After years of war, on this day, 50 years ago, Saigon, South Vietnam (officially the Republic of Vietnam [RVN]), fell to the invading communist North Vietnam Army (NVA).
The South’s Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) fought hard against the NVA with limited resources and supplies– the US failed to supply the South with the military aid needed to fight the NVA, aid that Congress stonewalled.
Let no one think that everyone in the South wanted the communist North Vietnam, i.e. the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, to take over the South, because that isn’t true.
I have met ARVN veterans in Vietnam. (I’ve been to this beautiful country two times for long periods.) Turns out, after the communist takeover of the South, the re-education camps set up for ARVN veterans to brainwash them didn’t work that well. Most retained anti-communist and anti-North sentiments long after the fall of Saigon, and openly expressed these feelings with no fear, much to my initial surprise.
While Saigon’s name was changed to Ho Chi Minh City, named after the anti-French Viet Minh leader and North Vietnam’s first president post-independence, ARVN veterans have persisted in calling the city Saigon, and surviving veterans continue to do so today. It is their little symbolic rebellion against the communists.
To me, the city is and shall remain Saigon.
◙ Posted on YouTube today, see this fantastic ITN montage and timeline of footage from the fall of Saigon: Fall of Saigon | Rare Footage of US Embassy Airlift and NVA Takeover (1975): https://youtu.be/cmWzl1jx724?si=HMcqlkysFmyNxqjD
ITN– In the last week of April 1975, the US-backed Republic of Vietnam collapsed in the face of advancing North Vietnamese troops. Amid the turmoil, ITN journalists and an international crew documented the chaos engulfing the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon. One team escaped on an American helicopter before the city fell. Another was left behind to film the moment Communist forces entered the city.
Journalist Michael Nicholson, camera operator Peter Wilkinson, and sound recordist Hugh Thomson documented the human tragedy as thousands of South Vietnamese refugees sought safe passage out of Saigon during Operation Frequent Wind, the US evacuation of the city. ITN’s Sandy Gall, after acting as an ‘evacuation warden’ for the Third Country Nationals (TCN) press, found himself left behind. On the morning of 30 April, Gall watched from the streets of Saigon as the final American helicopter lifted off from the US embassy compound. Teaming up with UPITN camera operator Lucien Botras and sound recordist Jacques Chaudenson, Gall spent the following days documenting the North Vietnamese capture of the city.
–RdM
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