I Was Living in Saigon When it Fell

WAR & THE REFUGEE EXPERIENCE I Was Living in Saigon When it Fell

And now more families are going through what my family went through so many years ago

BY SEAN-HABIB TU

It was painful to watch the events at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai airport on August 15. The chaotic scene, the people running in total panic, thousands jamming the airport trying to get out of the country, people clinging on to a U.S. Army C17 and falling as it took off. All of these images caused me to relive the day when Saigon — now Ho Chi Minh City — fell to North Vietnam’s communist regime on April 30, 1975.

What should I write about while watching history repeat itself in the space of just a few decades, from the fall of Saigon in 1975 to the fall of Kabul in 2021? I began writing this article on Sept. 18, only a short month after that fateful day in the Kabul airport, but it seemed as if that particular event had almost become part of a distant past.

Except for those who fought in Afghanistan and those who have escaped from war and persecution, very few Americans will pause to think about or even remember a war that happened decades ago in another distant Asian land. And perhaps only five or ten years from now, no one will think twice about the destroyed country known as Afghanistan.

When the war ended in Vietnam, I was barely a teenager. Like many Saigon residents, during those last few weeks the siege and constant bombing by the North Vietnamese forces rendered us hopeless. The only way in or out of the city was through the main airport. When the battle got closer to the city, the bombing of the airport became so intense that no planes could take off or land. On the radio we heard talk of American personnel and advisors frantically leaving the country via helicopters that were landing on the U.S. Embassy’s roof.

Our family friends and relatives constantly gathered in my father’s house, where they would try to predict what the future would look like in communist-ruled Vietnam. Based on past events that had occurred in communist-ruled North Vietnam during the 1950s, we knew that many of those who had worked for the previous government, as well as intellectuals, businessmen and landowners, had perished or been disappeared without a trace. So, fear started to creep into our household and grip us — our father had worked for the South Vietnamese government. Planning for the worst should the city fall, we all hunkered down and waited for the inevitable.

I ventured outside out of curiosity. Who are the North Vietnamese? What is a communist? There were a lot of thoughts in my young mind during those days. People were saying that the communists had killed millions of people in the Soviet Union as well as in the People’s Republic of China after their respective communist parties had come to power.

I also learned that after Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (the future North Vietnam) on Sept. 21, 1945, the communists had killed hundreds of thousands of “enemies of the state.” Those who did not embrace their ideology went into hiding or migrated to the south, just as many Chinese had migrated to Vietnam after Mao Zedong proclaimed the PRC on Oct. 1, 1949.

I gave no thought to what the communists might do to the people in Saigon. All I knew was that communist governments were very repressive, anti-intellectual and anti-religion.

During those days, martial law was declared. I saw deserted streets devoid of cars and people, paper and trash flying everywhere. The only vehicles dashing back and forth were military vehicles and convoys of troop reinforcements. The officers looked nervous. There was no sign of the police or traffic controllers. The markets were open, but not many people were talking or smiling. Everything came to a standstill. Those were very eerie days.

Saigon fell about a week later. Early that morning, I saw a lot of people rush into the street and nervously watch the convoys of North Vietnamese troops enter the city. I also dashed out to see what was going on. For the very first time I saw a train of T54 tanks speeding toward the presidential palace. Riding on them were young North Vietnamese soldiers with their AK-47s on hand. Their uniforms looked just like the photos I had once seen on a propaganda poster. The tank convoy knocked down the presidential palace’s gate and took over the grounds.

The entire country was then placed in lockdown for a few days. After the government of North Vietnam declared the war over, it announced that the entire country would now be called the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. In other words, the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) ceased to exist.

They then began dismantling the regime in the south and running the country from the north. My family went back to our village, located about 350 miles north of Saigon. The new regime sent my father and all of the former government’s workers to reeducation camps as prisoners. We struggled to survive without him — he was released three years later. Seeing no future for himself under the communist regime, he decided to escape in 1979. I tagged along with him on the arduous journey through Cambodia and into Thailand, struggling all the way with hunger and thirst and not knowing in which country we might end up. Ultimately,

indicated, the Vietnam war left over 2 million people displaced, another 2 million dead on the battlefield and thousands more dead on the open seas as they struggled to make their way to freedom in foreign lands.

THE CLASH OF IDEAS RESULTS IN THE CLASH OF ARMIES After World War II, when the Cold War was at its height, the world was divided into two spheres: capitalist and communist. Both sides, locked in this ideological war, sought to destroy the other. Fearing that the Soviet Union–China alliance would facilitate the spread communist ideology in Indochina, Washington worked with Saigon to form a vanguard against the Hanoi-directed advance of communism.

AS A MUSLIM OBSERVER WHO HAS LIVED IN THE U.S. FOR DECADES, AS WELL A PERSON BORN IN VIETNAM WHO GREW UP DURING THE WAR AND EXPERIENCED ITS AFTERMATH FOR FOUR YEARS, SEEING SUCH FAMILIAR SIGHTS WAS HEARTBREAKING.

in 1981 we ended up in the U.S.

Fast forward to the fall of Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021. I saw history repeat itself in front of my very eyes. I watched in horror at the scenes of people rushing to the airport and trying their best to force their way inside it. On top of those sufferings, a bomb exploded in the crowded area and killed innocent people who were trying to get out of the country. It was all so real to me, for seeing all of those images caused me to relive what had happened in Saigon.

As a Muslim observer who has lived in the U.S. for decades, as well a person born in Vietnam who grew up during the war and experienced its aftermath for four years, seeing such familiar sights was heartbreaking. Those who sided with the U.S. will feel the loss, and those who sided with the Taliban will feel the triumph. At the end of the day, those on the winning side will have it all, and those on the losing side will write books to tell the tale of what, at least according to them, happened.

Having lived through my birth country’s war from childhood until it ended has left an indelible mark on me. As statistics have

The two countries fought a bitter war that lasted from 1955 until 1975. The amount of bombs dropped by the U.S. and its allies on the small strip of land comprising Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia actually surpassed the number of bombs dropped in all of Europe during World War II! The Agent Orange pesticide sprayed so freely over the jungles, forests and villages, not to mention the landmines planted in so many areas, continue to threaten peoples’ lives even today. The former has resulted in the birth of many deformed children, and the latter continues to kill people indiscriminately.

Who would have predicted the millions of refugees fleeing the new communist regimes in their countries, hoping to reach the West’s more open political atmosphere? As a result of this development, Congress passed the Indochina Migration and Refugee Act of 1975. In short, the fall of Saigon culminated in a cataclysmic event that triggered waves of refugees that started in 1975 and only officially ended in 2001, coincidentally just when Washington became militarily involved in Afghanistan.

What does Washington have to show for its 20-year involvement in Afghanistan other than trillions of dollars going up in smoke? From the Taliban’s point of view, they liberated their country and proudly added yet another empire to the list of earlier empires that have perished in their country’s backyard.

Wars end, but the costs do not. The U.S. will continue to pay for the veterans’ health care, disability and burials, as well as for resettling an as yet unknown number of Afghan refugees. These costs will compound the national debt that our future generations will carry for decades to come. Such is the folly of man and the hubris of a government that thinks it can bomb its way in and out of poor and distant lands.

At the core of the struggle between nations, history proves repeatedly that freedom, sovereignty, self-governance and self-determination will conquer all odds. When Western colonialism started in the 18th century, European nations colonized vast territories and thought that they were the master of all races. But by the end of the 20th century, all of them had gone home in defeat.

EVERY STRUGGLE NEEDS A CAUSE In the case of Vietnam, the North’s war effort capitalized on nationalism and unification, whereas that of the South was built on nationalism — but on the defensive level. One side was bent on attack and unification, the other on defense and preserving its national identity. In the case of Afghanistan, the U.S. sought to destroy the terrorists who, its leaders alleged, had inflicted harm upon them. Washington painted a blurred line between the Muslims and the terrorists, for the Mujahideen who had fought against the Soviet Union were reclassified as jihadists when they turned their weapons on the U.S.

But many laypersons don’t make such a distinction, for they only see Washington targeting Islam and Muslims as a whole. In its effort to root out terrorists, the U.S. tried to build a democratic Afghanistan and an American-style army. But neither of these goals were compatible with that country’s realities. For a vast number of Afghans, elections and democracy are just fancy words. At the end of the day, whatever the local imam tells the villagers is the truth in which they believe. ih

Sean-Habib Tu (BSEE, Iowa State University, 1988) has worked with Santa Ana’s Muslim community since 1994. A trained engineer by profession, he has found his passion in community service.