Waiting for Saigon

At 11.00 p.m. the evening of the 29th, two distraught neighbours of ours came to our gate. They are two doctors from Da Nang, married to each other. They fled from Da Nang, and are petrified or the stories they've heard about the communists They asked us if we knew how they could flag down a helicopter; they were thinking of painting SOS on their roof.

We begged them not to do anything of the sort, pointing out that if a helicopter came down on our alley we'd probably all be killed by ARVNs shooting at him. We invited them in, and the man came in for a talk. We reassured him, calmed him, and in the end he, like many visitors we'd had before him, left with new ideas in his head.

I'll jump ahead to tell the interesting end of this tale. Late in the day of liberation I asked the man doctor if he'd like to volunteer at the Van Hanh University first aid center. He was very eager to go, perhaps to show his good intentions to the new government. We took him in our car, and he ended up spending the night. When he walked in the dispensary to meet his first "communists", the first aid cadres, two young men and one woman, grinned and clapped, grateful to have a doctor's held. The doctor grinned back, and immediately took on the tone of authority of a doctor, and comfortably got to work.

The next morning his family saw me and said he hadn't come home yet, and they were afraid he'd been kidnapped. I assured them he hadn't been, and he came home himself shortly to tell them it actually was safe to leave the house! He continued working there until he found a different center where he was needed even more. Now, two weeks later, his wife has returned to Da Nang to see where doctors are most needed there, and he is eager to get into a regular position, hopefully home in Da Nang. Some doctors in Quang Ngai are receiving reeducation because they were military officers, and considered very corrupt. Our neighbor doctor feels he needs orienting to the new society and is looking forward to it.

Liberation of Saigon:

For several days ARVN soldiers and police had been wearing civilian clothes under their uniforms, and by surrender time the streets were littered with thousands of piles of helmets, jackets, trousers backpacks, and ammunition. Local student groups were prepared in advance to begin collecting the arms, and they did so with excellent organization.

Chi Dung tells a story of herself and her 16 year old sister going out right after the surrender and taking down the GVN flag and hinging up the PRG flag at the local administrative office. Fleeing, confused ARVN soldiers saw them there, and began piling their guns at their feet, to get rid of them. Dung saw this was a good thing, and she and her sister each picked up a rifle so as to look official (neither one knows how to shoot). Then dozens more soldiers piled their guns there, and Dung waited for some other people to help her take the guns to a building and lock them up.

Though the surrender had occured, we didn't see any PRG soldiers until 4 in the afternoon The immediate organizing of the city was completely carried out by local people, both students and older people. They had planned in advance for the collection of arms, ending the looting, feeding the homeless ARVN soldiers, cleaning the streets of garbage, protecting the gas stations that were left, and calming the populace Students climbed on trucks and jeeps to go out and bring back guns and ammunition abandoned in the streets. Sound trucks told citizens not to burn the piles of trash, because there were explosives in the piles. (There were quite a few injuries for the first two days from children picking up abandoned ARVN grenades, and people burning trash containing explosives). Students sorted the military supplies, emptied the rifles of bullets, and took all explosives to a locked, guarded room. This was happening all over the city.

At about 4 I saw the first PRG tank come slowly up Trung Kinh Giang into the city The streets were jammed solid with vehicles and pedestrians, moving around, greeting the PRG soldiers, and just stuck. I went out on the sidewalk to watch. Tanks came in piled with soldiers sitting, friendly and maybe shy, looking around Saigon and talking among themselves Someone near me threw them a pack of cigarettes. People on the sidewalks waved and giggled and they waved back. Then came busloads of soldiers, grinning out the windows at us

Along the sidewalk came a single file line of foot-soldiers carrying all manner of weapons, grenade launchers, rocket launchers, rifles, rice, transmitters. The ones on foot had to move through crowds of onlookers and they must have felt a bit too exposed, so they kept their eyes straight ahead and walked quickly. The PRG soldiers were friendly and polite, but aloof. They had to remain alert, because there were still "enemies" in Saigon, and some soldiers and political cadres have been killed in the last two weeks after liberation.

People on the sidewalks on that street didn't cheer the soldiers uproariously, as did happen in Cho Lon and parts of Gia Dinh. But there were friendly. The next day I met my first woman cadre. She was 24, had been a cadre for ten years Strong, solid and beautiful, with a thick black braid down past her waist. She's from Can Tho, carries an AK 47, has a beautiful big smile and talked freely but shyly. She had a beautiful liberation scarf and a newly ironed blue blouse. A young man cadre came up to her and teased her about her blue things, instead of wearing her rubber sandals, he winked at me and said she was in the city now, and had to look pretty.

Downtown, the Presidential Palace was quite a sight, with tanks lined up straight to the door, and big guns and anti-aircraft guns and all sorts of military trappings, all over the big park in front of the Palace. The tanks had just rolled past the barricades and up to the steps. President Minh really did a gererous thing, to accept being President for a day. I think it avoided a lot of bloodshed. Hundreds of soldiers sat on their tanks and trucks, talking with the Saigonese walking around looking at everything.

I went hesitantly to a truck and had a short conversation with some equally embarrassed and shy soldiers. Then I went over to a small group sitting under a tree. I can't remember quite what I said, but a very kind voiced young man said, "Please call me older brother, because we are all one family now, and Vietnam is one country".

That night Keith and I slept on the meditation roof of the Buddhist Van Hanh University. We felt like we were on vacation in some peaceful Asian country. Never before had we slept out on a high roof. Never before did we feel so safe, as opposed to threatened by the Government of the country. It was very clear that the newly arrived soldiers were not angry, were not hostile. They were curious, friendly, people from nearby, from farther away, but all Vietnamese.

In some encounters on the streets in the next two weeks worried citizens would meet one or another of us and say. "But the Americans aren't coming back, are they? Please don't let foreigners come in again." Other people understand that some Americans are "friends", but those who are just beginning to understand history, to see how they've been lied to all these years, are frightened of the idea of foreigners returning again.

On the second day of Liberation, May 1, we were taken around in a jeep to look at the city and take pictures. This was organized for us by friends who are students at Van Hanh. It went on for several days, until the students ran out of gas! The crush in the streets was incredible, but gay.

Organisation was under way in seemingly all levels of life. Students organized to clean up the city. Cadres like Yen began holding meetings with scared people all over the city. Movies and cultural troupes and TV documentaries were brought into Saigon to educate the people. Never have we seen Saigonese so glued to their TV sets. The soldiers in the park politely covered the noses of the cannons and anit-aircraft guns with rice bags, so they wouldn't look so threatening. Soldiers started walking around the streets, and as each day passed we'd see soldiers farther and farther in the suburbs, either looking around or visiting friends and family.

Most remarkable to me was that the vast majority of soldiers are totally unarmed. Officers and cadres are being urged now to carry pistols, because there have been some murders recently, apparently by former secret police who didn't make it out on the American evacuation. Security forces have rifles, but they're usually stationed somewhere, like at the front of a diplomatic or military building.

The Revolution:

People are beginning to understand that the revolution is a long growing process, as opposed to Liberation. Our friend, the former political prisoner, Chi Hien, in the first few days after Liberation bragged about her position and her activities. More page 7 recently she says calmly that she and her friends are studying the meaning and goals of the revolution, and gaining skills themselves that will make them useful individuals in the future.

Various underground and opposition groups are organizing together, compromising making decisions for the long term future ahead. Individual Saigonese are beginning to enjoy the idea of no more foreigners. Those who depend on foreigners for the businesses are worried about the future Government workers are all back on the job, working for the new government. I asked a woman at Logistics what her salary would be, and she said she had no idea. We were told that Quang Ngai hospital workers were getting two cans of rice and 50 piastres a day - very, very little. Most people are functioning in their normal ways.

In thousands of families, relatives are appearing on the doorstep after not having been heard from for twenty years It's like Rip van Winkle's tale, people who were 18 when last seen, are now 40 years old. Families are being reunited, full of emotion and joy. Northerners here in Saigon are very excited about going back north, and those who are poorer or have large families are waiting for the railroad to be built taking them all the way.

We attended an outdoor meeting of religious leaders and political leaders, held on a crowded little street in a suburb. I attended a women's meeting led by Chi Yen talking to the women about some basic changes the revolution had to offer, such as medical and child care.

The audience applauded loudest when Yen said now women could walk safely on the streets because there are no more "self-defense forces' terrorizing everyone.

The meeting was held outdoors, in the evening, in a poor and crowded refugee camp: The people were excited about the possibility of free education, honest examinations, day care centres, going home to the countryside, and good free medical care. Their fears had been based on the abundant rumours, and Yen assured them that children would not be taken away from their mothers, women with nail polish would not have their nails pulled out, soldiers and police would not have their throats cut, half American babies would not be boiled alive, women with American husbands would not be discriminated against people are free to wear whatever clothes they desire, and they need not hide in the dark to eat a chicken or pork, but just eat it quite freely. No one will starve.

Someone asked if soldiers will still get their financial compensations (which in most cases hadn't been paid by the Thieu government anyway). Yen bristled slightly at this, and only I in the audience knew how recently her husband was killed fighting for the revolution (actually not fighting, but writing). She answered that brothers and sisters in the Liberation struggle have sacrificed themselves for decades with no thought of compensation so now Thieu government soldiers' families will have to do some sacrificing too. There isn't enough to pay people for a family member who is dead, only enough for those who are alive. The audience murmured in agreement.

There was a huge festival on May 7 downtown, led mostly by student groups There were banners and streamers and pictures of Uncle Ho, and ten or hundreds of thousands of people attending. It wouldn't be true to say they were all waiting joyously for this day to come, for the revolution, but now that this change has taken place, people have something to look forward to, something to think about, other than continued war and suffering and destruction.

It's hard to fathom peace for people who have been at war for so long. Buses on Highway 1 run all day and all night now! Vietnam has never had GVN (Government of Vietnam) traffic moving at night before. People at the demonstration were of all sorts—young giggly students cheering and then giggling with each other. Old women looking, solemn and carrying obviously precious pictures of Ho Chi Minh. Students looking busy and happy, PRG soldiers looking calm and pleasant.

In the huge mass of people I saw no guns or arms at all. The soldiers in the streets were unarmed. Way up on top of the palace we could see two guards, presumably armed, but the whole military government—the officials—were standing on a balcony of the palace, for all the world to see, as Thieu had never done. I mentioned this later to a high level cadre, and he said that the revolution belongs to the people it's not something being done against them.

I heard a man a few days ago tell a beggar that he shouldn't beg anymore, now there was a revolution and everyone would have work to do, and enough to eat. This morning a woman eating breakfast with us at a noodle stand told another beggar that what the government says is true this time, and that she won't have to beg. At the same meal a woman from the north, mother of 8 children, asked both me and this other woman if we knew a way for her to not have any more children. She responded that as soon as the new government gets better organized they'll surely offer such services, and free.

People on the streets are interested in the changes, and talking freely. Some are absolutely thrilled, like the majority of cyclo drivers I've talked to. A few are still living in a dream world, like a young woman who handed Paul a letter in English saying she wanted to live in freedom and would he marry her and take her away, and that though she didn't speak English, she would try to please him as a wife. But those are few, thank heavens, it's just that as some of the few foreigners left, we meet some. Paul told her to wake up and" look around, and see what's going on in the world outside her own head.

The present Saigon government is a temporary military government, run by a committee, whose job it is to restore full security in the city and make way for the political government to take over. Already the security is phenomenally better than it's ever been for Vietnamese, with little or no robbery in the suburbs.

We've heard of some cases here and in Nha Trang of shooting armed robbers, and these examples apparently influence other would-be thieves. Paul heard of a young man with a red arm band and a rifle, posing as a cadre, firing into a bus in Gia Dinh that wouldn't stop for him. He shot and killed an old woman. Some genuine soldiers were nearby and caught him, and asked the people on the bus what they thought they should do with him. This was a day or two after liberation. They said shoot him, and so they did.

Two Weeks After:

It's still much too early to make any sweeping judgments on the revolution. Well, maybe there are a few we can make Political prisoners under Thieu are free. Among the former prisoners, AFSC staff have personally met student leader Huynh Tan Mam and artist Buu Chi. The only person we've heard of being jailed under the new regime is the Quang Ngai Police Chief, who we hear is in his own prison. It is very peaceful, relaxed, pleasant in the city, Foreigners have freedom of movement within the Saigon area, and Vietnamese have complete freedom of movement.

There has been absolutely no "bloodbath', whatever that abused term really means. The new government is being cautious, keeping its defensive posture against possible outside attack again. Vietnamese who we meet day to day seem for the most part happy, looking forward to the future, and some are wondering how they II make their living if their former one depended on American trade The beautiful north, which southerners and northerners alike say is the nicest part of Vietnam, is now available to those in the south.

Husbands and wives are meeting for the first time in 21 years, families are coming together. Tomorrow, May 15, is the first day of a three day victory celebration, and many soldiers will have the days off to go visit their relatives and friends. May 19 is Ho Chi Minh's birthday, and another celebration. Downtown the soldiers are building a bandstand for tomorrow's gathering, and there's an air of festivity.

In PRG aread before liberation and in the north there is no haggling over prices and people don't overcharge. So when the liberation soldiers reached Saigon, the goal of how many years, they had their pictures taken in front of the Assembly building, and bought souvenirs. But the Saigon sharks, jumped right in and began selling fake watches broken watches, at outrageous prices.

It was already difficult because of the difference in value of South Vietnamese and North Vietnamese money. (The North Vietnamese money is pegged to the value it had 20 years ago.) The sharks would tell sad, and fake tales of being very poor and needing to sell the watch so they could go home, or feed their children. Some soldiers were so embarrassed that they bought the objects at the outrageous prices. This was bothering us tremendously, and Ken her and I were relieved to hear a sound truck going around one day telling the soldiers not to believe what they were told about the watches, to only buy in real stores where they get honest receipts, and to not believe the stories of the sellers.