Updated April 30, 2025 at 1:42 PM EDT
In April 1975, the Vietnam War came to a turbulent close as North Vietnamese forces entered Saigon.
April 30 of this year marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War in Ho Chi Minh City, which was formerly known as Saigon. American forces rushed to evacuate the last of personnel from the U.S embassy rooftop by helicopter as North Vietnamese troops advanced into Saigon.
Among the foreign journalists who witnessed the collapse of the city was Loren Jenkins, who was a reporter for Newsweek at the time, documenting the final hours of the U.S. presence in Vietnam.
Jenkins, who would eventually become NPR's foreign editor, told Morning Edition how he thought the Vietnam War was horrible for all parties involved.
"It was vicious, nasty to everybody, to the Americans who were set to fight it and to the poor Vietnamese who had bombed them," Jenkins said.
Jenkins spoke with NPR's Steve Inskeep about the fall of Saigon and his memories from those final days covering the Vietnam War.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
Steve Inskeep: Let's hear from a reporter who covered the Vietnam War. Loren Jenkins, who had never expected to be there.
Loren Jenkins: I didn't want to be a war correspondent. I thought I'd be a film critic. But the big stories of my generation were wars.
Inskeep: In later years. Loren Jenkins was NPR's foreign editor, a white bearded Ernest Hemingway sort of figure here at NPR. But in April 1975, he was in Saigon reporting for Newsweek.
Jenkins: The North was beginning to fold up what little South Vietnamese resistance there was, and moving South was a big crowd of refugees trying to flee the north. It was just slowly unrolling, we knew it was going to end. In Saigon, there was nothing to stop them. The embassy had evacuation plans. They were going to broadcast "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" on the military radio system as a code to evacuate. Some of us in the press. were told to go out to the airport and jump on a plane and get out of there. Some others thought that was so stupid that as long as it was an American embassy, we were going to see that fold up.
Inskeep: I'm just trying to imagine the American embassy in Saigon. I guess there's a compound?
Jenkins: Big wall, six story building, a flat roof. When I got in through the main gate that was guarded by Marines and hundreds of Vietnamese trying to get in, hoping to be evacuated because they were compromised for having worked with the Americans. The Americans were preparing to, you know, get rid of all their security files. They were stuff streaming out of the embassy window: ticker tape and shredded documents. Couple of security guards came down with a load of dollars to burn in the incinerator that clearly had come from the CIA main office.
Inskeep: So they didn't want the hundred dollar bills to fall in enemy hands?
Jenkins: Yeah, there was a lot of smoke coming out of a lot of windows as they were burning documents. By then, they had been flying people in helicopters off the roof. There were Vietnamese generals or Saigon fire chiefs and, you know, Vietnamese that had worked for Americans who wanted to leave before they were sent off to re-education camps. The ambassador lowered the flag around 4 a.m. in the morning, who folded it into a nice triangle, moved up with a secretary and his pet dog to the roof. He got in one helicopter, put the secretary in the dog and another, and they flew off. And then a couple of us journalists that were still there. We flew off in the helicopter after.
Inskeep: Having covered so many years of the war and then having seen the very, very end. What thoughts pass through your mind about it all?
Jenkins: Oh, I was just glad it was over. It was a stupid war. Never should have been waged. It was vicious, nasty to everybody, to the Americans who were set to fight it and to the poor Vietnamese who had bombed them. I filed my last story and flew to Bali to sit on a beach with Hunter Thompson and look at it, see and talk about the past.
Inskeep: Do you think Americans learned anything from that bitter experience?
Jenkins: No. The problem is Washington, they're intellectually not aware of what their actions really do. The policymakers rarely go to the places they're making policy about. And I think that's the problem.
The broadcast version of this interview was produced by Milton Guevara and edited by Jan Johnson. Treye Green edited it for the web.
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