Three and a half hours after the last American marines were lifted from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon by helicopter April 30, the liberation forces marched into the city in triumph.
They were greeted by cheers and applause from the populace. Western correspondents in Saigon reported an overwhelming feeling of relief there that the long struggle was over. The first of the liberation forces to enter the center of Saigon was a jeepload of barefoot teenagers. Soon others were parading through the streets on tanks and captured American jeeps, cheering and waving flags. Laughing soldiers riding the tanks shouted “Hello, comrades” to bystanders and reporters.
As an unarmed member of Thieu’s forces struggled to open the gates of the presidential palace, one tank, disregarding his efforts, simply smashed through one of the supporting pillars. At 12:15 p.m. the flag of the National Liberation Front was raised over the palace.
The Provisional Revolutionary Government announced that Saigon would be renamed Ho Chi Minh City in honor of the “father of the Vietnamese nation.” This decree was later modified. “Ho Chi Minh” will be a “popular” name; the official name will remain Saigon.
“Within hours,” the May 1 Washington Post reported, “the streets of the city took on a festive air, and the looting and robberies that had been going on for the previous day or two came to a halt.”
Saigon itself was liberated with hardly any fighting. Many areas were littered with shoes and uniforms discarded by the puppet troops. Tanks driven along Tu Do Street in a victory celebration ground abandoned uniforms into the asphalt.
According to a Reuters report in the May 1 Christian Science Monitor, “A Communist colonel told one correspondent that foreign newsmen ‘would be the most protected people here because you are from abroad.’
“Nevertheless, many journalists walked about town festooned like prize chickens with their national colors draped around their arms, small flags pinned to their lapels, and large pieces of paper stuck to their chests.
“A Reuter correspondent read ‘Bao Chi Phap’ (French newsman) and elicited friendly waves from the young guerrillas.”
A Vietnamese who had been supplying photographs to the Associated Press for three years entered the agency’s office with a Communist friend and two North Vietnamese soldiers and said, “I guarantee the safety of everybody here.”
“I have been a revolutionary for 10 years,” he said. “My job in the Vietcong was liaison with the international press.” The AP bureau chief served his visitors Coca-Cola and cake.
The last president of the puppet regime, General Duong Van (Big) Minh, announced total surrender a few hours after the U.S. marines and officials had left. According to Hanoi radio, when the liberation forces entered the presidential palace they found General Minh and others seated in two rows of chairs.
“The revolution has come,” General Minh is quoted as having said. “You have come. We have been waiting for you this morning to hand over power.”
The broadcast said that an officer of the liberation army replied:
“The revolution has seized complete power. The former Administration has been overthrown. No one can hand over what they have lost.”
General Minh was detained by the PRG forces and released five days later.
Including the Kitchen Sinks
Immediately after the last U.S. marines were airlifted from the embassy, thousands of Vietnamese looted and sacked the building. Tear-gas grenades lobbed down the elevator shaft by the departing marines did not deter them.
“The six-story U.S. Embassy in Saigon withstood a determined Viet Cong commando attack in 1968, and five Americans died in its defense,” reported Associated Press correspondent Peter Arnett.
“Today, without its armed guards, the embassy was no match for thousands of Saigonese getting their last American handout.
“They took everything, including the kitchen sinks and a machine to shred secret documents.
“The bronze plaque with names of the five American servicemen who died in the embassy in 1968 was torn from the lobby wall. It lay amid piles of documents and furniture on the back lawn. We carried it back to the Associated Press office.
“ ‘It is our embassy now,’ said a laughing young Vietnamese soldier as he pranced gleefully along the littered hallway of the administrative building.”
The embassy was set ablaze. Most other buildings deserted by the Americans were also ransacked. The rest of Saigon was barely scratched in the take-over.
Washington’s final evacuation of its embassy officials, military advisers, and other American citizens and their dependents was delayed so long that it became a very risky operation. The threat was not from the advancing liberation forces, who halted just outside the city and held their fire during the evacuation. According to Sarah Webb Barrell in the May 1 New York Daily News, “The consensus was that angry and disillusioned South Vietnamese soldiers were more dangerous than Communist shells.”
The American consul general in the Mekong Delta escaped by boat down the Mekong River, along with a contingent of U.S. marines, sixteen other Americans, and 100 Vietnamese. Adrift in the South China Sea, they were attacked by South Vietnamese helicopters, and had to call in U.S. planes to drive them off, a report in the April 30 Washington Post said.
Washington reported that about 130,000 refugees had fled the country. Some puppet troops organized their own evacuation. About 125 air force planes carrying officers and their families landed in Thailand. Dozens of helicopters fled in search of U.S. ships. There was not enough room for them all to land on the decks. Some were ditched in the sea; others landed on helipads and were then thrown into the sea to make way for more. Armed American marines disarmed the Vietnamese soldiers, and the U.S.-manufactured weapons were tossed over the side. “It’s all over for you; you won’t need these anymore,” said one marine.
American television commentators noted that each ditched helicopter cost nearly $1 million. It was small potatoes, however, compared with more than $5 billion in military equipment left behind and now in the hands of the PRG.
‘Only When the House Burns...
“There is a Vietnamese saying,” wrote Washington Post correspondent Terry Rambo in an April 29 dispatch from Clark Air Base in the Philippines, “that ‘Only when the house burns, do you see the faces of the rats.’ This phrase, often cited in Saigon in the last few weeks, is again being repeated by Vietnamese observing the most recent loads of refugees arriving here from Tansonnhut airport.”
Those passing through included high-ranking former Saigon government officials, former ministers, and members of wealthy Saigon families.
“A number of wealthy businessmen, dressed in expensive foreign-made clothing, carry small but obviously heavy bags with them at all times,” said Rambo. “Knowledgeable Vietnamese say these are filled with gold.” A three-star general airlifted out with the Americans in the final evacuation carried a suitcase loaded with gold, the April 30 New York Daily News reported.
“Many of Saigon’s more affluent and well-connected bar girls and prostitutes were somehow among the first persons evacuated,” said Wall Street Journal reporter Norman Pearlstine April 30 after his own evacuation from Saigon to Guam.
Apart from himself and an American employee of Chase Manhattan Bank with nine Vietnamese women and children in his custody, said Pearlstine, “almost everyone else on the plane was related to a South Vietnamese air-force fighter pilot....
“Sources in Saigon say the pilots had threatened to shoot down the evacuation planes or stop flying themselves if their families weren’t evacuated.”
Among the refugees was “one former cabinet official, known to Saigon businessmen as ‘Mr. 10%’ because he demanded that much of any deal he approved while in office....”
Former dictator Nguyen Cao Ky also fled with the last of the Americans. A few days earlier he had told a Saigon rally, “If Hanoi refuses to negotiate... we will fight to the death. Our backs are against the wall now.... So let the cowards who are leaving with the Americans go and let those who love South Vietnam stay and fight.”
PRG Announces Nationalizations
On the day Saigon was liberated, representatives of the PRG in Paris issued a statement hailing it as “a victory of historic significance.” The statement said the new government would follow a foreign policy of “peace and nonalignment,” and gave assurances that the lives and property of foreigners would be protected.
The same day the PRG radio broadcast a revised version of its ten-point policy for South Vietnam (see Intercontinental Press, April 14, p. 511, for the earlier text):
1. Existing agencies and organizations must carry out a policy of “revolutionary government.” Abolition of the old system and its laws, dissolution of “all reactionary parties and other organizations serving imperialism and puppet regimes.”
2. Sexual equality and freedom of thought and worship.
3. Prohibition of all divisive activity and a “call to unity” to “build the new life.”
4. Guaranteed right to work and universal “obligation to support the revolution.”
5. All property of the “puppet administration” will be controlled by the PRG.
6. “National duty” to care for orphans and the infirm.
7. Encouragement of rural areas to increase production.
8. Cultural bodies, hospitals, and schools run by foreigners should continue serving the people. Talents useful in building the country will be nurtured.
9. Welcome and kindness for soldiers who desert enemy ranks.
10. “Except for those who oppose the revolution – and they will be punished – foreign persons and property will be guaranteed safety.”
In the earlier version point 6 read: “The property of industrialists and shopkeepers is protected.”
Both the French and Japanese embassies reported that the city had returned to normal and the situation was very calm.
Decrees were broadcast May 1 forbidding the publication of all newspapers, books, and other printed material by private citizens, and banning prostitution and dance halls.
“Anyone acting like Americans or participating in such American-style activities as opening night clubs, brothels or other places of entertainment will be punished,” the radio said.
Another broadcast announced the nationalization of factories, farms, and businesses, and on May 2 the headquarters of the Confederation of Labor was reportedly seized by 3,000 workers. The radio said a revolutionary trade-union organization was being formed. All members of the old confederation were ordered to report within twenty-four hours.
On May 3 the PRG announced that “Revolutionary People’s Committees” were being formed throughout the country, with the aim of protecting government property. The radio announced that 5,000 people in the Saigon area had signed up for duty.
Saigon was now being administered by the “Committee of the Military Management of Saigon-Gia Dinh” said the radio. Heading the eleven-member committee was Gen. Tran Van Tra, former head of the PRG delegation to the military talks with the puppet regime.
The government also announced May 5 that the release of political prisoners held by the former regime was under way. Prisoners already freed and the families of prisoners were urged to join in plans for a welcoming ceremony for those released from the “tiger cages” of Con Son island.
No news has been received as yet of the approximately 10,000 French nationals remaining in South Vietnam. The new government’s attitude toward French investments there – estimated in Paris financial circles to be as high as $300 million – is likewise unknown.
Until recently, when most of the trees were destroyed by bombing and the use of herbicides, rubber from the French-owned plantations made up the biggest export sector in the South Vietnamese economy. The Michelin tire company owned 200,000 acres of rubber trees. Only 10 percent are believed to be still standing today.
Associated Press correspondent Daniel De Luce filed dispatches from Hue and Danang on life in the liberated areas. He reported that “there seemed to be no overwhelming emotion except relief” among the residents of those two cities. Urban life quickly resumed its usual activities, he said. Most shops were open.
“My impression is that people are getting along quite well with the new regime,” Thomas Hoskins, an American doctor who remained in Danang, told De Luce.
“A bloodbath in this region? Not in the least,” Hoskins said. “I speak some Vietnamese, and I go to the market frequently, and I would have heard people who were afraid of liberation and would have spoken their fears.”
Hoskins witnessed the liberation of Danang on March 29. The days before were “frightening,” he said.
“The city general hospital was a sorry sight indeed. It had been extensively looted and vandalized in the last 48 hours. Medicine supplies had been broken open, strewn about, smashed, stolen. Catholic sisters were still on duty in three wards, but most of the hospital’s patients had fled.”
Hoskins was working in an emergency ward and went outside for a break. He noticed that people were back on the streets, and that the shooting had stopped.
“Then I saw a huge American-made tank. Schoolchildren were clinging all over it, waving Buddhist flags. Suddenly it dawned on me: The city is liberated.
“At the foot of a flagpole I saw Vietnamese throwing their weapons on the ground. The mound of weapons grew rapidly – carbines, rocket launchers. Then I saw 10 liberation cadres emerge from the shadows and lay arms on this pile. It was an awesome moment to see finally men laying down the tools of war....”
A government functionary in Hue told De Luce he felt much the same emotion when he heard on April 30 that Saigon had been won.
“It is over. But what a cost,” he said. “Thirty years of people being killed and our land destroyed. Now there is much to do.”
Source: https://www.themilitant.com/Intercontinental_Press/1975/IP1318.pdf#page=6&view=FitV,3