The Weight of Memory (March 1973-Onward) The Vietnam War

"They carried infections, they carried chess sets, basketballs,

"Vietnamese-English dictionaries,

"insignia of rank, Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts."

On March 29th, 1973, the last American troops left South Vietnam.

Fewer than 200 Marines would remain,

assigned to guard consular officers and the American Embassy,

and other installations in Saigon.

Thousands of other Americans, including CIA agents,

diplomats and contractors stayed behind as well.

Over the next two years, the forces of North and South Vietnam would

continue to savage one another.

And the Vietnamese people would find themselves back where they were at

the beginning, engulfed in an apparently endless civil war...

..and struggling over what kind of future they would have.

For the United States, combat did end...

..but controversy over the war did not.

Subcommittee will come to order.

As the Watergate scandal unfolded during the spring,

summer and fall of 1973,

Americans watched the Nixon administration slowly come apart.

Blackmail, enemies lists, dirty tricks...

..a vice president forced to resign, perjury, cover-up...

..abuse of presidential power, secret White House tapes.

Mr Butterfield, are you aware of the installation

of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President?

I was aware of listening devices, yes, sir.

Good evening. The country tonight is in the midst of what may be

the most serious constitutional crisis in its history.

I told the President about the fact that there were money demands

being made by the seven convicted defendants.

He asked me how much it would cost.

I told him I could only make an estimate,

but it might be as high as 1 million or more.

He told me that was no problem.

I have no prior knowledge of the Watergate break-in.

I neither took part in, nor knew,

about any of the subsequent cover-up activities.

Well, the agreement was called

The Agreement To End The War And Restore Peace In Vietnam

and, of course, that was a huge euphemism.

It neither ended the war, nor did it restore peace.

And if you look at the substance of it,

it really was a withdrawal agreement.

We were withdrawing our forces in exchange for prisoners of war.

Those are the two matters that were definitively settled

by the peace agreement.

We got our troops out and we got our prisoners back.

The rest is just all a model of nebulosity and vagueness,

and didn't resolve a darn thing.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE:

Neither North nor South Vietnam had had any intention

of observing the ceasefire called for in the peace treaty

signed in Paris on January 27th, 1973.

Even before the ink was dry,

each side had sought to claim as much territory as it could

in what became known as the War Of The Flags.

Within three weeks of the ceasefire,

they were already some 3,000 violations by both sides.

RAPID GUNFIRE

The fighting went on for months.

Nixon had privately promised

South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu

that he would retaliate with American air power

if Saigon ever seemed seriously threatened.

But in Washington, week by week,

as the secrets of Watergate kept tumbling out,

Nixon's influence on Capitol Hill steadily weakened.

In June of 1973, an energised Congress, reflecting the views

of a majority of Americans,

voted to stop all military operations in or over Vietnam,

Laos or Cambodia by August 15th.

To abandon the South Vietnamese, when all we were providing them

at the end was money, was reprehensible

and disrespected the sacrifices of all soldiers,

ours and the South Vietnamese.

I think the moral obligation doesn't stem from a philosophical commitment

to stopping Communism.

Now it stems from our keeping our promises

to this erstwhile unfortunate ally.

While one regrets that we pulled the rug out, in some respects,

I think the ultimate outcome would have been the same.

Had we continued, it would have cost probably more lives,

in the long-term, with no change in the outcome.

In the 18 bloody months that followed the signing

of the peace accords, South Vietnam's position

became more and more precarious.

But by the summer of 1974, few Americans were paying attention.

They were riveted by what was happening to their own country.

On July 27th, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee

recommended that the President be impeached for abusing his office.

On August 9th, rather than face impeachment,

Richard Nixon became the first president

in American history to resign.

Just a few days after the new president, Gerald Ford,

moved into the White House, Congress cut in half the funds

for military and economic assistance

Nixon had promised to deliver to Saigon.

Conditions in South Vietnam continued to deteriorate.

With the American military presence gone,

one out of every five civilian workers was jobless.

Prices soared.

There were many mistakes made by the Americans,

but the biggest mistake was creating an army in their own image,

an army that...

..was used to fighting a rich man's war,

and South Vietnam was too poor to be able to sustain that kind of war.

Meanwhile, the chronically underpaid South Vietnamese army

had its pay cut further.

It began to disintegrate.

As many as 20,000 men were deserting each month,

most heading home to try to help their families survive

in such hard times.

In November of 1974, the Politburo and the Central Military Committee

met in Hanoi to discuss strategy.

Some members urged caution.

They worried that if they tried to push Saigon to the point of collapse

too quickly, the Americans would return.

Final victory, they calculated, would come in 1976.

Party First Secretary Le Duan didn't agree.

He ordered a test attack to see if the Americans would intervene

with air power as they had during the Easter Offensive,

two and a half years earlier.

EXPLOSION

In December 1974, North Vietnamese forces attacked Phuoc Long,

north-east of Saigon.

Within three weeks, they had overrun the entire province

and had killed or captured thousands of ARVN defenders.

The United States did nothing in response.

MUSIC: Kashmir by Led Zeppelin

The North Vietnamese now undertook a new assault on cities

in the central highlands, including Buon Ma Thuot,

where their forces outnumbered the overextended ARVN nearly six to one.

Buon Ma Thuot fell in two days.

And here is the second province to fall...

..and it falls fairly quickly.

At that point, they realised, "Well, we don't have to wait till 1976,

"we can go for it now."

Within a week, Pleiku and Kon Tum were in enemy hands.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE:

According to Western diplomats here in Saigon,

the South Vietnamese are quitting the central highlands

because they hope to avoid a complete rout.

The withdrawal is said to be an attempt to save men and equipment

that may become sorely needed in other, more heavily populated

parts of the country.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE:

As the ARVN fled south, 400,000 civilians fled with them.

On March 29th, 1975, the North Vietnamese entered Danang,

South Vietnam's second largest city.

Civilians and soldiers alike tried to flee.

"Danang was not captured," an American reporter remembered,

"it disintegrated in its own terror."

SHE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE:

On the same beach where the US Marines had landed

nearly ten years earlier, beginning America's combat involvement

in Vietnam, 16,000 ARVN soldiers fought for space

with 75,000 terrified civilians

aboard an improvised fleet of freighters and fishing boats

headed south for Cam Ranh Bay, Vung Tau and Saigon...

..anywhere they thought northern troops might not follow.

Thousands drowned struggling to reach the boats,

thousands more were killed by enemy shells raining down on the beach.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE:

The North Vietnamese decided to move against Saigon

and take it before Ho Chi Minh's birthday on May 19th.

-GERALD FORD:

-A vast human tragedy has befallen our friends

in Vietnam and Cambodia.

On April 10th, President Ford appealed to a joint session

of Congress for 722 million in military aid to Saigon.

If they refused, and Saigon fell, Congress, not the White House,

should take the blame.

Under five presidents and 12 congresses,

the United States was engaged in Indochina.

Millions of Americans served...

..thousands died...

..and many more were wounded, imprisoned, or lost.

In the end, Congress voted against any military aid.

I don't think that it is good for a big nation like the US

to behave like that

because, by that time, we didn't ask for the blood of American soldiers.

I mean, the last minutes, they washed their hands, like that.

It is not up to a diplomat to use strong words against the Americans,

but I felt deeply sorry about it.

EXPLOSIONS AND GUNFIRE

On April 21st, Highway 1 was open all the way to Saigon.

That evening, President Thieu resigned.

News of Thieu's resignation had sent thousands of panicked Vietnamese

rushing to Tan Son Nhat Airport, hoping to get out of their country.

Some had exit visas, many did not.

Duong Van Mai's family had fled Hanoi in 1954,

leaving behind her older sister, Thang,

who had joined Ho Chi Minh's forces.

Now, 20 years later, with the North Vietnamese closing in on Saigon,

they were faced with the prospect of fleeing once again.

My mother didn't want to leave.

She said didn't want to be a refugee again.

She had been a refugee too many times.

Plus, my sister, Thang, was about to arrive

and meet us after all these years.

She said she wanted to stay and see Thang.

My father was determined to leave

because he was afraid that if we stayed we'd be killed.

He got mad at my mother and they argued.

But, in the end, my mother yielded to his insistence

that they should leave.

Through the whole thing, I thought, "This is crazy." You know?

Why we have to leave under these conditions?

It was so humiliating and I carry that humiliation with me

to the United States. When I get in line to sign up for a job,

you know, I was...

I remind them of the war in Vietnam, which the Americans hate.

You have to lose a nation in a dream to feel...

to feel that humiliation.

SHE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE:

We have always sent a wreath to his grave in Arlington...

..partly in remembrance, of course, of him,

but also thinking of other grieving people are there,

or just people that are visiting to pay their respects.

It's good for them to know that people...

That the soldiers are remembered.

EXPLOSIONS BLAST, ROCKETS WHOOSH

On April 27th, 1975, rockets landed in the heart of Saigon.

It was the signal for the North Vietnamese to begin

their main assault on the city.

"They attacked from five sides, like a hurricane," their commander said.

MUSIC: All Along The Watchtower by The Jimi Hendrix Experience

When the Communists began shelling the seaside town of Vung Tau,

just south-east of Saigon,

thousands of terrified people clambered into any vessel

they could find in hope of rescue by the Americans.

At the American Embassy, Ambassador Graham Martin

cabled Henry Kissinger, now Secretary of State, that...

HELICOPTER WHIRS Evacuation planners had quietly

designated two spots within the Embassy

as potential helicopter landing zones -

a courtyard that could accommodate large choppers

and the helipad on the Embassy roof meant for smaller ones.

Meanwhile, General Duong Van Minh was sworn in as

the new president of South Vietnam.

He called for an immediate ceasefire.

On April 29th, at 3:58 in the morning,

North Vietnamese rockets began falling on Tan Son Nhat Airport.

The runways were cratered and blocked by wrecked planes,

littered with jettisoned bombs and fuel tanks.

It was time to call in the helicopters from the offshore fleet.

There was no way all of the remaining South Vietnamese

could be evacuated.

There were anywhere from 10,000 to 12,000 people

surrounding the Embassy.

We were supposed to get Americans out of there,

we were supposed to get South Vietnamese that worked for us

at the Embassy.

But every time you reached out to grab a specific individual,

other people were grabbing your hands and trying to pull you down

with them, you know, so that you could help them out.

Some Americans had left so rapidly, they'd left their radios behind.

So their Vietnamese friends were on the radios, begging to be rescued.

"I'm Han, the driver, I'm Mr Noc, your translator."

I realised what the Americans had often done in Vietnam...

..they had forgotten that these were human beings.

My experience in Vietnam had often been like a B-52 strike

from on high.

I never had to confront the consequences of my action.

I could just let the bomb doors open...

..and still remain...

..detached.

This will be the final message from Saigon's station

the CIA chief Thomas Polgar wired to Washington.

"It has been a long fight and we have lost.

"Those who fail to learn from history are forced to repeat it.

"Let us hope that we will not have another Vietnam experience

"and that we have learned our lesson."

More than 50 US helicopters now crisscrossed the sky over Saigon,

picking up evacuees from designated rooftops, as well as the Embassy...

..ferrying them to the fleet far out at sea, then returning for more.

Some desperate South Vietnamese officers also

commandeered helicopters for themselves and their families,

dangerously crowding the decks of the American aircraft carriers.

There was no room for them.

The image that remains in my mind is the picture of the helicopter

being pushed over the side of the carrier.

The helicopter was everything in Vietnam.

I mean, it was dust off, it was resupply,

it was fire support, it was everything.

All I could think of was, "What a waste, what a waste."

As I watched that all unfold, I felt...responsible.

I was ashamed.

We had told these people

that we would be there to support them and we were not.

This action closes a chapter in the American experience.

The President asks all Americans to close ranks,

to avoid recriminations about the past...

..and to work together on the great tasks

that remain to be accomplished.

Now, to give you details of the events of the past few days

and to answer your questions, Secretary of State Kissinger.

Mr Secretary, are you confident that all the Americans

that wanted to come out are out of Saigon?

Do you have any idea of the number of Americans who remain behind?

I have no idea of the number of Americans that remain behind.

I'm confident that every American who wanted to come out...

..is out.

What we need now in this country is to heal the wounds

and to put Vietnam behind us.

An aide handed Kissinger a note.

It said that 129 Marines had somehow been left behind

on the Embassy roof.

Helicopters were dispatched to pick them up.

Eventually, only Sergeant Valdez

and his ten-man Embassy security unit remained.

But then, an hour went by with no sign of any more helicopters.

Their radio was dead, the Marines had no way to contact the fleet

to see if anyone was on the way.

Everything stopped. We were being left behind.

We pretty much decided that we were going to fight it out,

use the arms that we had and just fight it to the end.

We started seeing two puffs of smoke coming from out at sea.

As they got closer, we were able to determine

that they were helicopters.

It was a relief.

One of the Marines, I believe it was Staff Sergeant Sullivan,

my assistant, grabbed me and started pulling me in

as the ramp was going up.

At 7:53am, April 30th, 1975,

the last helicopter lifted off the Embassy roof.

Master Sergeant Juan Valdez was the last American to climb aboard.

President Minh spoke from the palace at mid-morning.

He urged what was left of the South Vietnamese Army to stop fighting.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE:

At noon, North Vietnamese tanks flying Vietcong flags

smashed their way through the gates of the Presidential Palace.

Within hours, victorious soldiers were calling Saigon

Ho Chi Minh City.

All over town, ARVN soldiers tore off their uniforms

and did their best to melt into the crowds.

Families burned their photo albums,

so there would be no evidence that their sons or husbands

had ever fought for South Vietnam.

I felt a sense of relief, but also a sense of sadness when it ended.

I felt relief that the killing and destruction finally came to an end,

and I didn't care which side won.

To me, Vietnam won, the Vietnamese people won

because they finally could live normally.

And sad because I saw that my family was again fleeing,

and this time from their homeland, and the future was very uncertain.

I got a call from the VVAW national office,

from some friends of mine from the old days.

They were having a big celebration, drinking booze,

and, "Oh, it's a great day, isn't it? And I said, "Are you nuts?"

I said, "No, it's not a great day."

To see America leaving like that,

after we'd given almost 60,000 of our sons and daughters?

That wasn't something to celebrate.

I knew we were abandoning millions of South Vietnamese

that had trusted us, thrown in their lot with us.

That wasn't anything to celebrate.

I thought it was just one of the saddest moments

I'd ever seen in American history.

So, when some future politician, for some reason,

feels the need to drag this country into a war,

he might come out here to Arlington

and stand maybe right over there, somewhere,

to make his announcement and to tell what he has in mind.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE:

CHEERING

In Vietnam, the Communist Party is triumphant.

They have exceptionalism, too.

And their exceptionalism gets in their way,

just like our exceptionalism got in our way.

So, they unified the country, in a military sense, and then they

don't really unify the country after that. They...they...

They try, but they fail.

In the end, there was no bloodbath on the scale many had feared.

But hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people in the countryside

are thought to have been killed in individual acts of revenge

or political retaliation.

Those who had served the Thieu regime, from generals

to ordinary clerks, were required to undergo re-education.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE:

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE:

A million and a half people are believed to have undergone

some form of indoctrination.

ARVN cemeteries were bulldozed or padlocked,

as if the memory of an independent South Vietnam,

and those who had died for that cause, could both be obliterated.

The Communists, in their effort to erase vestiges

of the former regime...

..have not allowed the South Vietnamese who lost their sons

in the war to mourn, to have their graves, and to honour their memory.

It caused a division that lasts to this day.

The winners would not accommodate the losers, in some way.

After 30 years of war, much of Vietnam lay in ruins.

Three million people are thought to have died, North and South.

Still more had been wounded.

Thousands of children, fathered by American servicemen,

had been left behind.

Villages needed to be rebuilt, land had to be re-claimed.

Cities were choked with refugees, millions were without work.

President Ford imposed an economic embargo.

Washington refused to recognise the new government of Vietnam.

But Le Duan and his allies on the Politburo remained optimistic.

"Nothing more can happen," one committee member said.

"The problems we face now are trifles compared to those

"in the past."

Le Duan resolved, with Soviet help, to turn all of Vietnam into what

he called, "An impregnable outpost of the socialist system."

Hanoi forcibly collectivised agriculture in the South,

virtually abolished capitalism, nationalised industries,

and appointed planners to run it all along strict Communist lines.

The result would be economic disaster.

Inflation rose as high as 700% a year.

People starved.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE:

-REPORTER:

-The South China Sea, 1978.

They come ashore at the rate of 10,000 a month,

much faster than the United States, or any other nation,

is willing to accept them.

They come chasing an elusive memory - the promise of America.

A million and a half people would eventually flee Vietnam.

Hundreds of thousands of the boat people died.

Others suffered in refugee camps throughout Southeast Asia.

Some 400,000 eventually made it to America...

..but memories of their homeland could never be erased.

HE SPEAKS ENGLISH:

-APPLAUSE REPORTER:

-21-year-old Maya Ying Lin,

an architect student at Yale University, got the 20,000 prize.

Her winning design is comprised of two elongated triangles

of black granite inset into a hill

and inscribed with the names of the 57,692 men and women

who died in the war.

Lin, whose parents emigrated from China in the 1940s to Ohio,

thought she wouldn't win because her design was too strange

and too strong.

I had a general idea that I wanted to describe a journey,

a journey that would make you experience stuff,

and where you'd have to be an observer,

where you could never, really, fully be with the dead.

It wasn't going to be something that was going to say, "It's all right,

"it's all over," because it's not.

MUSIC: Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel

# When you're weary

# Feeling small

# And tears are in your eyes

# I will dry them all... #

As you got out of the car and you approach the wall...

..the intensity of which it grabs you...

..you go up...

..you see the names, you touch the names.

It's intense.

# Like a bridge over troubled water

# I will lay me down... #

I did not like the Vietnam Wall.

I considered it an ugly, black ditch,

and that it said, "The only people

"that are to be commemorated are the dead...

"..not because they're heroes, but because they're victims."

I didn't go...until...

..one year...

..they were going to put the wreath in front of the name of my roommate.

I had to go.

So I've gone every year since then,

to remember those...we lost and...

..I walked down to the far left and I...

..run my fingers over that name.

You go to that wall and even my son, who was nine years old

when I first took him, and you see over 58,000 names...

..and you know that...written behind,

or beside each name, there's a mother, or a father,

or a wife, or a daughter whose lives were forever shattered

by that damn war.

When I caught sight of it...

..I literally lost my breath.

Of course I wept.

I had help getting lifted up, so I could touch it.

I found my brother's name.

I looked at my brother's name,

in the company of all those other people.

There was sadness...

..but now he wasn't alone either.

He was in the company of people.

And he was...

..there for people to know and to think about,

and he wasn't forgotten and he wasn't lost.

It was incredibly healing and freeing for me.

As I was walking towards it from the reflecting pool,

they were so many names on those walls...

And, all of a sudden, my throat swole up and I thought,

"I can't do this. I can't do this right now."

And I collapsed.

And all the tears I'd been holding back...

I didn't cry, I sobbed.

I was on my knees...

..sobbing. I couldn't stop, I couldn't get my breath.

And I was so grateful to God that it was there.

I thought...

"This is going to save lives.

"This is going to save lives."

Le Duan died in 1986.

His successors adopted what they called Doi Moi,

a more pragmatic, reformist economic policy.

As the Cold War ended, Soviet aid disappeared.

And Hanoi finally began to help US military teams

search for American remains.

In 1994, the United States lifted its trade embargo.

Full normalisation came the following year.

In November of 2000, President Bill Clinton travelled to Vietnam.

The first American president to visit that country

since Richard Nixon reviewed US troops there 31 years earlier.

-BARACK OBAMA:

-Now we can say something that

was once unimaginable.

Today, Vietnam and the United States are partners.

We have shown that hearts can change...

..and that a different future is possible when we refuse to be

prisoners of the past.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE:

In Vietnam, the land has largely healed.

Old animosities have mostly been buried.

But ghosts remain.

Americans and Vietnamese work together to clean up places

where Agent Orange has poisoned the earth.

Unexploded ordnance, half hidden in the ground,

still takes lives each year.

Aged mothers and fathers from Northern Vietnam

still roam the South,

seeking to discover what happened to their sons and daughters.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE:

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE:

More than four decades after the war ended,

the divisions it created between Americans

have not yet wholly healed.

Lessons were learned and then forgotten.

Divides were bridged and then widened.

Old secrets were revealed and new secrets were locked away.

The Vietnam War was a tragedy, immeasurable and irredeemable.

But meaning can be found in the individual stories

of those who lived through it,

stories of courage and comradeship

and perseverance,

of understanding and forgiveness,

and ultimately reconciliation.

"They shared the weight of memory.

"They took up what others could no longer bear.

"Often they carried each other, the wounded or weak.

"They carried infections...

"..they carried chess sets,

"basketballs, Vietnamese-English dictionaries...

"..insignia of rank...

"..Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts...

"..plastic cards imprinted with the code of conduct.

"They carried diseases, among them malaria and dysentery.

"They carried lice, and ring worm, and leeches...

"..paddy algae, and various rots and moulds.

"They carried the land itself...

"..Vietnam.

"The place, the soil, a powdery orange red dust...

"..that covered their boots and fatigues, and faces.

"They carried the sky,

"the whole atmosphere.

"They carried it.

"The humidity, the monsoons...

"..the stink of fungus.

"By daylight, they took sniper fire.

"At night, they were mortared.

"They crawled into tunnels, and walk point,

"and advanced under fire.

"But it was not battle.

"It was just the endless march...

"..village to village.

"They marched for the sake of the march.

"They plodded along, slowly, dumbly...

"..leaning forward against the heat,

"unthinking, all blood and bone.

"Simple grunts, soldiering with their legs.

"Toiling up the hills and down into the paddys,

"and across the rivers, and up again and down, just humping.

"One step, and then the next, and then another.

"They made their legs move.

"They endured."

MUSIC: Let It Be by The Beatles

# When I find myself in times of trouble

# Mother Mary comes to me

# Speaking words of wisdom

# Let it be

# And in my hour of darkness

# She is standing right in front of me

# Speaking words of wisdom

# Let it be

# Let it be, let it be

# Let it be, let it be

# Whisper words of wisdom

# Let it be

# And when the broken-hearted people living in the world agree

# There will be an answer

# Let it be

# For though they may be parted

# There is still a chance that they will see

# There will be an answer

# Let it be

# Let it be, let it be

# Let it be, let it be

# Yeah, there will be an answer

# Let it be

# Let it be, let it be

# Let it be, yeah, let it be

# Whisper words of wisdom

# Let it be

# And when the night is cloudy

# There is still a light that shines on me

# Shine until tomorrow

# Let it be

# I wake up to the sound of music

# Mother Mary comes to me

# Speaking words of wisdom

# Let it be

# Let it be, let it be

# Let it be, yeah, let it be

# Oh, there will be an answer

# Let it be

# Let it be, let it be

# Let it be, yeah, let it be

# There will be an answer

# Let it be

# Let it be, let it be

# Let it be, yeah, let it be

# Whisper words of wisdom

# Let it be. #