{"id":293185,"date":"2025-04-29T11:27:05","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T11:27:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/29\/the-americans-fled-vietnam-50-years-ago-i-visited-the-buildings-they-left-behind\/"},"modified":"2025-04-29T11:27:05","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T11:27:05","slug":"the-americans-fled-vietnam-50-years-ago-i-visited-the-buildings-they-left-behind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/29\/the-americans-fled-vietnam-50-years-ago-i-visited-the-buildings-they-left-behind\/","title":{"rendered":"The Americans Fled Vietnam 50 Years Ago. I Visited the Buildings They Left Behind."},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/04\/25\/multimedia\/INT-SAIGON-01-zjfm\/INT-SAIGON-01-zjfm-facebookJumbo.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"The Americans Fled Vietnam 50 Years Ago. I Visited the Buildings They Left Behind.\" title=\"The Americans Fled Vietnam 50 Years Ago. I Visited the Buildings They Left Behind.\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On a rusty door at the top of a nine-story apartment building that no architect would admire, someone had scratched a declaration: \u201cFALL OF SAIGON.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Nguyen Van Hiep can still see it happening. On April 29, 1975, as South Vietnam\u2019s government collapsed in the final hours of the war, he watched from next door as an American helicopter landed on the roof of the building\u2019s elevator shaft, a space barely big enough to hold its skids.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A crowd of Vietnamese civilians squeezed their way up a narrow ladder to the military chopper, yelling and jockeying for position. An American with a white dress shirt ushered a lucky few onboard.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cEveryone was fighting to get up there,\u201d said Mr. Hiep, whose father helped maintain the building known as the Pittman, where the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency lived and worked. \u201cIt was very chaotic, only people in the building could go.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">What he witnessed became iconic \u2014 <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2000\/04\/23\/weekinreview\/the-world-getting-it-wrong-in-a-photo.html\" title=\"\">and misunderstood<\/a> \u2014 after a photo of the scene by <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/05\/16\/business\/media\/16vanes.html\" title=\"\">Hubert Van Es<\/a> hit the news wires with an editor\u2019s incorrect caption saying that it showed desperate evacuees at the U.S. Embassy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">I visited the Pittman 50 years later with a simple question: What happened after the Americans left?<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Thousands of U.S. bureaucrats once occupied Saigon, doing the unseen work of a cataclysmic conflict from the comfort of ordinary buildings. Between deskbound lunches, they spread anti-Communist messages, calculated costs and worked out logistics for food and ammunition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When they left in a hurry, Vietnam\u2019s revolutionary victors took over the places of quiet American paperwork and inserted loyalists and the needy \u2014 new tenants with new roles, aiming to build a socialist state.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-4\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">They got in on the ground floor. And as a modern city of nine million grew up around them \u2014 renamed for Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam\u2019s revolutionary leader \u2014 the old structures became experiments in national evolution.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Inside their walls, family life bridged two eras. The more I got to know the buildings and their residents, the more I saw the time-lapsed drama of a complicated nation. It started with postwar deprivation. Pragmatism then displaced despair \u2014 but without fully erasing the distrust born of deep regional divisions and a long war between North and South, in which America played an extended role.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"css-13o6u42 eoo0vm40\" id=\"link-4d315a0\">Communist Spoils<\/h2>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Pittman is shorthand for American. The source of the name remains a mystery.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Sitting squarely downtown, it was one of many buildings the Americans leased across Saigon, in this case for the C.I.A. and U.S.A.I.D., and its elevator used to make it feel modern.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Now, its wide windows look across the street at towers three times its size on top of a mall built by one of Vietnam\u2019s largest developers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-5\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Inside the Pittman, less has changed. Two families that the government moved into the second floor in the 1970s are still there, in side-by-side studios next to a cafeteria where workers in the building now fill the same dining room once used by the C.I.A. and U.S.A.I.D.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Trinh Thanh Phong, who provided an unofficial tour, said he was proud to have grown up in a spoil of war. His father was from Vietnam\u2019s deep south but fought for the north, then worked for a state-owned chemical company with offices upstairs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cHe did a lot for the Revolution,\u201d Mr. Phong said. \u201cThat\u2019s how we got this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">His mother, Truong Thi Net, sat in the doorway. When I showed her the Van Es photo, she shook her head.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-6\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIt\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve ever seen it,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I recognize the top floor.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On the fifth floor, two women \u2014 Nguyen Chan Thy, an accountant, and Tran My Lien, a customs manager \u2014 worked in a quiet office one Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">If the families downstairs represented the thin years right after the war, when Soviet-style planning paralyzed the economy, the business above them spoke to the go-go \u201990s and beyond, when Vietnam embraced free trade. Their company handles logistics for leather manufacturers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-7\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWe carry your dream,\u201d a sign at the office\u2019s glass entrance reads.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">President Trump\u2019s tariffs, paused for now but set at 46 percent for Vietnam, threaten that optimism. Examining the Van Es photo, both women were surprised. So many people. So few seats on the chopper. It was hard for them not to see Mr. Trump\u2019s trade policy as another example of U.S. abandonment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The whole region was at risk, they said, but Vietnam had hoped for more respect, given the legacy of war in a country where <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/03\/20\/opinion\/vietnam-war-agent-orange-bombs.html\" title=\"\">leftover American bombs<\/a> and dioxin still threaten lives.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI\u2019m not saying it\u2019s a betrayal, but it\u2019s not decent,\u201d said Ms. Lien, referring to the tariffs. \u201cIt\u2019s not a decent way to treat a place where you caused so many problems.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A few doors down the street stands a large gray building that once housed the United States Information Service, which had been tasked with winning hearts and minds. Sometimes that involved promoting democracy; at other times it meant using \u201cpsyops,\u201d psychological operations seeking to manipulate opinion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-8\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The building was designed by Arthur Kruze, a French modernist, and had included a library and radio studios, according to Tim Doling, the author of several books about Saigon\u2019s architectural heritage. Starting in 1956, the Americans rented three floors rather than build something of their own \u2014 a pattern repeated across Saigon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Doling said it was one thing that made America\u2019s influence harder to see once the Americans left Saigon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But there were still hints of past shaping present.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Nguyen Thi Bich Giang, 66, who was selling soda outside the former U.S.I.S. building when I showed up, said she had moved in with her father \u2014 who worked with Communist propaganda operations \u2014 after the American propagandists left. He got her a job at a printing plant, where she met her husband, Truong Tan Dat, and they\u2019ve been at 37 Ly Tu Trong ever since. They now live above a chic Egypt-themed cocktail bar that plays a lot of Taylor Swift, and a high-end seafood restaurant selling Canadian lobster.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-9\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The wealth gap is not the building\u2019s only divide. Mr. Dat and Ms. Giang also represent different Vietnams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">At the war\u2019s end, he was studying to become a doctor for the navy of South Vietnam, like his father. She was from a family of revolutionaries \u2014 \u201cV.C., V.C.,\u201d Mr. Dat joked, pointing and smiling at his wife, a former member of his old enemy, the Viet Cong.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">They were jovial together when we first met, but in his apartment alone one night, Mr. Dat admitted that he lost a lot with the South\u2019s defeat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-10\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">His medical studies, his dreams, his status, they evaporated. All he could do was love and learn to survive in a system that would not see him the way it saw his \u201cV.C.\u201d wife.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIt\u2019s been 50 years, but the wounds are still there,\u201d he said after playing a ballad on his guitar. \u201cThe distrust still exists.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"css-13o6u42 eoo0vm40\" id=\"link-3a93313e\">Stability? Or Angst?<\/h2>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Some of the old American buildings seemed to host suspicions less common elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Security guards at a tourist agency turned me away from a villa where the American wartime commander, Gen. William C. Westmoreland, lived in the 1960s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Around the corner, in one of the largest apartment buildings where American officials were replaced with Vietnamese counterparts, one resident refused to provide a name, fearing trouble from the police; another intensely scrutinized my credentials.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The building at 218 Nguyen Dinh Chieu had briefly functioned as the headquarters of U.S. Naval Support Activity Saigon, or N.S.A.S., which focused on logistics. After the war, which officially ended on April 30, 1975, Vietnam\u2019s state news agency moved in dozens of families, concentrating the like-minded into a close community.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-11\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Doors stayed unlocked. The wide hallways were soccer pitches, the balconies gardens, as the next generation learned to globalize and compete.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Huynh Kim Anh, 76, a former head of human resources for the city government\u2019s Institute for Development Studies, pointed to a certificate on his wall showing a scholarship for his daughter at Western Sydney University.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWe\u2019ve had a very stable life here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The community closeness, however, made the building a labyrinth of whispers. In the early years, meals with better meat were hidden, to avoid gossip, residents said; later on, criticism of anything official caused generational arguments that ran loud, then hushed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-12\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Today, the N.S.A.S. building, the Pittman and others are again in transition, aging into disrepair and reinvention.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Saigon, as many still call it, feels fidgety. The trains on a new metro line are too many minutes apart. A national campaign against corruption has paralyzed construction. In the N.S.A.S. building, graying comrades are dying off and new tenants are turning rooms into yoga studios, seeking wellness, not Lenin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-13\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">At the Pittman, the need for renewal is acute. A rooftop bar that had capitalized on the \u201cfall of Saigon\u201d theme, with war and peace graffiti, closed a couple of years ago. Mr. Hiep, who still lives near where he saw the helicopter land, now wonders if the war is too distant to attract tourists for much longer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-14\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Phong, who provided the tour of the Pittman, wants to move on, but he doesn\u2019t know where to go. He works as a security guard for a big software company, but he\u2019s hoping the government will save him again \u2014 by paying for his family to move from his well-placed apartment in the middle of this dynamic city.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cChange is always happening,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve been proud to be here. But it\u2019s time to go.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-798hid etfikam0\">Tung Ngo contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/04\/29\/world\/asia\/vietnam-saigon-pittman-building.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On a rusty door at the top of a nine-story apartment building that no architect would admire, someone had scratched a declaration: \u201cFALL OF SAIGON.\u201d Nguyen Van Hiep can still see it happening. On April 29, 1975, as South Vietnam\u2019s government collapsed in the final hours of the war, he watched from next door as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/04\/25\/multimedia\/INT-SAIGON-01-zjfm\/INT-SAIGON-01-zjfm-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3392,19410,179791,169297,47637,192765,4342,163847,163574,14600,14563,111],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293185"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293185"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":293187,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293185\/revisions\/293187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}