After Saigon Fell

A new understanding of US policy toward Vietnam after the end of the Vietnam War based on fresh archival discoveries.

Describes the events leading up to the evacuation of all Americans in Saigon after the Vietnam War.

This inspiring true story of familial love and triumph through adversity follows a father and daughter separated by war in Vietnam. In 1970, near the end of the Vietnam War, Thuhang Tran was born in Saigon. She contracted polio as a baby, and though her family sacrificed much to seek treatment, their efforts were halted by Saigon’s fall. Her father, Chinh Tran, an air traffic controller in the South Vietnam Air Force, was lost during the evacuations and presumed dead. This powerful memoir follows both father and daughter through their respective struggles, from Thuhang's battle with polio and the impact of her father's absence, to Chinh's immigration to the United States and his desperate 15-year mission to be reunited with his family. Through all the seemingly impossible hurdles she’s faced, Thuhang has remained hopeful and resilient. Now she tells her incredible story, inspiring those around her to find strength through perseverance.

When North Vietnamese troops occupied Saigon at the end of April 1975, their leaders in Hanoi faced the future with pride and confidence. Almost fifteen years later, the euphoria has given way to sober realism. Since the end of the war, the Communist regime has faced an almost uninterrupted series of difficulties including sluggish economic growth at home and a costly occupation of neighboring Cambodia. In this third and updated edition of a study which was originally published in 1980, William J. Duiker treats the fifteen years since the Communist takeover and attempts to reach a balanced appraisal of current conditions in Vietnam and their ultimate causes. Some of Hanoi's problems, he concludes, are self-inflicted while others stem from the historically deep political and cultural chasm dividing North and South. Duiker's insights and assessments will also be of particular interest to those concerned with American foreign policy and major issues in contemporary world politics.

*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading The Vietnam War could have been called a comedy of errors if the consequences weren't so deadly and tragic. In 1951, while war was raging in Korea, the United States began signing defense pacts with nations in the Pacific, intending to create alliances that would contain the spread of Communism. As the Korean War was winding down, America joined the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, pledging to defend several nations in the region from Communist aggression. One of those nations was South Vietnam. Before the Vietnam War, most Americans would have been hard pressed to locate Vietnam on a map. South Vietnamese President Diem's regime was extremely unpopular, and war broke out between Communist North Vietnam and South Vietnam around the end of the 1950s. Kennedy's administration tried to prop up the South Vietnamese with training and assistance, but the South Vietnamese military was feeble. A month before his death, Kennedy signed a presidential directive withdrawing 1,000 American personnel, and shortly after Kennedy's assassination, new President Lyndon B. Johnson reversed course, instead opting to expand American assistance to South Vietnam. Over the next few years, the American military commitment to South Vietnam grew dramatically, and the war effort became both deeper and more complex. The strategy included parallel efforts to strengthen the economic and political foundations of the South Vietnamese regime, to root out the Viet Cong guerrilla insurgency in the south, combat the more conventional North Vietnamese Army (NVA) near the Demilitarized Zone between north and south, and bomb military and industrial targets in North Vietnam itself. In public, American military officials and members of the Johnson administration stressed their tactical successes and offered rosy predictions; speaking before the National Press Club in November 1967, General Westmoreland claimed, "I have never been more encouraged in the four years that I have been in Vietnam. We are making real progress...I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing." Ripe for the plucking by North Vietnam, the country of South Vietnam found itself in an unenviable position in 1974. American forces rapidly withdrew, leaving only a few advisers and other personnel in place of the large forces deployed in the Southeast Asian theater until recently. President Gerald Ford and his staff, completely outmatched at the negotiations during the American retreat, parleyed from a position of weakness. The North Vietnamese gave essentially no useful concessions since they had no reason to, and they secured an American withdrawal without needing to remove their own advance units from South Vietnamese territory in return. Naturally, these facts reflected themselves in the morale of the two sides. South Vietnamese morale collapsed to catastrophic levels and remained there, though the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) forces occasionally managed gallant, even heroic stands. The North Vietnamese, by contrast, felt confident of victory, from the highest to the lowest ranks. A mix of Marxist zeal and barely expressed but very real nationalism strengthened the resolve of the North Vietnamese's commanders and soldiers as well. A haunting fear remained among the North Vietnamese that the Americans would return, but each fresh success with no American response made this concern recede further into the background. As 1975 dawned, the NVA prepared for a final series of campaigns to conquer the territory of South Vietnam, leading to a chain of events that culminated with the fall of Saigon and some of the most infamous footage in 20th century America's history. The Fall of Saigon: The History of the Battle for South Vietnam's Capital and the End of the Vietnam War examines how the war ended.

For Victor Hugo, the nineteenth century could be remembered by only its first two years, which established peace in Europe and France's supremacy on the continent. For General Lam Quang Thi, the twentieth century had only twenty-five years: from 1950 to 1975, during which the Republic of Vietnam and its Army grew up and collapsed with the fall of Saigon. This is the story of those twenty-five years. General Thi fought in the Indochina War as a battery commander on the side of the French. When Viet Minh aggression began after the Geneva Accords, he served in the nascent Vietnamese National Army, and his career covers this army's entire lifespan. He was deputy commander of the 7th Infantry Division, and in 1965 he assumed command of the 9th Infantry Division. In 1966, at the age of thirty-three, he became one of the youngest generals in the Vietnamese Army. He participated in the Tet Offensive before being removed from the front lines for political reasons. When North Vietnam launched the 1972 Great Offensive, he was brought back to the field and eventually promoted to commander of an Army Corps Task Force along the Demilitarized Zone. With the fall of Saigon, he left Vietnam and emigrated to the United States. Like his tactics during battle, General Thi pulls no punches in his denunciation of the various regimes of the Republic, and complacency and arrogance toward Vietnam in the policies of both France and the United States. Without lapsing into bitterness, this is finally a tribute to the soldiers who fell on behalf of a good cause.

Vietnam: 35 Years after the Fall of Saigon is a photo documentary of contemporary Vietnam from the perspective of the war. The legacy of the Vietnam War in America is well documented. But before this book, little existed on the topic as a comprehensive work as it relates to Vietnam itself. The volume captures cities and regions throughout the country from Hai Phong in the north to the Mekong Delta in the south, documenting the residue of the war, including MIA and unexploded ordnance (UXO) issues, and the current social, economic, and diplomatic environment to present a comprehensive view of the country today.Thirty-five years after the fall of Saigon, Vietnam is a rapidly developing country yet still endures the legacies of the War. Modern cities are rising quickly, yet on old battlefields children still play with the debris of war. The economy is thriving, yet second and third generations suffer the long-term effects of chemical defoliants and the lurking presence of unexploded ordnance. And amidst the economic and social progress, government officialdom does not let its citizens forget the war as it carefully shapes a historical perspective of it.The title represents an important and timely work from many perspectives--reconciliation between former foes, a social and economic perspective of a self-proclaimed communist country that fully embraces and practices capitalism, a documentation of the political and economic development of Vietnam, and as an 'epilogue' on the Vietnam War.Vietnam: 35 Years after the Fall of Saigon provides a contemporary perspective into Vietnam, documenting the country at this unique time when the legacy of the war is still alive but is giving way to a renewed economic, diplomatic, and social order. The scars of war have not yet faded, but peace and reconciliation are steadily overtaking them.