Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Mayhem: The 1970s You Never Knew, Episode 7

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

Draft dodging. When did the draft lottery begin for the war in Vietnam, and who among America’s youth was hit the hardest? It was an unwinnable war, and thousands of high school graduates and college students refused to comply. What sparked these explosive protests nationwide? What role was marijuana and heroin playing back in Vietnam? And how did two decades of the costly, divisive conflict finally come to an end? Writer, Host, and Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Writers and Researchers: Amy Watkin, Mandy Reid, and Kari Anton Production Coordinator: Andrea Champoux Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In October 1967, 24-year-old Captain Rodney R. Chastent, a U.S. soldier from Alabama who'd been fighting in Vietnam for over a year, wrote a letter home saying this. Mom and Dad, I appreciate all your letters. I appreciate your concern that some of the things you write about are trivial, but they aren't trivial to me. I'm eager to read anything about what you and the family are doing. You can't understand the importance that these trivial events take on here. It helps keep me civilized. For a while, as I read your letter, I am a normal person. I'm not killing people or worried about being killed. While I read your letters, I'm not carrying guns or grenades. Instead, I'm going ice skating with David or walking through a department store to

exchange a lampshade. It's great to know your family is safe living in a secure country, a country made secure by thousands upon thousands of men who have died for that country. upon thousands of men who have died for that country. Your son, Rod. One year later, on October 22nd, 1968, Rod Chastain was killed in action. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. And here's where it gets interesting. The Vietnam War started long before many of us realize. When the last French troops left Vietnam on September 14, 1956, President Eisenhower was very concerned that the communist governments of Asia would spread. They called this the domino theory because they felt that if one country or government fell to the communists, it was very likely that surrounding countries would also fall, meaning that the U.S. would have more enemies than just the initial country that turned communist.

The Cold War and the Red Scare began in earnest in 1950s America, and the propaganda was everywhere from pamphlets to comics to film and television. Metaphors showing scary aliens as stand-ins for communist infiltration came through in films like The Blob and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. TV shows like Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best focused on what felt virtuous about American society, the nuclear family, obedience, and prosperity. Schools and textbooks were also enlisted to help convey to Americans that they were living

in the best possible society and should reject all things communist. Lessons, particularly in history and English, became more focused on nationalism and patriotism. The words, under God, were added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1952, and young people were given handouts called things like, how to spot a communist. Perhaps most famously, children in schools were regularly participating in duck and cover drills where they would practice hiding under their desks in case of Soviet nuclear attack. The Geneva Accords of 1954 divided Vietnam along the 17th parallel. North Vietnam was communist under Ho Chi Minh, and South Vietnam was led by nationalist Diem. Part of the agreement was to hold elections that would, in theory, unify the country under one agreement

within the following two years. But guess what? It never happened. China and the Soviet Union provided weapons and resources to North Vietnam, while the U.S. provided the same to South Vietnam, and the fighting began. Military advisors from the U.S. entered South Vietnam in the 1950s. During 1959, guerrilla attacks on Saigon became more common. On July 8, two U.S. military advisors were killed when their living quarters were attacked. After the incident, President Kennedy secretly sent the special forces with helicopters and estimates of 600 green berets to continue training the South Vietnamese. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy answered a question about how involved the United States was in the growing war between North and South Vietnam. in the growing war between North and South Vietnam.

There is a war going on in South Vietnam. I think last week there were over 500 killings, assassinations, bombings. The casualties are high. It's a, I said last week, a subterranean war, guerrilla war of increasing ferocity. The United States, since the end of the Geneva Accords, setting up the South Vietnamese government as an independent government, has been assisting Vietnam economically to maintain its independence and viability, and also has sent training groups out there, which have been expanded in recent weeks, as the attacks on the government and on the people of South Vietnam have increased. We are out there on training and on transportation,

and we are assisting in every way we properly can the people of South Vietnam who, with the greatest courage and under danger, are attempting to maintain their freedom. At the time of Kennedy's death in November 1963, there were over 16,000 American troops in South Vietnam. The U.S. had been helping South Vietnam with a $24 million modernization plan to build a network of roads and airstrips all over the country. By the end of 1965, there were 184,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam. there were 184,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam. Just two years later, the number of American GIs in Vietnam had risen to almost 500,000. More than 9,000 Americans were killed in action in 1967

alone, and the war was costing the American public more than $25 billion a year. Over the course of Johnson's presidency, he came to realize that winning in Vietnam would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. But American GIs and war protesters didn't care about Johnson's growing discomfort. He was blamed for sending American GIs overseas and into harm's way. Under Johnson, some of the most startling protests occurred as well. One example was Norman Morrison, a Quaker pacifist from Baltimore, who set himself on fire in front of the Pentagon to protest the war while holding his 11-month-old daughter Emily. Onlookers convinced him to let go of the baby before he was engulfed in flames. Just before the 1968 election, Johnson had been in talks with the South Vietnamese to end the

U.S.'s involvement in Vietnam. Johnson felt that since he was not running for re-election, he could be more flexible on terms and take more risks. But Nixon not running for re-election, he could be more flexible on terms and take more risks. But Nixon was running for election and knew that if Johnson brokered a peace deal before election day, it would rack up votes for Hubert Humphrey, Nixon's opponent, because Hubert Humphrey was a Democrat like Johnson. So Nixon used the wife of a U.S. general, Chinese-born Anna Chenault, to deliver a message to the South Vietnamese government saying that if they held out until after the election was over, they would get better terms, assuming Nixon was the one taking office. In November 1968, Nixon won the presidential election, partly on the promises of leaving Vietnam and ending the draft. But that was not the immediate plan. On December 1, 1969, the first draft lottery began. College students with

high enough grades could receive deferments until graduation, but people who couldn't afford college got no such consideration. Around 80% of the two and a half million enlisted servicemen in Vietnam had received only a high school education and came from impoverished or blue-collar family backgrounds. College-aged people and their loved ones were scared and angry. During the 1969-1970 school year, two and a half million students went on strike. 700 colleges or universities were shut down for at least two weeks, and there were around 9,000 recorded protests and more than 80 acts of arson or bombings at schools around the country. Protesters in the United States knew that over in Vietnam, there

were hundreds of American GIs and POW camps, and thousands of young soldiers were fighting for their lives in battle. Hal Kushner, an army flight surgeon, survived a helicopter crash with severe burns, a broken arm and collarbone, and missing teeth and eyeglasses. He watched two of his crew members die before he was captured by the Viet Cong and brought to a camp with 27 other POWs. Ten of those men died in Kushner's arms. Kushner recounted in a 2018 talk at the University of Arkansas that the prisoners went without shoes, clothes, mosquito nets, or medicine. They survived on rice that had been stored for 15 years and contained rat feces, rocks, and weevils, which we ate, said Kushner.

Other soldiers were struggling with heat, rain, exhaustion, and other elements that people in wars throughout history have faced, with the addition of two things, drugs and controversial orders from superiors. Now, we're not going to pretend like drugs didn't exist before the 1960s and 70s, and that soldiers haven't used and abused drugs throughout history, but Vietnam was different. According to historian Jeremy Kuzmarov, drugs played a role in Vietnam, in part because we had the counterculture stateside, in part because of the ready supply of the drugs, and in part because of the breakdown in morale in the army where a rebellion took root. Marijuana was cheap and easy to get. Commanding officers often overlooked marijuana use among

soldiers, at least until author John Steinbeck's son, John Steinbeck IV, a Vietnam soldier himself, wrote a piece for the Washingtonian Magazine in 1968 detailing the widespread use of marijuana among soldiers. The negative response to this among the American public was so strong that the military had to start clamping down harder on marijuana use. But what was also easy to get in Vietnam and even harder to detect than marijuana? Heroin. A Pentagon study showed that in 1973, nearly 20% of Vietnam soldiers regularly used heroin. Vietnam military personnel have largely claimed then and now that drug use was relatively mild and did not have negative effects on most of the soldiers or

the war itself. Another aspect of Vietnam that seemed more widespread than previous wars was the disturbing nature of the orders that soldiers claimed to have been given. After returning from Vietnam in 1970, future Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry co-founded Vietnam Veterans of America and became a spokesperson for the Vietnam veterans against the war. There are all kinds of atrocities. And I would have to say that yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used.50 caliber machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were

our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare. All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions. And all of this is ordered as a matter of written, established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed a free-fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals. One incident that has marked the Vietnam War in many ways is allegedly connected to both the drug use I've been describing and the disturbing orders like the ones John Kerry described.

On March 16, 1968, part of the Army's 23rd Infantry Division, led by Captain Ernest Medina, arrived in the village of My Lai because they thought Viet Cong soldiers were being hidden there. Soldiers and officers remember the orders given differently, but some say they were told to decimate the village, including women and children. I'll spare you most of the details, but suffice it to say that 70 to 80 villagers were lined up and shot. Soldiers fired randomly into the village. Homes were burned and people running away were killed. Some historians have argued that the My Lai massacre happened because heroin use made soldiers aggressive and irrational, adding that racism led some American soldiers to kill Vietnamese people more indiscriminately than we've seen in wars carried out in places with largely white populations. We may never know for sure which, if any, of these factors played a role in the My Lai massacre. What we do know is that the American soldiers were never fired upon. No one shot at them, probably because none of the villagers had guns.

And some soldiers have since reported that they did not see anyone in My Lai who appeared to be part of the Viet Cong. Even without all of those details at their disposal, hearing some of these stories in the news and knowing a bit of what was happening in Vietnam caused a flood of young American men to make their way to Canada and apply for political asylum. Giant peace marches were organized all over the country. The largest was in 1967 in Washington, D.C. with an estimated 100,000 people. So why, under all of this pressure from hundreds of thousands of constituents and with Americans being killed every day for a war that didn't seem to have an end in sight, why didn't the United States leave Vietnam?

Because they couldn't give up. Giving up would be weak, and the United States wanted to strengthen its new superpower status, not weaken it. There was still the threat of spreading communism as well. there was still the threat of spreading communism as well. So the protests continued, even in the halls of Washington, D.C. itself. In April 1971, John Kerry, wearing his decorated Army Green Vietnam War uniform, testified in front of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on behalf of the Vietnam veterans against the war. Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam, someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we've made a

mistake. The tenor of the nationwide demonstrations changed dramatically after 1970 when President Nixon announced that U.S. troops would be going into Cambodia and Laos. The incursion into Cambodia and Laos only lasted a few months, but nearly a thousand Allied casualties caused Congress to pass the Cooper Church Amendment, banning any American troops from being deployed into ground operations in Laos or Cambodia. Nixon's workaround was to have the South Vietnamese attack the Ho Chi Minh Trail from the ground, with American bombers supporting them from the air. Nixon and Kissinger saw it as a test of the military fitness of the South Vietnamese. Nixon held a press conference responding to the student protests that emerged as a result of the incursion.

They're trying to say that they want peace. They're trying to say that they want to stop the killing. They're trying to say that they want to stop the killing. They're trying to say that they want to end the draft. They're trying to say that we ought to get out of Vietnam. I agree with everything that they're trying to accomplish. Student groups seemed unwilling to take President Nixon at his word that he had the same end goal that they did. The Weathermen took their inspiration from the revolutionaries of Latin America and China

and began creating violent confrontations with the objective of, as they said, bringing the war home. Peaceful demonstrations didn't feel like enough anymore. They wanted to take things to the next level. At the end of 1969, the Weathermen organized what they called Days of Rage. Days of Rage had already taken that turn towards, we're going to fight you, and that the point of it was to show how tough we were and how militant we were.

They went into high school and college classrooms, tying up the teachers and giving speeches. During the days of rage, the Weathermen also blew up a statue in Chicago commemorating police officers. The weekend was largely unsuccessful and sent the organization underground. They surfaced again on March 6, 1970, when three members making bombs in a New York City Greenwich Village townhouse accidentally set off an explosion. Kathy Wilkerson was in the house when the bomb went off. At the moment that the explosion happened, I was ironing sheets right above the floor above the basement. And there was just this huge blast, the room filled with smoke, the floor sank. And I was holding the iron and I thought,

I don't want to put this down, it'll start a fire. And then I looked over 20 feet next to me and saw that the entire basement was engulfed in flame. The building was on fire, its windows blown out, bricks littering the street. Two young women stumbled out of the rubble before the police and fire trucks arrived, one of them naked because she had been in the shower. Neighbors took them in and lent them some clothes, but in the confusion of the day, the two young women disappeared. Neighbor Dustin Hoffman can be seen in some of the pictures from that day, racing up and down his stoop stairs, trying to save some art pieces. And that was not actor Dustin Hoffman's only connection to anti-Vietnam sentiments. His breakthrough role in the 1967 film The Graduate

had led him to travel to college campuses and show the film with director Mike Nichols. Though the film was ultimately very popular, Nichols remembered being questioned by student anti-war activists wherever they went, and he said in an interview that to make a movie for young people that was not about Vietnam actually affronted them. Nevertheless, it was only happenstance that brought The Weathermen to Dustin Hoffman's building, and it turned out that The Graduate was kind of about Vietnam. After all, it's a film about a young man learning that older generations were not always looking out for him. The two young women who'd escaped the townhouse explosion, Kathy Bodin and

Kathy Wilkerson, were scheduled to appear in a federal court in Chicago on March 16th, along with a number of other people because of their participation in violent clashes with officers the year before. Neither women appeared in court in 1970 or for years afterward. After the New York explosion, the group changed their name to the Weather Underground and continued with their campaign to, quote, protest the American condition through most of the 1970s. The bombs that leveled the townhouse in Greenwich Village had been intended for a dance that evening at an army base in New Jersey. They were planning, in fact, hoping for large numbers of collateral damage. At the time, their view was

that no one on the base was innocent. They were all connected to what the Weather Underground called the Military-Industrial Complex. The Weather Underground was responsible for at least 10 other high-profile bombings, including the National Guard Building in Washington, D.C., Bank of America headquarters, the NYPD headquarters Bank of America Headquarters, the NYPD Headquarters, three courthouses, the Harvard Center for International Studies, and the U.S. Capitol Building. On May 19, 1972, on what would have been Ho Chi Minh's birthday, if he hadn't died in 1969, the Weather Underground bombed a women's bathroom in the Pentagon on the fourth floor of the E-ring, causing flooding that destroyed classified information.

In his 2001 memoir, Fugitive Days, Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers describes the preparation and execution of the Pentagon attack. He said, We pulled together a special group that scouted the Pentagon irregularly for months. When a new escalation in Vietnam became imminent, my associates, Anna and Aaron and Zeke, got a storage locker outside DC, moved some explosives in, and then found a cheap apartment nearby and rented it by the week. Anna, her fingertips painted with clear nail polish to obscure the identifying marks of her naked hand, and heavily disguised in suit and blouse and briefcase, dark wig and thick glasses,

began entering the Pentagon every morning with hundreds of other workers. She walked the halls, ate breakfast in the cafeteria, and left by 11 a.m. She was never challenged. I can do it, she said finally, pulling out her sketches and maps. Here she pointed to an isolated hallway in the basement of the Air Force section. I've been here four times, never seen another person, and there's a women's room halfway down right here. She made an X on the map. Anna was in the next day at 9 a.m. and was in the women's room and the stall by 9.10. She locked the door, hung up her jacket, and pulled plastic gloves, a screwdriver, and tape measure from her briefcase. The grated drain cover was gunky but easy to pop off once the screws were out,

and there was a comfortable four-inch diameter that ran down over a foot. Anna replaced the drain cover, wiped the area down, and was back at the apartment by 10 a.m. wiped the area down and was back at the apartment by 10 a.m. At 11 a.m., Aaron pulled on plastic gloves and taped a statement about the impending attack beneath a tray in a phone booth across from the Washington Post offices. He then moved across town and at 11 30 called the Pentagon emergency number. In 25 minutes, a bomb will explode in the Air Force section of the Pentagon, he said calmly. I'm calling from the weather underground, and believe me, this is no prank. Clear the area. Get everyone out. You have 25 minutes. Vietnam will win. In 1969, Nixon announced the plan insiders had dubbed Vietnamization, which meant shifting the

full responsibility of the war to the South Vietnamese so that U.S. troops could withdraw. By late 1970, Nixon could see that staying in Vietnam would sink his presidency if he did not bring American soldiers home. His initial idea was to bring all of them, at that point around 300,000 soldiers home within 18 months. Kissinger cautioned Nixon against pulling all combat troops out by the end of 1971 as it would not leave the U.S. a way to calm things down if the fighting heated up again. So they decided to commit to having combat troops out by the end of 1972, after the next election. In April 1971, there were still 150,000 American troops in Vietnam. One year later, there were around 50,000. By October of 1972, just a month before the U.S. presidential election,

the North Vietnamese had finally given up their offense posture, but not before taking new territory in South Vietnam. They were refusing to cut a deal with Kissinger, who nevertheless made the fateful, if exaggerated, announcement that, quote, peace was at hand. The U.S. and Hanoi had technically been in peace talks for four years when both sides agreed to meet in Paris. But for almost four years, no progress was made. On January 27, 1973, American involvement in the Vietnam War officially ended as the Paris Peace Accord was signed. U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and the head of the Vietnamese Communist Party negotiated the final deal and won the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for it.

and won the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for it. Just three months after the peace accord was signed, open fighting once again broke out in Vietnam. But in those first six months of 1973, when the peace accords were mostly holding together, almost 600 Americans who had been POWs, including future Senator John McCain, returned to the United States in Operation Homecoming. Remember how Kushner, the military flight surgeon who was taken prisoner

after his helicopter crash? Kushner recalls finally coming home in March 1973 after almost six years in POW camps, including the infamous prison nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton. And then they called their name. And I walked out in the sunlight. And the first thing I saw was a girl in a miniskirt. She was a reporter for one of the news organizations. I've never seen a real live miniskirt and there was a table with the Vietnamese and American authorities on one side and there was a Brigadier General Air Force General in class-a uniform and he looked magnificent and I looked at him and he had breadth. He had thickness that we didn't have.

And his hair was, he had on a garrison cap and his hair was plump and moist and our hair was like straw, you know, it was dry and we were skinny. And I went out and I saluted, which was a courtesy that had been denied us

for so many years. And he saluted me and I shook hands with him and he hugged me. He actually hugged me and he said, Welcome home, Major. We're glad to see you, Doctor. And the tears were streaming down his cheeks. And it was just a powerful moment.

But of course, many Vietnam veterans faced much worse reunions back at home. Many veterans were spat on and called baby killers. Some say their loved ones ignored their service altogether, and they never heard the words, thank you for your service, or even welcome home. Studies after Vietnam showed that at least 15% of veterans were suffering from PTSD, but some Americans claimed that PTSD wasn't real, just something invented by the government to garner support for the war. Soldiers whose fathers and uncles had returned from World War II to ticker tape parades, jubilant celebrations, and many honors

were finding that America had turned away from them, scapegoating them for a war that it was hard for many to feel proud of, blaming them for their government's decisions. And things weren't going all that well at the White House either. On August 8, 1974, President Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment related to the Watergate scandal. And in January 1975, President Ford made it clear that there would not be any more military deployments to Vietnam. This announcement might have been met with some relief on the home front, but in Saigon, it did nothing but raise anxiety to new heights. Saigon is in the far southern part of Vietnam, with Cambodia's

capital city Phnom Penh to the west and the South China Sea to the east. One of the most important things that the U.S. and South Vietnam needed to maintain was the South Vietnamese capital city, Saigon. Losing Saigon to the communists meant losing the Vietnam War. It meant that the entire country would be reunified under communist rule, defeating the entire purpose for the war in the first place. The North Vietnamese army, the People's Army it was called, was marching south through the country, capturing cities like Da Nang along the way. Phnom Penh, the capital of what is now Cambodia, fell to the communist Khmer Rouge. Cambodia's deputy prime minister wrote to the American ambassador, I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. I have only committed

this mistake of believing in you, the Americans. A few days later, he was executed by the Khmer Rouge. American officials advised the ambassador to South Vietnam, Graham Martin, to start evacuating American personnel in early 1975 to make it easier for a later possible emergency evacuation to happen. Graham Martin said it would be bad for morale and believed that Saigon would not fall. So 6,500 American officials remained in Saigon. CIA agents reported that nothing short of B-52 bombings could stop the North Vietnamese from advancing into Saigon. On April 3rd, President Ford authorized Operation Baby Lift, which evacuated thousands of orphans, many of them fathered by American servicemen from the country. Children known to have or suspected of having white fathers were rumored to be in particular danger in Vietnam.

One mother shared her fear that her child would be doused in gasoline and burned. Over several weeks, Operation Baby Lift carried children out of Vietnam. Transports landed in nearby countries to get aid to those most in need and then continued on to various places in the United States, carrying children in airplane seats and babies in cardboard boxes lined with blankets. One plane crashed right after takeoff, killing 78 children and 50 adults. By the end of Operation Babylift, over 2,700 children were brought to the United States, while another 1,300 were taken to Canada, Australia, and Europe. while another 1,300 were taken to Canada, Australia, and Europe.

Several agencies worked to get the Vietnamese children adopted by families all over the world. All of this hasty activity, said to be in the best interest of the children, caused problems later when families, sometimes even parents of those children, left Vietnam to find their children and try to get them back, only to learn that their children's names had been changed and they were hard to find or they had been legally adopted and it would be difficult for relatives to get them back. The People's Army continued to advance towards Saigon and reports of beheadings, mass graves, and people simply vanishing traveled with them. People in Saigon had very little food, and gas was so expensive

that many could buy only one quart at a time. During the last week of April 1975, the People's Army began closing in on Saigon. The president of South Vietnam resigned, appointing his vice president the new leader. In his resignation speech, he said, let me say that we need immediate, I say immediate shipment of arms and equipment to the South Vietnam battlefield. I would challenge the United States Army to do better than the South Vietnamese Army without B-52s, he said. Most of his speech was reserved for criticism of the United States, such as his statement that the United States has not respected its promises. It is unfair. It is inhumane. It is not trustworthy. It is irresponsible.

The troops that were left in the city of Saigon were soon overrun. North Vietnamese forces now controlled key bridges and roads blocking the food supply route as well as the path from Saigon to the sea. The roads from neighboring villages and cities were so crammed with refugees hoping to escape communist rule that even military vehicles couldn't get through and had to return to Saigon. Refugees waited to get into Saigon but couldn't get past South Vietnamese troops that worried they were communists disguised as refugees. More importantly, people who were already in Saigon could not get out. There was a rare blood-red sunset the night that Saigon was completely surrounded by North Vietnamese forces. At 11 a.m. on April 29th, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave American personnel their evacuation order. The secret code was, the temperature in Saigon is 105 degrees and rising, broadcast on American radio and followed by the song White Christmas, performed by Tennessee Ernie Ford, because the DJ couldn't find the Bing Crosby version.

to 2,000 American civilians still living in Saigon. However, there were tens of thousands of Vietnamese soldiers and others who'd worked with the U.S. military. All of their lives were now at risk, and there was only one way to get out. The helicopter airlifts out of Saigon began at 2 p.m. on April 29, 1975. U.S. Ambassador Martin initially refused to leave on the helicopter transports. He instructed the pilots to take Vietnamese people out to the aircraft carriers and sent his wife with them. She left her suitcase behind in order to make room for more Vietnamese people in the chopper. There are several famous photographs capturing the chaos of these hours. A line of people standing on rooftop stairs waiting to board a helicopter, screaming mothers trying to hand their small children over embassy fences to

get them out of the country. During the evacuation, Ambassador Martin sent a telegram to National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft asking, Perhaps you can tell me how to make some of these Americans abandon their half-Vietnamese children. One pilot commented that normally they would cram about 44 seated troops into a Chinook helicopter, but during the fall of Saigon, one Chinook helicopter carried 147 refugees in a single trip. 55 helicopters were flying back and forth from the embassy out to the USS Midway aircraft carrier, waiting for their turn to land and drop off the people they'd rescued. Many of these helicopters had no radio communication with air traffic control, so controllers on the carrier deck communicated only through hand signals and red and green flags.

Being airlifted out on a Chinook was not the only way that people got out of Vietnam that day. South Vietnamese Air Force Major Hoang Ly knew he had to get his young family out of the country. He and his wife raced to the airstrip with their five children between the ages of 14 months and six years. He hot-wired a tiny two-seater Cessna airplane, crammed his family inside, and took off towards the South China Sea, figuring it would be safer over water than over land. With the tank full of gas, he was happy to see the USS Midway, but he could also see there was not room for him to land on it. Captain Lawrence Chambers, the first African-American aircraft carrier captain, commanded the USS Midway that day.

When they saw the little Cessna, Chambers' admiral ordered him to tell the Cessna to ditch in the water. This was a common order on that particular day. With 55 helicopters and one aircraft carrier, there simply wasn't room for everyone to land. As each helicopter ran low on fuel, the pilots were ordered to hover over the carrier deck to allow everyone but the pilot to disembark, and then go out to open water, jump free of the rotors as the chopper sank into the water, and then the pilot would swim to the nearest vessel. But the tiny plane couldn't hover over the carrier deck like a helicopter, and Chambers could see that there were several people inside. At one point, they flew the Cessna low over the carrier and dropped a note

that he'd crammed into his pistol holster to weigh it down. The crew retrieved the note, which said, Can you move these helicopters to the other side? I can land on your runway. I can fly one hour more. We have enough time. Please rescue me. Captain Chambers knew it was time to defy orders, as there was no way the pilot and his wife and children could survive ditching the small plane out in the open water. His order to the crew was, get me a ready deck, which they knew meant pushing the helicopters into the sea. Chambers turned the ship to give the Cessna favorable headwinds for landing, while firefighters prepared on deck just in case. Another cruise pushed three Hueys and one Chinook off the carrier. Five Huey pilots who'd been waiting to

land took quick advantage of the situation and unloaded their passengers. Cruise then pushed those five Hueys overboard as well. Chambers knew that he could be court-martialed for disobeying direct orders, not to mention destroying millions of dollars in military equipment, orders, not to mention destroying millions of dollars in military equipment. So he turned his head away so that he wouldn't be able to witness exactly how many choppers were destroyed or who pushed them. It seemed like everyone on that aircraft carrier held their breath as the Cessna safely landed. Crewmen jumped onto the plane immediately to weigh it down as they were afraid it would blow right off the deck before the family got out. Shouts and applause greeted the pilot, his wife, and his five little children

as they all got out safely. Captain Chambers was not court-martialed. He was promoted. Over $10 million worth of helicopters were pushed into the water that day because they couldn't be flown home and they couldn't be left for the communists. Nobody was prosecuted for that loss. The ship's crew collected money to help the pilot and his family resettle, and all seven of them are now naturalized American citizens. At 7.53 a.m. on April 30, 1975, the evacuation of the American embassy in Saigon was over, stopping only when the North Vietnamese tanks came rolling into the embassy's courtyards.

only when the North Vietnamese tanks came rolling into the embassy's courtyards. 1,373 Americans and 5,595 Vietnamese and other nationals were rescued by helicopter. Hundreds of thousands more would have to find other ways out. April 30, 1975 is called many things, depending on your perspective. Western countries typically call it the fall of Saigon, but in Vietnam, it's officially called the day of liberating the South for national reunification. Some call it Liberation Day, others National Day of Shame, or even just April 30. Between 1975 and 1995, more than 3 million people fled Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The first wave of 140,000 refugees arrived in the United States in 1975. And on April 30th, the city, once known as Saigon, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

the city, once known as Saigon, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. 58,000 Americans and somewhere close to 2 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians died in the Vietnam War, which lasted far longer than most people realize. But of course, back in 1975, there were a few other things happening as well. Bill Gates and Paul Allen developed and sold a software program called BASIC. The name Microsoft is used for the first time that year, and year-end sales totaled a whopping $16,005. The movie Jaws was released on June 20th, 1975, terrifying audiences with a mechanical shark named Bruce at a boat that was clearly way too small. Jaws was the second film that director Steven Spielberg and composer John Williams worked on together. Spielberg has said that when Williams first played him the simple two-note line that's at the heart of the Jaws theme song, he thought it was a joke at first. But film audiences were properly terrified by it.

Before 1975, summers were called graveyard season for movies, but Jaws came through as the very first summer blockbuster. but Jaws came through as the very first summer blockbuster. On July 31, 1975, union leader Jimmy Hoffa was reported missing. He was last seen the day before in a restaurant parking lot in Detroit. It's presumed that he was murdered and was even declared dead in 1982, but his remains have never been found. Hoffa's son, James Hoffa, took over his father's leadership role in the Teamsters until stepping down in 2022. And after writing about him in 33 novels, two plays, and 51 short stories, Agatha Christie killed off her beloved detective, Hercules Poirot, and he became the only fictional character

to ever receive a front page obituary in the New York Times. The obit ran on August 6th, 1975, and never mentions that Poirot is fictional, referring to Agatha Christie as his historian. And hang on, friends. For our next episode in this series, politics heat up as the Carter campaign rolls into 1976. And Patty Hearst, y'all, you have got to come back for Patty Hearst. I'll see you soon. The show is written and researched by Sharon McMahon, Amy Watkin, Mandy Reed, and Kari Anton. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder, and it is executive produced and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. If you enjoyed today's episode, we would love for you to hit the subscribe button,

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