A riveting but flawed documentary — The Last Days of Vietnam

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“The Last Days of Vietnam,” a documentary film produced and directed by Rory Kennedy.

Director Rory Kennedy, daughter of environmen­ tal activist Robert F. Kennedy, has created a riveting and heartwarming, yet heartbreaking, full-length documentary film, “The Last Days of Vietnam,” which takes place in South Vietnam from 1973 to 1975, the last years of the war.

That said, she gives us a highly shortsighted view of a war that involved the U.S. government’s strat­ egy to stop the spread of “Communism” in South­ east Asia. The U.S. sent over 2,500,000 soldiers to Vietnam, in an ultimately futile attempt to maintain a neo-colonial U.S. puppet government in the South while defeating all attempts to unify the country.

Kennedy artfully skirts taking a political stance, leaving it up the audience to decide whether or not her film is a U.S. mea culpa to the Vietnamese people for destroying much of their country before being compelled to abandon the war effort.

She avoids subjects such as the U.S. forces’ wanton destruction of villages (such as Mai Lai), and their killing of innocent farmers and other civilians. Ac­ cording to the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group Files, atrocities committed by U.S. forces numbered more than 300.

Kennedy’s team interviewed scores of both Amer­ ican and South Vietnamese retired Army men, Ma­ rine officers, Embassy guards, CIA agents, and other significant personnel. Unfortunately, the film does not include interviews with people who supported the National Liberation Front or North Vietnam in the conflict, or with any U.S. antiwar activists from the period. The film makes use of well-known, icon­ ic photos as well archival film footage.

“Last Days” focuses mainly on the 24-hour evacu­ ation of many South Vietnamese on April 29-30, 1975, as the People’s Army of Vietnam and National Liberation Front closed in on Saigon. Initially, White House orders were to evacuate only U.S. citizens who worked in the embassy, or provided support services, and other U.S personnel. Kennedy had a difficult time getting the film made because as one interviewee, former U.S. Army Colonel Stuart Her­ rington, said, “No one wanted to see a film about a bunch of people waiting for airplanes to rescue them.” It appears he was wrong.

In April 1975, President Gerald Ford ordered the 6000 Americans still in Vietnam to leave. Yet, life went on for the people in Saigon. We see footage of people shopping, going about their business as the North Vietnamese army makes its inexorable way south. A college student at the time, Binh Pho, says that classes were being held, but no one was interested in going to school, as many went to work for Americans for up to a thousand dollars. Later, in 10 SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 2014 his interview, he states that he and a naval officer were incarcerated in rebel “re-education” camps, although both eventually made their way to the U.S.

U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam Graham Martin denied that the North Vietnamese army was closing in on Saigon, believing that the South Vietnamese AVRN troops could prevail. When Congress refused the funds to evacuate Vietnamese citizens, in-coun­ try military officials organized a makeshift plan in opposition to both Martin and prevailing U.S. gov­ ernment policy: Black Operation or BlackOps. Right or wrong, legal or illegal; they risked being charged with treason. Some evacuees were airlifted to the Philippines.

Meanwhile, the South Vietnamese army was erod­ ing. Ford went before Congress asking for enough funds to save as many South Vietnamese collabora­ tors as they could and to “bolster America’s honor.” Kennedy includes the rare clip of him swearing when his plea was denied, calling Congress “those sons of bitches.” As ships waited in the harbor, a four-step plan was drawn up. The last resort was to evacuate by helicopter.

Kennedy utilizes clear, 3D animated graphics and maps to illustrate not only the evacuation plans, but also the rapid march of the People’s Army through South Vietnam. Vivid clips show the destruction of unoccupied ships in Saigon harbor to avoid their falling into enemy hands. .

Evacuations began: All Vietnamese dependants of U.S. officials and military—wives, common-lawwives, children, and relatives. Martin did all he could to slow it down, believing a rush would cause panic. Getting out depended on whether you worked for Americans, who you knew, and money or goods you could trade. The airport was to be kept open as long as possible. Still Martin refused to allow evacuation.

Detailed on-the-spot footage from April 29, 1975, shows North Vietnamese forces bombing and shell­ ... Climate disaster?

(continued from page 7: “The socialist program to avoid climate disaster”)

tion, is the only way to avoid doom for humankind itself.

But posing the issue as we have done above rais­ es a critical question that socialists must be pre­ pared to answer without equivocation lest we be charged with “environmental racism”—the idea that poor nations and people are permanently barred from enjoying the same benefits of indus­ trialization and technology as their counterparts in the developed world. That is, in the name of environmental “sanity,” so this fundamentally flawed view proclaims, the present poor must be She and the others jump to the deck.

The pilot skillfully ditches the Chinook into the sea; he climbs out as it sinks, disappears into the waves, and then re-appears. He’s then rescued. The narrator says that he’s never seen anyone as calm and collected after what he went through for his family.

There are incredible, unforgettable shots on the deck of a ship as hundreds of people push the now empty helicopters overboard. Sadly, we also see the eyes of desperate, hopeful people clinging to the Embassy fences and gates, waving papers or just frantically waving; there are thousands of people, many who claimed to have worked for Americans.

All told, about 17 helicopters brought over 150 people on to the ships, each one holding only 40 evacuees and one or two Americans. As crewmen distribute food, clothing, and toys among them, a camera catches dolphins leaping alongside the bow, in an amazing shot.

A little over 400 were left behind. The last Ameri­ cans huddled on the roof as roughly a thousand Vietnamese tried to push through the closed hatch. The Americans managed to save half of them. A mil­ itary officer at the scene felt that he had betrayed them. The evacuation went on for little over eigh­ teen hours straight.

With the Americans gone and many Vietnamese collaborators as well, Saigon was left to the invading North Vietnamese People’s Army and the National Liberation Front. Film clips show the plundering of the city and armed reprisals against South Viet­ namese military personnel and anyone thought to be collaborators with them. To avoid identification, South Vietnamese soldiers stripped themselves of their uniforms. There is film footage of them walk­ ing away almost naked. We see a deserted street with boots lying helter-skelter. The abandoned American Embassy is looted.

An American military officer asks on film: “Is this what America fought for? I have no answer.” Nor does Kennedy’s film offer any answers. And that’s a pity since thousands of soldiers and civilians who became casualties of the brutal American incursion into Vietnam would like to have known why they were sacrificed. n relegated to a lesser, if not permanent, secondclass status.

We hear variants of this view with regard to im­ migrants in the United States, where reactionary environmentalists argue that U.S. society simply lacks the resources to accommodate immigrants in health care, housing, and other essential aspects of a decent life that are available to “citizens.”

Eco-socialists today must envision a future in which all poor nations and people have free and full access to quality housing, education, medi­ cal care, technology and all other aspects of life that maximize the potential for the free and full development of everyone. How this can be accom­ plished is among the most decisive questions of our time. n

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