Remembering the Fall of Saigon -- and Hugh Van Es.

[Carl Robinson (via Google Docs)]

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[Arnold Isaacs]

Chilling!

I'm waiting for someone to remember that the biggest obstacle to
getting endangered U.S.-connected Vietnamese out of Saigon in the
final weeks of April 75 was the American ambassador, Graham Martin,
who explicitly ordered airlift planes and Sealift Command ships NOT to
take any Vietnamese refugees on their return trips out of the country.
Most of the American-employed Vietnamese who got out before the very
last couple of days were smuggled out by their U.S. supervisors in
direct disobedience of Martin's orders.

We'll see if we end up doing any better by interpreters and others
whose safety is at risk
in Afghanistan.

Skip Isaacs

On 7/10/21, Carl Robinson (via Google Docs) <robinso...@gmail.com> wrote:
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[David Brown]

Skip,The generation of my wife's family who grew up in the US cornered Tuyet and me after a funeral last month and insisted that we write down 'their story,' that is, we should sort out and cross-check what we and their parents remember of the family's departure from Saigon and resettlement in the US. We agreed.

Our project has led me to review accounts of the April 1975 evacuation from Saigon. I've concluded that immediate judgments on Ambassador Graham Martin's role (think Frank Snepp here) were overly harsh. With good reason, Martin believed that a misstep on his part could, at the least, hasten the collapse of the Thieu regime and endanger the American staff of the US Mission still at post, their relatives and their Vietnamese co-workers. His compromise was to authorize his deputy (Wolf Lehmann) and other embassy and mission staff to organize and carry out a low-silhouette evacuation while he, Martin, remained detached from all that, and focused on sustaining Thieu's morale.

Was Martin's decision correct? I've concluded that under the circumstances the evacuation was more successfully executed than likely alternatives might have been. By the beginning of April, the means to move Americans and their friends out of Vietnam were organized and those in charge faced an unanticipated problem: perhaps the majority of those who'd signed up to go (my in-laws among them) were having second thoughts. Not until about the 20th of the month did the 'pipeline' to Tan Son Nhut fill up with would-be refugees. 

I have some direct experience of all this, but let me here refer you and other hacks to two primary sources, lengthy interviews of Lacy Wright, then a mid-rank Embassy officer, and Wolf Lehmann, Martin's #2, from the annals of the Association for Diplomatic Study and Training (https://adst.org/oral-history/oral-history-interviews/).

Hope you are well. Very best from California, David Brown      

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[Carl Robinson]

Thanks David & Skip:   You mean Frank Snepp might've been wrong?!   (ha ha)  Well, having lived through all that drama at the time, the US was also holding out -- and raising -- hopes of some sort of last-minute political solution.  But, yes, we were also getting increasingly nervous at our own Vietnamese friends & allies turning on us too.   I was more nervous of them waiting for that bus out to TSN than the NVA, I tell 'ya.  

Equivalence today?  Any Third Forcers out there who don't think the Taliban are gonna' be that mean?!   It's easy to focus on those who've worked directly for the US, but what about everybody else?   Kabul has five million people today.

It's never easy abandoning your friends, is it?

Carl

 

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[Jim Laurie]

David -  It is worth recalling that the operation on April 29-30 1975 that saw most Vietnamese escape Saigon was an unsanctioned one led by Richard Armitage (who had been assigned in 1975 to see to it that South Vietnamese naval assets stay out of North Vietnamese control).  Do you know Richard?  

My wife Xuan Xanh then 18 (we met only in 1989) escaped Saigon down the river with nearly 30,000 other refugees on more than 20 ships which were to rendezvous near Con Son Island.  Armitage's efforts coordinated with  Capt. Kiem Do, deputy chief of staff for the South Vietnamese navy and later Captain Paul Jacobs of the USS Kirk saw the flotilla of refugees reach Subic Bay.  When President Marcos refused to permit South Vietnamese Navy ships to enter Philippine waters, Armitage and Do ordered South Vietnamese flags lowered and all ships resumed sailing under American flags.  Marcos could not refuse admission of US ships.

Until much later, Washington knew nothing of the tens of thousands refugees saved in this improvised operation. Armitage said later "it was easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission."

It is good that your wife's family wants their stories told.  I am struggling to get my wife to tell hers in full.

Her escape led her to be the "anchor" for a dozen family members who embarked on perilous journeys to get to America in the years after 1975.  

cheers

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