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All Things Considered
Tom Crann and Ngoc Bui

The fall of Saigon through the eyes of three Vietnamese Minnesotans

evacuation
People try to scale the 14-foot wall of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, trying to reach evacuation helicopters, as the last of the Americans depart from Vietnam. The war ended on April 30, 1975, with the fall of Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City, to communist troops from the north.
AP Photo | Neal Ulevich, File

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On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese forces captured what was then called the city of Saigon.

It marked the beginning of Communist rule in Vietnam and the end of a long war that left almost 3 million people dead.

Chaos followed as Americans and South Vietnamese tried to escape however they could.

These are the stories of three Vietnamese Minnesotans who lived through that historic moment.

Tran Thi Minh Phuoc

Tran Thi Minh Phuoc was 21 years old and in law school when the city of Saigon fell to the north Vietnamese.

“I remembered dropping my book and saying, ‘No more school’, and I cried,” she said. “There was no future I see right away from there.”

She was able to return to school a couple years later and then left Vietnam in 1982 on a dangerous journey by boat. She eventually landed in a refugee camp in Malaysia where she stayed for months before coming to Minnesota.

Tran went on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees, becoming Minnesota’s first Vietnamese librarian. She is now a storyteller and children’s book author.

Ha Tuong

An officer in the South Vietnamese army, Ha Tuong had received advice from the temple the day before the fall of Saigon to flee.

“We were told, ‘Head west! Go as far as you can.’ And that’s what we decided to do,” he said.

He managed to escape to Malaysia, then Guam, and finally Minnesota.

He was the principal of South High School in Minneapolis and has written two books.

Hung Duc Phung

Only in the sixth grade when the war ended, life for Hung Duc Phung and his family changed completely. They were moved into a “new economic zone.”

“It's not a zone — it's just a jungle,” said Phung. “They forced my family to register so they can take our house. But thank God my mom was so tough. She would try to put it off, put it off, and then found a way so we were able to escape from it.”

He tried to escape Vietnam many times before finally succeeding in 1981.

He later went on to work in social services, supporting immigrants coming to the state.

These oral histories come courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society's Vietnam Era Oral History Project and Vietnamese Community Oral History Project.