporter, and other news venues. He authored two books: Reported to be Alive (Grant Wolfkill, Simon and Schuster, 1965) and Face of Anguish (Free Asia Press, 1965), a book of his photographs. He had an MA from the Iowa Writers Workshop and also published fiction in literary magazines. He is deceased and this memoir was created with the help of his sister and co-writer, Lucy Rose Fischer.

Lucy Rose Fischer, an award-winning Minnesota author, artist, and social scientist, is the author of five previous books: Linked Lives: Adult Daughters and Their Mothers (Harper and Row, 1986, translated into German); Older Minnesotans (Wilder Foundation, 1989); Older Volunteers (Sage, 1993, NSFRE Research Prize); I’m New at Being Old (Temuna Press, 2010, Independent Publishers Gold Award and Midwest Book Award); and Grow Old With Me (Temuna Press, 2019), as well as more than 100 professional research articles. She has a PhD in sociology and an MA in Asian Studies. She currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota.