Douglas Pike

Douglas Eugene Pike (July 27, 1924 – May 13, 2002) was a leading American historian and foremost scholar on the Vietnam War and the Viet Cong based from 1997 onward at Texas Tech University. In 1960, Pike became a Foreign Service Officer in the United States Information Agency and was sent to South Vietnam. Aside from serving in Saigon he had assignments in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Taipei, and Washington, but Vietnam was the focus of most of his career. In 1981 he retired from the Foreign Service and became director of the Indochina Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Included in his duties in that position were serving as director of the Indochina Archive and editor of Indochina Chronology, published quarterly beginning in 1982. He was considered an expert on the National Liberation Front and NVA (People's Army of Vietnam) before his death in 2002.

Pike received a degree in journalism from the University of North Dakota as a bachelor's in international communications from the University of California, Berkeley and also a MA from American University in Washington D.C. (1958). Pike worked at the MIT Center for International Studies (1963–64) a year after graduate.

Early life Pike was born in Cass Lake, Minnesota. He grew up in Minor and had planned on a career in journalism, but with the outbreak of World War II, he joined the Army Signal Corps and served in the South Pacific. He served between 1943–1946 and reached the rank of Master Sergeant.

Published works Douglas Pike, Viet Cong. The organization and techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1966) Douglas Pike, War, Peace, and the Viet Cong (Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1969) Douglas Pike, The Viet-Cong Strategy of Terror (United States Mission, Vietnam, 1970) Douglas Pike, History of Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1976 (Hoover Institution Press 1978) Douglas Pike, PAVN: People's Army of Vietnam (Presidio Press 1986)