In maps of Asia printed before 1975, the name Saigon would have stretched back at least to the 1700s, when the Vietnamese took over the bustling city from their Cambodian neighbors. For hundreds of years the name was a stalwart of Indochinese culture, reaching the status of metropolis under French colonial rule in the 1800s as the capital of the territory they called Cochinchina.
The city remained under French administration until it was taken by Imperial Japanese forces in 1945, mere months before the end of World War II. Into the power vacuum left by the Japanese defeat stepped the Viet Minh, led by political revolutionary Ho Chi Minh.
After becoming a focal point of the Cold War between the increasingly communist East and the democratic West, the name Saigon ceased to represent a political reality: on future maps the city would be officially re-dubbed after Ho Chi Minh in a dramatic rejection of the colonialism that had defined Vietnam for centuries.
When American military and diplomatic forces evacuated the city 50 years ago, Saigon became Ho Chi Minh City in a final symbolic defeat for U.S. forces. But the fall of Saigon was a great deal more than a name change—it was perhaps the single most chaotic diplomatic marathon dealt with in modern times.
By the time North Vietnamese forces carrying the banners of Ho Chi Minh entered the city on April 30, 1975, American diplomats and the few peacekeeping forces that remained had spent days scrambling to organize a Dunkirk-level evacuation of Saigon. With sea routes blocked by hostile forces and airplanes unable to land, a mad-dash helicopter air lift was instituted, resulting in a 7,000 person exodus known as Operation Frequent Wind. So many choppers were arriving on American carriers like the USS Okinawa that empty helicopters were pushed overboard to make space for those still stranded on the mainland.
American diplomatic and military personnel, Vietnamese citizens whose political actions would have meant persecution under the new regime, and civilians of all stripes descended upon the U.S. Embassy, the main embarkation point in this high-speed Casablanca-esque plot. The diplomatic corps in the embassy did the work of a lifetime securing visas and places on choppers for 7,000 desperate people in the days leading up to April 30, in many cases showing noteworthy empathy and bravery.
Originally ordered to evacuate only the Americans remaining in Saigon, U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin insisted on providing assistance to as many imperiled Vietnamese citizens as possible, swelling both the size of the airlift and the workload of his tireless staff.
When North Vietnamese troops shelled Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut Air Base on April 30, Martin had already given the order for evacuation by playing Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” on repeat over the Armed Forces Radio channel. The American military experiment in Indochina would end to a soundtrack of the beloved—if seasonally inappropriate—strains of the ballad. Helicopters began to ferry evacuees in 10-minute intervals, with as many as 10,000 Vietnamese civilians attempted to secure a spot on one of them by any means necessary. According to the Museum of American Diplomacy, pilots flew their choppers for as many as 19 hours straight in their back-and-forth route to save as many as possible.
Wolfgang Lehmann, Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy, gave a particularly valuable snapshot of what must have been the heaviest moment of his diplomatic career: “We could see the lights of the North Vietnamese convoys approaching the city…The chopper was packed with the rest of the staff and remaining civilian guards…and it was utterly silent except for the rotors of the engine. I don’t think I said a word on the way out and I don’t think anybody else did. The prevailing emotion was tremendous sadness.”
The last Americans were on their way out of Vietnam following what could be called one of the soundest military defeats in U.S. history. More than a decade of direct involvement in the region had seen more than 65,000 American troops killed, a massive shift in public sentiment towards American military action abroad, and ultimately a victory for the proxy forces of China and the USSR over those of NATO and the U.S.
The evacuation of Western forces from Saigon was a logistical nightmare for anyone unlucky or stubborn enough to still be in the city as the North Vietnamese Army descended in their masses (only a single unit had been left to defend the Northern capital at Hanoi as the rest of the army marched south). Not only were spots on helicopters far from assured, according to the LA Times, but correspondents from United Press International saw an increase of 1,000% in their life insurance premiums during the days leading up to the fall. Shops sat filled with sandbags in a last gambit to save the structures. And just before 8am on April 30th, a final helicopter carrying 11 U.S. Marines lifted off Vietnamese ground and ended the West’s colonial adventure in Indochina.
In the midst of U.S withdrawal, 40 “reeducation” camps were established in the South by the conquering NVA, attempting to rid Vietnam of the last vestiges of Western influence but destined, as such efforts always are, to produce more sectarian infighting than it prevents. Those South Vietnamese allies who were unable to successfully board a helicopter were kept for months or years until they were deemed to be loyal citizens of the new regime.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., veterans, protesters and politicians alike were left to reckon with the enormous material and human losses of a military adventure that ultimately ended in failure. In the minds of many, the fall of Saigon was a sure sign that the Communists would prevail in the Cold War. This foreboding feeling would only be assuaged by the fall, some 15 years later, of Soviet influence in the East.
