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00:01They call it Ho Chi Minh City. It used to have another name, Saigon, capital of South Vietnam.
00:17Saigon in the mid-1960s, bursting at the seams, jammed with refugees from the war-torn countryside.
00:25Mostly they were strangers to the Americans who came here to fight for their country.
00:30We didn't know their names, or where they came from, or what happened to them.
00:34But there were some familiar faces here.
00:39Air Vice Marshal Nguyen Cao Chi, Prime Minister of South Vietnam.
00:44Nguyen Van Thieu, Chief of State and later to be President.
00:47Henry Cabot Lodge, completing his second tour as American Ambassador to Vietnam.
00:53General William Westmoreland, Commander of the American Combat Forces.
00:57But these men, famous and powerful, were not the essence of Saigon.
01:02They were superimposed upon it.
01:05Saigon in the 60s was a clash of cultures.
01:08Thousands of Americans and millions of American dollars reweaving the texture of life here.
01:14Remember Saigon for what it was, or what we did to it, and for what it did to us.
01:20Remember Saigon for what it is, no more.
01:25Let's go!
01:41Let's go!
01:53THE END
02:15THE END
02:42STANDBY FLAIR, TEN SECONDS
02:44STANDBY DROP THREE FLAIR
02:48READY
02:52DROP ONE
02:57HIGH IN THE AIR, HALFWAY
02:59AROUND THE WORLD FROM WHERE THEY WERE BORN,
03:02YOUNG AMERICANS DROP FLAIRS
03:03ON A CITY FOR PROTECTION AGAINST
03:05THE ENEMY. THE FLAIRS ARE
03:07NEUTRAL. THEY ILLUMINATE
03:09FRIEND AND FOE, CITIZEN AND STRANGER
03:11TOGETHER IN THE STRANGEST
03:14OF CITIES, SAIGON.
03:22BY DAY, SAIGON BURSTS FORTH,
03:25ITS PEOPLE AND ITS PEDICABS
03:27ALL MIXED, ITS VALUES
03:29AND ITS CULTURES CONFUSED
03:31AND ITS SIDEWALKS
03:33A SWARM WITH COMMERCE.
03:34FLAIRS
03:36NUMBER
03:38GEMI 10 DAYS
03:39GEMI 10 DAYS
03:41GEMI 10 DAYS
03:42I WANT GONNH
03:50GEMI 10 DAYS
03:52GEMI 10 DAYS
03:53GEMI A LITTLE
03:56GEMI 10 DAYS
04:03GEMI 10 DAYS
04:04Let's go to the next place.
04:06Let's go to the next place.
04:1380 years ago, Rudyard Kipling penned a warning to the Anglo-Saxon people.
04:18He wrote that east is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet.
04:24Well, never is a long time, Rudyard Kipling.
04:37Good morning, Vietnam!
04:51Well, good morning everyone and welcome back once again to the second portion of music on Saturday.
04:57Dawnbreaker will be here until 9 o'clock. Hope you can join us all the way.
05:02For without you, we here would be awfully lonesome, you know.
05:06This is your host, Army Specialist.
05:07Kramer has the record man.
05:25Hit, hook, hold.
05:43The
06:13guitar solo
06:25guitar solo
06:49When not using a Mach-V vehicle, the taxi cab is a way to travel.
06:54Remember, stay off motor scooters and cars that are not taxi cabs.
06:59guitar solo
07:34guitar solo
07:58More soldiers did come, many of them to Saigon, this strangest of strange cities.
08:05Where a man on a bicycle could bring the war right to your doorstep, as Dan Rather reports.
08:16There is still sporadic firing, but we're beginning to piece together at least part of the story.
08:24Apparently, some Viet Cong tried to get in with bicycles into the area of an American billet just behind the
08:33Saigon PX.
08:36A South Vietnamese policeman gave his life at that gate, and together with some American MPs, results of the bicycle
08:46riding Viet Cong.
08:49Then the suicide squad, which had intended to set off their mind at the American billet, was chased on down
08:56the street.
08:57American MPs at the other end of the street began firing, spraying the street with considerable small arms and automatic
09:04weapons fire.
09:06And the resulting confusion, and there was considerable confusion in the wake of this, American military men came pouring in
09:12on all sides, most of the military police.
09:14There was a lot of crossfire, absolutely impossible to tell whether any of the bicycle riders were firing on the
09:22Americans.
09:25This much is known. Some of those shot were shot by Americans, but it could be that they were some
09:33of the civilians trying to attack the American billet.
09:37The war on Saigon's streets is every bit as confusing and hard to follow as the war in the field.
09:47Saigon's Tonsunut Airport is the funnel for United States aid to Vietnam.
09:53The time is 5-6 in the quarter.
09:55We have a jet pilot.
09:571-4-7, check the jet pilot.
09:59We're for takeoff on way 2-5.
10:01We are allies.
10:03South Vietnam supplies the battlefield, and we supply endless streams of young men, vast squadrons of planes, the machinery of
10:12war, and the money.
10:15The money is staggering.
10:17$20 billion this year for planes and guns and bombs, and $525 million more for economic aid.
10:25That amounts to more than $1,000 for every man, woman, and child, including the Viet Cong.
10:31There is more money where that came from, and we keep pumping it into Saigon.
10:38Saigon is the city where we will find out if it is possible to get our money's worth in Asia.
10:43But the ironic thing is that the people in Saigon who take the money do not entirely welcome it.
11:01One high American said, of the embassy here said, well, we can buy everyone in this country.
11:11No need to worry.
11:13But can't you really buy them?
11:15Have you really bought them?
11:17I don't think you have.
11:19We pretend.
11:21We pretend because we need the money, or we don't want to be beaten.
11:25But in ourself, we don't accept, you cannot buy anyone, not only the Vietnamese, any anyone in the world.
11:34You can win only a friendship by giving a friendship in exchange, and love by giving a love in exchange.
11:41And this is a thing that the things Americans don't understand.
11:44Not yet.
11:45Not yet.
11:56This city, where 35,000 Americans now learn the hard lessons that go with great power, has taught others before
12:04us.
12:04The Chinese, the French, the Japanese, all came and went in their turn, and there is hardly a trace of
12:11any of them left behind.
12:13Avenues and architecture, to be sure.
12:15But the people, the 1,700 Frenchmen, even the 700,000 Chinese, are lost among 2 million war refugees from
12:23the Vietnamese countryside.
12:27War and the spoils of war have made Saigon the world's most crowded and chaotic city.
12:32If you superimposed Paris and London on Tokyo, you'd have an idea of how crowded it is.
12:39A hundred forty-three thousand people per square mile, three million in all, in a city planned as a graceful
12:46colony for 500,000.
12:51Hundreds of babies are born every day, but one in ten dies in infancy.
12:56Millions of people manage to live, but one in six lives with tuberculosis.
13:02That is not at all like Toledo or Jersey City, so the Americans are appalled, and with the best will
13:08in the world, they set about raising the standard of living.
13:11And then they are baffled when the Vietnamese, who surely ought to be glad to be like people in Toledo,
13:17are not necessarily.
13:21This crusade, to improve the lives of the Vietnamese, even in spite of the Vietnamese, we have misgivings about the
13:30solutions to our problems.
13:33You see, there are the solutions to the problems of the poor people, little solutions for our little people.
13:42We cannot afford what you want to give us, television, motor cars, air conditioners, nice house, and all that.
13:50But we, at least, do not have the means to have these things.
13:54So what do people do? Where do they get the money?
13:56They steal from their own government, their own people, and they back from the Americans.
14:02So we become a nation of thieves and beggars.
14:06You want to change money for, uh...
14:08You have money, $200.
14:10$200 for $100?
14:11Yeah.
14:11You want to do it for MPC or for green?
14:13Yeah, yeah, yeah, we have MPC.
14:15You have MPC?
14:16Yeah, yeah, yeah.
14:21If you hang a microphone around the neck of an American passerby in the center of town,
14:27it seems that Saigon's heart is made of money, and there's nothing that's not for sale.
14:32Take a short time now.
14:34Short time, how much?
14:35That, uh, maybe $300.
14:37$300?
14:38Yeah.
14:39Ah, how much is long time?
14:41Say, uh, one hour.
14:43You stay one hour?
14:43One hour, how much?
14:44One hour, maybe, uh...
14:46I don't know, maybe, uh, $700, maybe $800.
14:48$700, too much.
14:50Maybe $600, you know?
14:50Too much.
14:51What'd she look like?
14:52Young.
14:53I saw you.
14:5415, 17, 18.
14:58This is the postcard Americans send home from Saigon.
15:01It's the center of town, the only part most Americans ever see, a great plaza presided over by the
15:07Constituent Assembly Building, which is regularly inspected with mine detectors, and garnished
15:12by a statue of two soldiers.
15:14The Vietnamese say the soldier in front is one of theirs.
15:17The one hiding behind is American.
15:19The Americans say the one behind isn't hiding, he's pushing.
15:25In their time, the French built villas, which permitted them to imagine they were still living
15:30in Versailles.
15:31Now that the American time has come, the villas are mostly occupied by Americans.
15:38This part of Saigon has all the comforts of home, plumbing and running water, unlike the rest
15:43of the city, and some comforts unnecessary at home, like high fences and sandbagged guard
15:48posts.
15:49Observing this passion for security, the Vietnamese say the Americans have turned Saigon into a
15:54zoo and then put themselves in the cages.
16:00Eager landowners are building more cages every day, turning out their Vietnamese tenants to
16:06accommodate the Americans.
16:11Food prices have doubled and redoubled since the Americans arrived, and that upsets the
16:16way of the Vietnamese, who in turn try to make up their food money by overcharging the Americans
16:21for everything they want to buy.
16:33What do you want to buy?
16:35Monkey, a Ming vase, a camera, or a bottle of bourbon, or a box of ox at all?
16:40You can find it in Saigon.
16:42This is not the furtive basement black market of World War II with a few pairs of nylons for
16:47sale.
16:47This is a robust, multimillion-dollar black market operating in the open, with products
16:53from Communist China sharing the stalls with goods diverted from the PX, or stolen from
16:58the Saigon docks.
17:03Occasionally, the police come marching in with the announced intention of ridding the city
17:07of this shocking illegal menace to the good name of Saigon's merchants.
17:11They clear the area without embarrassing arrests, and they round up just enough goods to make
17:16a bonfire.
17:23It sometimes takes the black market six or eight hours to rise from the ashes.
17:29The police may not be very efficient at closing down the black market, but they are extremely
17:34efficient in dealing with anti-government demonstrations.
17:37John Lawrence reports one example.
17:39The students were protesting the weekend arrest of five of their leaders in earlier demonstration.
17:45The 200 youths didn't get a block from their headquarters before they were stopped.
17:50They tried to sit down in the street.
17:52The district chief of police quickly gave his men the order to use their short wooden truncheons,
17:57and the melee was on.
18:02A teenage girl falls down.
18:04A gang of the police take turns striking her on the back and head.
18:08It is the immediate law of riot control.
18:11Anyone caught in the path of the police is knocked down and struck with nightsticks.
18:33The 200 policemen cleared the street of students in five minutes, and then they turned on newsmen.
18:40CBS News correspondent Bert Quint, cameraman Keith Kaye, and soundman Pham Chan were the first targets.
18:47They had not yet taken any pictures, and they were arguing their right to cover the activities of the students
18:53and the police.
18:54But the police didn't want any pictures taken, and they enforced their will with a club.
19:05There comes a point in the fight when the distinction becomes blurred between the reasonable use of force and brutality.
19:13It can be reported that the CBS newsmen covering the story stood their ground until it became apparent
19:18that in the face of overwhelming strength, it was necessary to retreat.
19:24In all, six employees of CBS News were clubbed, beaten, and driven back by police.
19:32Nothing in history compares to Saigon under the Americans,
19:36who live with the Vietnamese in a kind of insane normalcy.
19:41The Americans have the air of preoccupied travelers with some business to attend to,
19:46and not much time for the natives.
19:49To the Americans, the Vietnamese are mostly inscrutable, corrupt, and lazy, a curious lot.
19:56The Vietnamese, for their part, find the Americans loud, hairy, aggressive, too much in a hurry.
20:03Each has picked up a few words of language from the other, but almost no understanding.
20:07And each goes his own way through the streets of Saigon, the flawed Pearl of the East.
20:20Saigon is a prostitute, can't you see? It's written everywhere.
20:25The Americans affect us in two ways.
20:30They are the sin-shorts who come here to rescue Vietnam from danger,
20:35and they are also the very rich tourists who come, you know, in large numbers,
20:40and that upset our life.
20:43Whether they like it or not, whether they want it or not, it upsets our life.
20:49Life can be changed in many ways, for the better or for the worse.
20:54Saigon has become a city of contrast, as Bruce Morton reports.
20:59Saigon's major industry is war.
21:01There are winners and losers here, as on a battlefield.
21:05The war-rich, the war-poor.
21:08These are some of the losers.
21:12They live mainly on rice.
21:14The wholesale price has risen 25% in the last 30 days.
21:18Most food prices go up every month.
21:22Wounded veterans, a man who's lost both legs or both eyes,
21:26gets a pension of his full base salary.
21:28For a private, that's about $12 a month,
21:32the price of a dinner in a fancy Saigon restaurant.
21:35A man with one arm gets half that, the price of lunch.
21:40They have little money and little hope.
21:43But Saigon has its winners, too.
21:48For the winners, it's a new experience.
21:50The French used to run things.
21:52Saigon's new rich literally have more money nowadays than they know how to spend.
21:57So the general's wives and the ladies who own the nightclubs have a new hobby, the trance.
22:03It comes from China, from Buddhism.
22:05It's a kind of spiritualism.
22:07It used to be practiced by professional mediums,
22:10who claim that in a trance they could speak with the voices of the famous dead.
22:15Now the rich amateurs have taken over.
22:17This trance is given by the owner of a Saigon nightclub.
22:21The medium is an army officer's wife.
22:23The costumes glitter.
22:24All of them are silk, worked with gold and silver brocade.
22:28Jewelry is important.
22:30The trance starts in the morning, the only free time for nightclub owners.
22:34And the lady will go through a dozen costume changes,
22:37becoming a dozen famous people of the past before it all ends.
22:41Her clothes alone cost over $1,000.
22:47Sometimes dancing, sometimes reaching for a stack of money to shower it on the musicians
22:52and on the friends who have come to watch with their puzzled Americans in tow.
22:57Piles of food, piles of money, La Dolce Vita, Saigon style.
23:03And later in the morning there are cigarettes daubed with opium to make the party a success.
23:08The trance is the fad now, the splashy way to show how rich the new rich are.
23:14One Vietnamese who's never seen one before wonders,
23:17why don't they give all that money to the poor?
23:20But the trance is for fun, not charity.
23:23It's a winner's game.
23:25The winners can afford parades, but even here there are losers.
23:29This parade turns into chaos, as Morley Safer and Ike Pappas report.
23:50National Day in Saigon, 1966.
23:54All the people are out lining Tonnyut Boulevard.
23:59National Day, the grenades, Viet Cong grenades, or mortars, coming into the other side of the river
24:04and it's causing some panic here.
24:07The crowd has broken the ranks, and even some of the members of these rural revolutionary development teams
24:16are panicking.
24:17It sounds like mortar rounds coming in from the other side of the Saigon River.
24:22People taking cover over here.
24:25And the rounds seem to be getting closer, closer to Tonnyut Boulevard here.
24:36Watch it.
24:37I just heard one go over.
24:40There it is.
24:41Watch it.
24:42Get down.
24:43Get down.
24:44Get down.
24:45It just opened up on a group of people waiting to march in the parade.
24:49National Police Force.
24:50Keep your head down.
24:52This was the block where the mortars fell.
24:55They're grabbing suspects.
24:56Anyone hiding in hallways and hauling them out, just grabbing them.
25:01There's a man being put in an ambulance for his own protection.
25:09The incredible thing is that just two blocks away, the National Day parade is still going on.
25:38Some kind of order seems to have been restored, but a lot of people are leaving.
25:42A lot of people are leaving, pulling out.
26:05This country is like a schizophrenic Shangri-La.
26:08It's a paradise of paradoxes.
26:10You have life going on as usual, and yet there's a war going on at the same time.
26:15How many St. Patrick's Day parades have you gone to where they shell the St. Patrick's Cathedral?
26:20Not too many, I would say.
26:21You know, and the same thing, how many times do you go to the top of the sixes in New
26:30York for dinner
26:31and watch the flares as they're shelling Staten Island?
26:34It just doesn't happen.
26:35The Vietnamese have the same universal aspirations and the same foibles that people do elsewhere.
26:42Their first interest is one in security, that nobody's going to throw a grenade
26:47while they're taking their kids to watch the Sunday parade,
26:51and that while they go shopping, they're not going to get zapped.
26:55And that's no different from the aspirations of anybody in Zanesville, Ohio,
27:02or any other town in the United States.
27:05The differences are not the thing that fascinate, but the universality of people.
27:13They're the same the world over.
27:15People are people.
27:40The music is too.
28:26People are people, but there are too many of them in Saigon, too many for the water supply
28:31and the sewage system, and far too many sick for the hospitals. For three million people,
28:36there are 100 doctors.
28:39Basically, modern plumbing would do more for this city than all the neurosurgeons you could
28:44import into the place, you know, in terms of preventing disease. Plague, cholera, smallpox,
28:52typhoid, dysentery, it has every conceivable infectious disease that you can imagine.
28:58And this is a much more potential threat in terms of this city than are the BC.
29:05Just killing Viet Cong is not the key to winning the war.
29:11It's our commitment to this country to help the people realize these basic desires and these basic needs that everybody
29:22has.
29:31And .
29:40Okay.
29:47Viet Cong.
29:49destroyed 10 years ago and so they came to saigon and live in the sandpan for the past 10 days
30:05eight children eight children eight children
30:14all tiny if the vietcong destroy your house or if the americans do you might end up in cho rei
30:24hospital the largest in saigon it has no running water and it often runs out of other things like
30:30soap and electricity and drugs when patients move in their families move in too to feed them and care
30:39vessels we supervise their care but their families this is part of their tradition in their hospitals
30:46their families stay with them and you couldn't i don't think you could get them away the ones i
30:54worry about are the orphans she was injured with a grenade we have a lot of this in saigon there's
31:02peaceful saigon looks every day there's one or two incidents like this she's a beautiful old girl
31:07country she's uh she's 13. she's 13. she goes to school they all go to school you know
31:33how was she injured she was with a grenade yeah and uh um uh mortar mortar works you see most
31:57of these
31:57children have never known what it is to be without a war they were born after the war started and
32:05uh
32:06they're just they accept it sometimes it's very difficult except when i come to work to remember
32:13there is a war but uh when i see the children it's very real to me i look at them
32:21and i'm sick
32:22because it had to be done uh it's a war like all wars and you just look at them and
32:28just pray that god
32:30won't condemn us too harshly for some of these things and hoping that the results will be worth it
32:42so
32:43soon
32:43we'll be done with the troubles of the world
32:47troubles of the world
32:49troubles of the world
32:50soon we'll be done with the troubles of the world
32:54we'll be done with the world
32:57we'll be done with the troubles of the world
33:08soon
33:11soon
33:12soon
33:14soon
33:14soon
33:15going home to be with god
33:22i want
33:23i want
33:24to see my mother
33:26i want
33:28i want
33:29to see my father
33:31i want
33:32i want
33:33i want
33:33to see my jesus
33:35want to be with god
33:38i want
33:40i want
33:41i want
33:46to see my brother
33:47i want
33:49i want
33:50to see my jesus
33:52fall
33:54with god
33:56come
33:58to be
34:02with
34:04god
34:11saigon is one of the world's busiest ports
34:14it was never designed to be but that's what it has become since the war started
34:18there is three times more cargo than there is dock capacity so ships have to wait to be unloaded
34:24sometimes they have to wait for months 50 or more ships just waiting
34:29and when they are unloaded a percentage of their cargo perhaps six percent perhaps thirty percent
34:34depending on which ship you're talking about and which authority you believe
34:38is siphoned off to the black market and to the racketeers
34:42the police patrol the harbor searching for stolen goods but the goods keep getting stolen
34:47theft has become a part of the routine on the saigon docks
34:51and to the people who live on the barges in the river
34:54the search is also part of the routine
35:13on the docks as everywhere else in saigon the work moves at a deliberate eastern pace
35:20while the supervisors look on with western impatience
35:24up
35:33okay back up now
35:36back up
35:41i see the cargo coming out of the hatch and it makes my heart feel good just like new york
35:49the
35:50at the beginning it was a little rough but uh things come along pretty good we had the language barrier
35:55and uh lack of court equipment
35:59and then the old time methods of working here they're behind about 50 years as far as working conditions
36:06the only difference
36:07the only difference here is that they put women long charlotte to work
36:11and they do a good day's work
36:14and uh
36:16you'll find occasionally a pregnant woman amongst that gang but she still works but they just take it easy with
36:22her
36:23you just gotta go along with their way of doing things
36:27it shows progress at the end
36:30it does
36:39last year america
36:41america spent two hundred million dollars on new buildings in saigon
36:46we created jobs for sixteen thousand men
36:49we doubled the pay of unskilled laborers
36:54and
36:54this year the work goes on
36:55and if this year is anything like last year
36:58we won't make any new friends among
37:00the workers
37:01hop on the internet
37:13The feeling they have is the American doesn't make any consideration about the Vietnamese.
37:19It's very bad because the general feeling will be what they are thinking the American is against the Vietnamese.
37:38The general attitude of almost all the Americans around here, they are pretty hard with them.
37:49They need to see them changing their attitude otherwise the feeling they have is they hate the Americans.
37:57Many of the Vietnamese who criticize Americans speak more kindly of the French, their former colonial rulers.
38:04They say the French understood them better. The French, they say, had more style.
38:10The French are in a strange position like their yacht club on the Saigon River.
38:15Next door to it is a Vietnamese army outpost. Across the river from it are the Viet Cong.
38:21And overhead are the American helicopters flying low to see the bikinis.
38:46The French not only fought in Vietnam down the years, but also invested in it.
38:51And a few remain to protect their investment, which still amounts to more than a hundred million dollars.
38:56The Vietnamese government tolerates the French. The Americans actively dislike them on the theory that they got us into this
39:02mess.
39:03American soldiers coming here, very often they have the feeling they come here because the French made a lot of
39:11mistakes in this country.
39:12It's probably true they made a lot of mistakes, but 150,000 of them died in this country fighting the
39:18Viet Minh, which was the Viet Cong today.
39:21Their only trouble, I think, is they died a few years too early.
39:25There is no doubt the French could have done more, there is no doubt.
39:29The French could have done more. The government which followed the French could have done more.
39:34The Americans who helped replace the government could have done more.
39:37The people of Saigon have had to suffer them all, living their lives on unclaimed land never meant to be
39:44lived on, such as this old French graveyard.
39:47Living in places far from the villas and the seats of power, in jumbles of houses along streets without names.
39:55In this house, with his family, lives a pedicad driver, who has driven, in turn, the Japanese, the French, and
40:03the Americans.
40:03His name is Nguyen Vandong. He says he wonders whether the Americans are here for themselves or for Vietnam.
40:10He thinks maybe for themselves.
40:13He thinks much about the clothes.
40:18When we come here, we feel like we don't eat anymore.
40:23Before, he works very easily, and he earns enough.
40:26Now, since the beginning of the American, he earns a lot of money, but he's done enough for himself and
40:34for his family.
40:38The only connection he has with the Americans is just to take, to drive them, but he has
40:45nothing beside of that, so he cannot make any judgment, and he doesn't like or dislike
40:50the Americans.
41:02About his daughter, he's worrying about very much because right now in Saigon, many
41:09girls go into prostitutes, and he's very angry about the situation, and he's afraid
41:16so much, and every night he's waiting for his daughter, and sometimes he must come to
41:24the office to pick her back because he's afraid of something that can happen to her daughter,
41:29because around himself there are so many other girls who are going with the Americans.
41:34He works hard and he asks money, but he doesn't like money.
41:38What he wishes is just to have peace and go back to his village up there in the north,
41:42near Hanoi.
41:46What is this
45:17Why are you number one?
45:18What time you're feeling working?
45:20What time you're feeling working?
45:24I'm here.
45:26I'm here.
45:37I'm here.
45:38I'm here.
45:39I'm here.
45:42I'm here.
45:43I'm here.
45:44I'm here.
45:46I'm here.
45:47I'm here.
45:57I'm here.
46:00I'm here.
46:22Celestial Bar 2 here, he says there's two Ciclons.
46:26That's right.
46:27Two Ciclons.
46:27They want 50p a piece for the two Ciclons.
46:30Oh, yeah.
46:31Yeah.
46:32Yeah.
46:33No way we need it.
46:41I didn't ask you for nothing.
46:43Now, you keep flying.
46:44What are you trying to celebrate?
46:45I'm not sorry.
46:46I'm not sorry.
46:46I'm not sorry.
46:47All you Americans that do not long here, not violent in this, I want you to move out immediately
46:52and that is an order.
46:53Anyone remaining will be put on a 1932.
46:56Now, you better move if you're an American.
47:14One Ciclons.
47:15One Ciclons.
47:15One Ciclons.
47:19One Ciclons.
47:23One Ciclons.
47:28One Ciclons.
47:28One Ciclons.
47:30One Ciclons.
47:32One Ciclons.
47:32One Ciclons.
47:32One Ciclons.
47:33One Ciclons.
47:34One Ciclons.
47:39One Ciclons.
47:49I don't know.
48:21I don't know.
48:44You see, there is one part of the Vietnamese which you cannot penetrate unless he allows
48:53you to penetrate, because he's in yourself.
48:56Each Vietnamese has inner life, inner self.
48:59He won't allow you to come near him, really, until and not unless he feels that you don't
49:06want anything from him, but you, whatever you do, you do for him.
49:10It's not out of pity, it's not out of exploitation, it's just our friendliness.
49:18If he knows and if he's convinced of it, he's yours, not until then.
49:38At curfew, the city no longer belongs to its own people.
49:41That is the strangest hour of all, when all that moves are the Americans on their way
49:47to war through the streets of Saigon.
49:53By 1967, when those scenes were filmed, American forces in Vietnam numbered almost 400,000.
50:00And it seemed that with all those men and all that equipment pouring in, the war would have
50:06to turn our way.
50:07And that Saigon, at least, was safe.
50:09As it turned out, nothing was safe.
50:13The next year, Saigon exploded, becoming a battlefield of the Tep Offensive, the subject
50:18of another cassette in this series.
50:20The war dragged on for seven years after Tep, despite a peace treaty in 1973, despite the
50:27withdrawal of American forces.
50:29And ultimately, Saigon was doomed.
50:32On April 29, 1975, as North Vietnamese troops approached the city, the last Americans
50:39were evacuated, flown by helicopter from the roof of the embassy building.
50:43The next day, communist troops moved in, and South Vietnam surrendered.
50:49Saigon was transformed into Ho Chi Minh City.
50:52There's a postscript to this story.
50:54In 1985, ten years after the end of the war, we returned to what had been Saigon to see what
51:01had happened to it.
51:06Some of the changes were obvious.
51:11Others were not.
51:14The traffic was certainly different.
51:17The streets were quieter and cleaner.
51:19The traffic jams largely gone.
51:22Also gone, or at least not visible, were the beggars, prostitutes, and money changers.
51:29Familiar sites abounded, however, one of the most familiar was the building behind these walls, the building that used to
51:36be the United States Embassy, that now serves as headquarters for the government-owned petroleum company.
51:47Ten years later, a soccer game was in progress in the courtyard, and no one seemed to be giving
51:52much thought to the history of this place.
51:55Aside from the embassy building, very little remains of the American presence in Vietnam.
51:59And yet, if you walked the streets of this city, you could hear an American voice.
52:12The voice of Bruce Springsteen echoing through the black markets of Ho Chi Minh City.
52:43The black market was still thriving.
52:45No longer with goods stolen from docks or from the American PX, but smuggled in on ships from places like
52:51Singapore and Hong Kong, or sent by friends and relatives overseas.
52:56Some families, it was said, made a living entirely by selling foreign goods.
53:03The docks were nowhere near as busy as they used to be.
53:06Most of the ships were from Russia or from other communist bloc nations.
53:10There was a reason for this.
53:12Most Western trade had been halted after Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979.
53:18As a result, Vietnam had become increasingly dependent on the Russians.
53:23Soviet aid was estimated at $2 billion a year.
53:27Yet, unemployment remained high.
53:30Industry here was running at about half its capacity.
53:34And the average income per person amounted to $150.
53:38Not per week, not per month.
53:41$150 a year.
53:43To ease the crowding in the cities, Vietnam had forcibly sent hundreds of thousands to what they called new economic
53:50zones, developing unused land in the countryside.
53:53The large numbers of those had left, drifting back to the cities, with no place to live.
54:00But what we saw ten years after the war may not have been as significant as what we did not
54:05see.
54:06We did not see the estimated one million Vietnamese who had fled the country.
54:11We did not see the Vietnamese evacuated to what the government called re-education camps.
54:17Former government officials, military officers, those who had been involved with the Americans.
54:22At the time we were there in 1985, the government conceded it still held 10,000 persons in those re
54:30-education camps.
54:31Other estimates went as high as 40,000.
54:36Even after ten years, many Vietnamese still called the city by its old name.
54:41And indeed, the old name remained.
54:44Here and there, no one had bothered to repaint it.
54:53We visited a cemetery where thousands of South Vietnamese war dead had found their final resting place.
55:05It was lonely now, overgrown with weeds.
55:09Many of the headstones bore photographs of the young men who had gone to war and died.
55:14But many of those had been defaced.
55:17These were the losers, remember.
55:22In the city that used to be Saigon, we found a sculptor completing a giant bust of Ho Chi Minh.
55:29Ho died in 1969, but never doubting that his cause would prevail.
55:34And less than six years after his death, this city would bear his name.
55:45On April 30th, 1985, ten years to the day after South Vietnam surrendered,
55:51a parade rolled through the streets of Ho Chi Minh City,
55:54down a street that had been renamed 30th of April Boulevard.
55:59It was the same route taken by North Vietnamese tanks on the day they conquered Saigon.
56:04A great deal had changed in the city, and yet, and yet,
56:11if you stood on the banks of the Mekong River, looked out over the waters,
56:16you might think that nothing had changed in a hundred years.
56:20Saigon, or what used to be Saigon, remains.
56:23It is different, in some ways a great deal different, but nonetheless, it is there.
56:28That's the way of history.
56:30Wars are won, or wars are lost.
56:32Governments come and go.
56:34Brave men die, and grave injustices are committed in the name of justice.
56:39But in the end, there are survivors.
56:42And in the end, life goes on.
56:48I'm Walter Cronkite, and this has been another in our continuing series of videocassettes on the Vietnam War.
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