“You can’t stay here. You can’t live with the Communists.” Remembering the fall of Saigon in 1975, Binh Pho, a college student at the time, underlines the utter lack of options before him. “Especially,” he adds, “if you have a connection with the Americans, then you really got to get out.” This idea, this need to get out, is the starting point for Rory Kennedy‘s smart, poignant documentary Last Days in Vietnam. On the one hand, the film—now in theaters and on its way to PBS—makes clear the damage done to Vietnam by the US government and military, as institutions defined and limited by their self-interests. The end of the US war was not even close to an end for the people in Southeast Asia, despite the chaotic rush to exit that is perhaps best remembered in the West’s collective memory as Hubert Van Es’ photograph of South Vietnamese civilians climbing a ladder to a US helicopter, set atop the Pittman Apartments. Click the link below to read the rest of the article. ______________________________________ POW/MIA Facebook maintained by: R. Cyril West POW/MIA author and historian rcyrilwest
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 23:26:16 +0000