Fifty-one years ago today, my father borrowed a typewriter and composed the following message. It is the last archived message between my parents during the Vietnam years.
If you’d like to see a clip of the American Challenger’s arrival at Guam on May 6, 1975, scroll to 4:02 on the YouTube video below.
American Challenger
Approx, 40 mi. E. of the Philippines
5 May 1975
Dear Nance, troops, and Rabs [my mother’s parents],
I am sitting in an upper deck cabin looking out the porthole at the booms and rigging of this 21,000-ton freighter. Below all these wires and steel are 5,029 refugees, not counting us four Americans—Bowman, Taber, Gass, and me.
Jones never made it out of Saigon in time to join us. TSN [Tan Son Nhut Airport] was bombed, rocketed, and closed the night before he was to come. The irony was that the day before, Monday, an empty C-46 arrived in Phu Quoc with only 2 cases of brandy aboard. A few others should have been on that flight. I assume some made it by chopper to the fleet or Subic Bay, but I fear for Mr. Hai.
Our group consists of something like 935 people connected with the project and other embassy activities, and the story of our odyssey and exodus would rank with some of the better fiction of that type if it were put into the right shape.
Briefly, as I saw what declining morale in ARVN pulling out of northern positions without a fight, public order disintegrating, and the results of panic were doing in Danang, Nha Trang, and Cam Ranh, I began to send priority traffic to Washington to get my group out yesterday. I could never bring them together in the midst of Saigon’s millions with curfews and panic.
In quick order, we considered Vung Tau, Phu Quoc, and tiny Phu Qui Island as places to relocate and start our Station anew (we never dreamed that events would unfold as fast as they did). Transmitters and all of House #7 equipment and furniture was packed and we finally settled on Phu Quoc as most secure.
I made an exploratory trip there with Bowman and Gass and came up with an abandoned VN MP Battalion HQ. It took a few days for top VN clearance, and in the meantime, we were underway shipping stuff so that when the clearance came, we were already moving. I had gone through the paces of evacuation with my people for weeks, so they were very well disciplined.
Air America mounted a massive airlift of over 800 people for us in 3 days, plus extra flights for food and some equipment like jeeps and telex machines. Everything seemed to come except our personal so we spent several days without a change of clothes or adequate washing facilities. I told Hal and Charlie I had never been so dirty for so long, and I guess it’s true. We were at the Phu Quoc camp about 8 days and like in a kibbutz, starting from nothing except bare buildings, we had a fairly comfortable set up by the end even though we were for the most part still sleeping on mats on the floor.
When Bien Hoa was closed and Vung Tau taken, it was obvious the game was up, and any thought of reestablishing the station was given up. “Mother” was closed down, and I turned my attention to making an evacuation plan.
You have to know the geography of the Southern tip of the island to understand it, but mainly I wanted to avoid passing through town and panic all the people there by using the back bay. It never came off.
We made our exit in five Navy trucks after curfew. Charlie escorted the first group of about 600 and got directly to the ship (how we got to the ship is another story); about 250 followed to be taken by two smaller landing craft were accompanied by Hal, Mai Lan, and me due to a combination of bureaucratic and “panic” circumstances we didn’t make it that night and spend the entire night huddled before the ramps of the landing craft in the fear that there would be a shoot-out between our Nung guards and the edgy Navy security types who obviously resented two Americans and their Saigonese leaving when they couldn’t. A lot of that came after we finally left the next morning.
The deadline for all Americans out of Vietnam was the previous noon, so we were presumably about the last Americans out of the country, with Gass possibly the last. He was to return with trucks for our baggage from soldiers, prisoners from a nearby camp, and refugees had already gone amok and were hacking it all to pieces with machetes.
So we lost almost everything. As did many others, I had only the clothes on my back—a blue shirt and my gray Levi’s cut off to make shorts. So now I presumably have less than I did when I was born.
I particularly regret the loss of my elephant hide bag, the tan calfskin carryall, my typewriter, camera, [son] Chris’ radio, not to speak of clothes. Your small gray suitcase and square tri-taper cosmetic bag were there, too. Probably someday I can make a claim, but I’ll have to do some shopping in Guam to get presentable clothes. I am now wearing a pair of dungarees I bought from the ship’s store. I regret the loss of everybody’s property—but we did get them out alive, which more than I would have been able to say had we remained in Saigon.
The lot of the evacuees (mine) and the refugees on the Challenger is not a happy one. They are all crowded together on the decks and in holds. Food is unappetizing—C-rations before, and now we have batches of rice with some chicken and onions thrown in, water at a common watering spot. Diarrhea, pinkeye, and fevers are prevalent. But we brought four doctors and three nurses with us to Phu Quoc, whom I have put at the disposal of the ship, and a makeshift dispensary is running round the clock.
I still have morning meetings with Mr. Thinh, my assistant, and Mr. Chuc, the elected head of our Vietnamese community in Phu Quoc, to pass out whatever instructions I have and to learn their problems. I also meet with ML on the other side of the ship for the same reasons, since most people come to her with their problems and fears. She has been great. She stuck by my side when she could have remained or gone back to accompany her family to safety and ease in NY or Paris. The two younger kids did go back, and I learned by radio that they were successfully evacuated with her parents a few days before Tan Son Nhut was closed. I have tried to bring ML over every day for a shower and some warm food, but it is kind of dicey because of the strict Marine security, and last night it seems I inadvertently took the Captain’s supper, which caused something of a stir. Oh well!
Someday I will have to write a book.
That is about all for now. Will mail this and call from Guam. I probably will stay with the group until it reaches the States, and then we can make some plans.
This has been a unique experience, but not one I would want to repeat.
Love to all,
Jim & Dad [handwriting]
P.S. My hair is not quite as long as [son] Mike’s, but it’s getting there
PPS. Trust Duffy and Viking arrived OK they should have left the same day we did. We spent most of the previous morning with the paperwork and left them with the maid for Mr. Hong to deliver next morning to Pan Am. I put the charges $302, I believe, on the AmEx card, payable over 6 mos.
Scroll to 4:02 on the following video to see a clip of the Challenger’s arrival to Guam on May 6, 1975.
These “Stories of Vietnam” offer a historical and personal glimpse into the Vietnam Era, a history worth preserving and sharing. If you agree, please support my efforts by liking, commenting, or sharing.
I am the author of the nonfiction book, For the Love of Vietnam: a war, a family, a CIA official, and the best evacuation story ever heard, which combines the history of the Vietnam War with tales from my family’s lives including how we resided in Saigon in 1974-75 as the North Vietnamese Army was making its way toward the city, and how, at the eleventh hour, my father, a CIA official, coordinated the rescue of over 1,000 South Vietnamese—the staff and families of “House Seven.”
I have published current and retrospective “Stories of Vietnam” on Substack since July 2023, adding layers to my own stories and featuring other voices, including those of Vietnam veterans and Vietnam refugees.
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