Fifty-six years ago, a young Mexican American man named Raúl Herrera found himself on a Swift Boat during the Vietnam War. It’s an experience that’s stayed with him all these years, and one he’s now exploring, publicly, with his new memoir Capturing Skunk Alpha: A Barrio Sailor’s Journey In Vietnam (paperback, Kindle). In the following email interview, Herrera discusses why he wanted to tell this story, as well as why it took him so long.