Leaving Vietnam: The Others We Forgot

...One might choose to agree with Asian communist leaders who think the traditional family is counter-revolutionary, or one might love his family and think the leaders are wrong, which seems to be the view of Tran Van Ngu...

...Other Americans fired into the air and beat back pleading Vietnamese who tugged at them desperately and then watched helplessly as the last two evacuation helicopters flew off...

...Knowledgeable Vietnamese say these are filled with gold...

...United States civilian employes at Nha Trang left behind more than 100 Vietnamese employes and their families in the United States Consulate General’s compound...

...Young men of military age, but who have never done active service, are also among the new arrivals...

...As late as April 22 of this year-less than two weeks before the final evacuation of Saigon-Lawrence Meyer wrote in The Washington Post: “With time running out in Saigon, the Ford Administration has taken the first steps toward planning for the arrival of Vietnamese refugees...

...Such “ghost soldiers”-who represented a significant reduction in the fighting capability of many of Saigon’s units, continued to lead the good life in the capital while others fought and died in Quangtri and Kontum and Camau...

...That massacre cut across class lines...

...The news clippings tell the story...

...It is particularly hard to accept that these men-who for years called on the people of South Vietnam to sacrifice everything for the ‘salvation of the fatherland’-and their families are filling seats on U. S. evacuation flights, while the common soldiers they have abandoned continue to die to preserve their escape route...

...For years hawks cajoled and pressured the South Vietnamese to join the forces of the free world...

...Many lesser official and quasigovernmental figures have...

...That we did not make plans to help people like him, the people who supported our cause and believed our propaganda, is a severe indictment of all of us, conservative and liberal alike...

...The planning that finally started three weeks later was typical of the whole war in its preference for the educated and the wealthy...

...This fear of being murdered, of the blood-bath that mercifully has not happened in post-war Vietnam, was not the only reason for wanting to escape...

...I’m so ashamed of the United States Government that 1’11 never be able to work for them again,’ a Government employe said...

...Although some earlier evacuees from Vietnam have been wealthy, the poverty of those landing today was obvious...

...Vietnamese employes who had been promised they would be evacuated, on realizing that the Americans were abandoning them, rushed the compound...

...The answer is to be seen here at Clark, and so far, at least, it appears to be an overwhelming No...

...I do not know where I am going,’ he said, ‘but I cannot live with the Communists...

...Only two, one of them a professor at Da Lat University, refused to leave without their Vietnamese families...

...They were scrambling to get on the ship,’ he said...

...There are ghost soldiers in abundance, but combatants like the militiaman from Phuquoc are conspicuous only by their absence...

...He showed a carefully preserved certificate attesting that he had completed a special training course run by the Marine and asked if the Americans would remember him and help him esczpe from the Communists...

...Some liberals think that only the corrupt rich had reason to fear the Vietcong...

...He had saved little else from his boat when he set her adrift as he and 11 family members leaped aboard an American freighter off Vang Tau...

...Most were barefoot, poorly dressed and carried few possessions...

...When the Vietnamese dashed onto the heliport through unguarded gates, they were met by more armed Americans...

...United States Marines closed the gates...

...The soldier had been wounded while serving together with the U. S. Marines in a combined-action platoon in Quangnam Province...

...others are from wealthy families who paid large bribes to keep their sons out of the ‘army...

...The arrival of these former high officials here is galling to many of the Vietnamese refugees who did not enjoy benefits of power...

...As the refugees began to leave Vietnam, Terry Rambo of The Washington Post described the kind of people we were taking out first and the kind we were leaving behind: “There is a Vietnamese saying 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...

...At Phucuoc [island] there were 30,000 to 50,000.’ “At the beach resort of Longhai, he said, he saw 4,000 to 6,000 would-be .refugees wailing and pleading from the shore...

...But it wasn’t the Saigon jet-set that got killed by the Communists at Hue in 1968...

...Some were on the ship and their families were in small boats and were left behind...

...The planning finally started three weeks after this story was filed by WI from Nha Trang: “Some Americans, hol’ding shotguns, automatic rifles and submachine guns, kept long-time Vietnamese friends from taking the places they had been promised on helicopters flying from Nha Trang today on the way to refuge in Saigon...

...been seen in the refugee camp here...

...Many of these refugees are employees and families of employees of official American agencies, such as the Defense Attache’s Office and the Agency for International Development...

...A later Washington Post report, on May 7, described what happened to the majority of the less privileged who tried to get out: “The captain of a ship that brought 5,030 Vietnam refugees to Guam tonight said thousands of persons were left behind in boats in the waters off Saigon ‘howling and crying, “Come back...

...Take Tran Van Ngu, a fisherman the Times wrote about in a May 11 story from Guam: “He was barefoot, wore typical black pajamas, and carried a blue umbrella for shade...

...Watching the ‘beautiful people’ arrive, many Vietnamese and Americans with long personal involvement in the war openly express bitterness and anger...

...Three years ago Suzannah Lessard wrote in this magazine an article titled “Let Those Hillbillies Go Get Shot” which said that America had let its poorer whites and blacks do the dying in Vietnam...

...Hours later Nha Trang fell to the North Vietnamese and Vietcong...

...The people in charge knew eight days ago what was coming, but they refused to do anything about it.’ “All Americans wanting to get out of Nha Trang left on the airlift that began Monday...

...A number of wealthy businessmen, dressed in expensive foreign-made clothing, carry small but obviously heavy bags with them at all times...

...When a reporter mentioned the lack of relocation camp sites and other facilities to a member of the task force yesterday, he replied, ‘That’s an academic point...

...They totally abrogated their responsibility...

...Charles Peters is editor-in-chief of The Washington Monthly...

...I counted at least 200 people in the water swimming for the shore at one time,’ he said...

...We don’t have that kind of numbers yet.’ According to this official, ‘sites have been suggested,’ but not selected...

...But we had to go,’ he said...

...Two weeks ago on Phuquoc Island, a soldier disfigured by battle scars approached an American...

...The first problem facing the Inter-agency Task Force on Vietnam, established by the White House Friday, is that it has no idea how many refugees may be coming to this country...

...Although the young men would be listed as soldiers on some unit’s roster, they would never report for duty, and their commanding officers would pocket their salaries...

...Our orders were to take only 2,500 people from that area and we already had our quota.’ “Boucher said one of his companion ships, the Pioneer Contender, became so overloaded with nearly 16,000 people, that at least 600 jumped overboard to escape the crush...

...And while the Communists weren’t quite as careless with the lives of Vietnamese villagers as we were, they still managed to kill thousands who had sided with us...

...these people have legitimate grounds for being evacuated even without accompanying American sponsors...

...And the pity is that it was so uncalled for...

...Arthur Boucher, captain of the cargo ship American Challenger that docked here today, described the scene off Vungtau in South Vietnamese waters as he picked up refugees there 10 days ago...

...Yet no one took the responsibility for planning an exit from Vietnam which would take care of the Vietnamese who had committed themselves to us...

...It was very sad,’ Boucher said...

...All I want is an ordinary life with my family.’ ’’ As we point out elsewhere in this issue (“American Communes : Voluntary Maoism”) there is much that is attractive about communism, particularly as it is practiced by the Chinese, the Cubans, and some of the com communes here in the United Statesattractive, that is, if you don’t have to practice it, if you can choose the freedom we so long urged the South Vietnamese to embrace...

...To repeat, that story had an April 1 dateline...

...Many other Vietnamese, not employed by the U. S. government and often from among the wealthier and more politically powerful families in Saigon, have also come out on these flights...

...Some are more-or-less-legtimate student deferments...

...Families were being broken up...

...There were people afloat in boats...