--- title: Vietnam War Anniversary: Remembering the Fall of Saigon description: TIME's former staffers in Saigon recall what it was like canonical: https://time.com/3838802/fall-of-saigon-memories/ author: Arpita Aneja article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-04-30T10:00:57.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:50:40.657Z article:section: History og:title: Vietnam War Anniversary: Remembering the Fall of Saigon og:description: TIME's former staffers in Saigon recall what it was like og:url: https://time.com/3838802/fall-of-saigon-memories/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7d69f3d35c953615/6987edaf3c1639fb36455c91/vietnam_tout1.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: The Fall of Saigon: April 1975 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Vietnam War Anniversary: Remembering the Fall of Saigon twitter:description: TIME's former staffers in Saigon recall what it was like twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7d69f3d35c953615/6987edaf3c1639fb36455c91/vietnam_tout1.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Eyewitness to the Fall of Saigon by [Arpita Aneja](https://time.com/author/arpita-aneja/) and [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/) Apr 30, 2015 10:00 AM UTC  336635 153: U.S. Marines prepare evacuation of american and vietnamese civilians while under Viet Cong fire in Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam, during the fall of Saigon, April 15, 1975\. (Photo by Dirck Halstead/Liaison) 336635 153: U.S. Marines prepare evacuation of american and vietnamese civilians while under Viet Cong fire in Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam, during the fall of Saigon, April 15, 1975\. (Photo by Dirck Halstead/Liaison)Dirck Halstead—Getty Images by [Arpita Aneja](https://time.com/author/arpita-aneja/) and [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/) Apr 30, 2015 10:00 AM UTC It was 40 years ago that Roy Rowan heard the surprising song coming through the radio in Saigon. Rowan was in the city as a correspondent covering the Vietnam War for TIME. It had been clear for weeks that the end of the war was imminent. But, until that moment, hearing a Christmas song in April, it hadn’t been clear just how soon the end would come. “The ending was very dramatic, as everybody knows,” Rowan recalls. “The signal to evacuate was ‘White Christmas.’ I remember waking up at 3:00 in the morning and hearing ‘White Christmas’ and wondering what the hell it was going to be like trying to walk out of this place.” Rowan is now 95, but his memory of that day is sharp. The details he summons 40 years later match those he related in the pages of TIME during those hectic weeks in 1975: the sound of the shelling, the fear of the approaching army, the sight of Tan Son Nhut airport fading away into the distance as he and his colleagues choppered away. After a war that dragged on for years, it all happened quickly. Less than two months before, the communist forces of North Vietnam attacked in the highlands north of Saigon. The decision by the Southern forces to withdraw from that area backfired as the North continued to advance. Amid political turnover in Saigon, ceasefire proposals were rejected. The North would not rest until the Americans were gone. On April 28, the airport came under fire; President Gerald Ford made the decision to launch Operation Frequent Wind, the emergency evacuation of all Americans. ### The Last 48 Hours of the Vietnam War in Photos  A CIA employee helps Vietnamese evacuees onto an Air America helicopter from the top of 22 Gia Long Street, a half mile from the U.S. Embassy. Corbis  Helicopter-transported U.S. Marines running, arriving at Tan Son Nhut air base to secure area around Defense Attaché Office compound for evacuation of the last Americans in Saigon. Dirck Halstead—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images  Mobs of South Vietnamese civilians scale the 14-foot wall of the U.S. Embassy trying to reach evacuation helicopters as the last Americans departed from Vietnam. AP  Civilians waiting in front of the U.S. Embassy. Getty Images  Citizens scale the wall of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, trying to get to the helicopter pickup zone. Neal Ulevich—AP  U.S. Marines' helicopter evacuation. Frances Starner—AP  The last U.S. citizens, including some journalists, gathered to leave the city by noon. Getty Images  Right after the U.S. Embassy security guards were evacuated, South Vietnamese civilians moved into the embassy and began looting. Even though a 24-hour curfew had been imposed on the city, the streets were filled with people carrying off all they could steal. Nguyen Khao—Bettmann/Corbis  Vietnamese women clutch boxes of food looted from U.S. installation after the evacuation of Saigon. AP  A crippled South Vietnamese war veteran limps away on crutch with food looted from abandoned U.S. installations after the evacuation of Saigon. AP  U.S. Marines hit the deck of the USS Blue Ridge to dodge flying metal from a South Vietnamese helicopter that crashed on the deck of the ship. One pilot had dropped his helicopter on the blade of another, and chunks of metal ripped through the air. The top helicopter, with its load of women and children, nearly toppled into the sea, but they were rescued without injury. AP  U.S. Navy personnel aboard the USS Blue Ridge push a helicopter into the sea off the coast of Vietnam in order to make room for more evacuation flights from Saigon. The helicopter had carried Vietnamese fleeing Saigon as North Vietnamese forces closed in on the capital. AP  U.S. Marine helicopter crewmen carry Vietnamese civilians to safety aboard the USS Blue Ridge, after their evacuation helicopter crashed on the deck of the amphibious command ship. AP  A weeping South Vietnamese mother and her three children are plucked out of Saigon by U.S. Marine helicopters in Vietnam. AP  The last Vietnamese evacuees by boat from Saigon waterfront, as troops close in. Matt Franjola—AP  North Vietnamese tanks cross Saigon on the way to Độc Lập Palace. Getty Images  A North Vietnamese tank rolls through the gate of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, signifying the fall of South Vietnam. AP In those few weeks of warning, TIME had worked to evacuate its Vietnamese staffers, who might have faced retribution if they were left behind. It took until the last week for them and their families to get out — twice the plan had been cancelled, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had gotten directly involved. ([Pham Xuan An was the only staffer to stay behind.](http://time.com/3836522/pham-xuan-an-1975/)) Saigon bureau chief Peter Ross Range got out around the same time. “When the end came, it came with stunning swiftness,” Range, now 73, says, “but it was not a total surprise to most of us.” That left Rowan, correspondent Bill Stewart, and photographers Dirck Halstead and Mark Godfrey to be evacuated on the last day. Hearing the signal to evacuate, they made their way out of the Continental Palace Hotel and to an assembly point nearby, under the watchful eye of the armed militiamen whom they were leaving behind. They ended up at the airport, under Marine guard, waiting for the word that the helicopters were ready. Later, safely on board the U.S.S. _Mobile_, Rowan sent the magazine a cable, which ran under the headline “This Is It! Everybody Out!”: --- > “” --- The confusion of the war had dissipated, leaving one indisputable fact: the U.S. was no longer in Vietnam. “Perhaps appropriately,” the magazine noted, “the American goodbye to Viet Nam was the one operation in all the years of the war that was utterly without illusion.” On the morning of April 30, 1975—exactly 40 years ago—the last U.S. helicopter lifted off and South’s President Minh surrendered unconditionally. That afternoon, the surrender was accepted. Word came from the Provisional Revolutionary Government: Saigon was liberated, and Saigon was no more. It would be known as Ho Chi Minh city, and it was theirs. **_Read the full 1975 cover story package about the end of the war and the fall of Saigon, here in the TIME Vault:_** [The Last Grim Goodbye](http://time.com/vault/issue/1975-05-12/page/18/) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3838802/fall-of-saigon-memories/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3838802/fall-of-saigon-memories/"},"headline":"Eyewitness to the Fall of Saigon","datePublished":"2015-04-30T10:00:57.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:50:40.657Z","description":"Forty years later, TIME's former staffers remember their final days in the Vietnamese city","url":"https://time.com/3838802/fall-of-saigon-memories/","keywords":["conflict","Media"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7d69f3d35c953615/6987edaf3c1639fb36455c91/vietnam_tout1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Arpita Aneja","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/arpita-aneja/"},{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7d69f3d35c953615/6987edaf3c1639fb36455c91/vietnam_tout1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"The Fall of Saigon: April 1975","caption":"The Fall of Saigon: April 1975","creditText":"Dirck Halstead—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/conflict/","name":"conflict"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3838802/fall-of-saigon-memories/","name":"Eyewitness to the Fall of Saigon"}}]}] ```