ho chi minh city

A memoir in which the author, an Amerasian now living in the United States, recalls his childhood experiences in Vietnam after being left behind when America pulled out of the war following the fall of Saigon.

In the chaotic final days of the Vietnam War in April 1975, as Americans fled and their Vietnamese allies and employees prepared for the worst, John Riordan, the assistant manager of Citibank's Saigon branch, succeeded in rescuing one hundred and five Vietnamese. They were his thirty-three Vietnamese staff members and their families. Unable to secure exit papers for the employees, Citibank ordered Riordan to leave the country alone. Safe in Hong Kong, Riordan could not imagine leaving behind his employees and defied instructions from his superiors not to return to Saigon. But once he did make it back on the last commercial flight, his actions were daring and ingenious. Decades later, Riordan has located the Vietnamese and reconnected with them, sharing accounts of those frantic days and the derring-do it took to get them out to safety.

Discusses the events leading to the United States involvement in the war in Vietnam, key figures in the conflict, the actual course of the fighting, and the final American withdrawal in 1975.

Describes that dramatic helicopter airlift, the largest in history, which during two days in 1975 carried thousands of Americans and selected South Vietnamese out of Saigon as the North Vietnamese marched to capture the city, thus ending the long Vietnam War.