By Charlie Shapiro
At the August 28 meeting of the Retired Men’s Association Larry Allen introduced the day’s speaker, Ralph White, author of “Getting Out of Saigon.”
In April 1975, the Chase Manhattan Bank’s senior management asked Ralph White, then 27, to relocate from its Bangkok branch to the Saigon branch as enemy troops closed in on the city. The bank needed an American to helm Chase Bank Saigon in its final days, preferably one who was young and single. White was given the mission of keeping the Saigon branch open as long as possible and evacuating its senior Vietnamese employees if closing became necessary. Upon arrival in Saigon, White encountered towering obstacles that the bank’s management had not anticipated. The US ambassador refused to support the bank’s evacuation of its Vietnamese employees. The Vietnamese government prohibited its citizens from leaving the country. Civil aviation into and out of Saigon was terminated. Yet fears of a bloodbath made it essential to evacuate all employees, not just the senior staff.
When White discovered a clandestine evacuation channel being run behind the US ambassador’s back, he resolved use it to rescue his staff and their families. With legwork and luck, White got his families onto the US airbase only days before Saigon fell. “Getting Out of Saigon” is the remarkable true story of a city once called the Paris of the Orient on the eve of cataclysmic destruction.
White described some of the most harrowing and extreme situations. For example, he thought the US Ambassador to Vietnam was “crazy,” among other things for telling his embassy personnel to not evacuate any of the South Vietnamese who worked with US companies. Leaving any of them behind meant torture and almost certain death. The ambassador thought he could “negotiate” with the North Vietnamese to spare those who had worked for US companies. This explains, in part, his lackadaisical attitude toward exfiltrating these workers.
But White felt he had one mission, to get the Vietnamese who worked for Chase out of country. He described several situations where his steadfast determination and serendipity each played a part in completing his mission. Embassy personnel, in direct violation of their ambassador’s orders, confidentially let White know that he could have 55 seats on a bus, in which he could drive the workers to the airport to be evacuated. This represented an agonizing dilemma for White, as he had about 120 people to evacuate. But he determined to do what he could.
He described several tense times. When he got through the US checkpoint, and finally into the airport, he needed paperwork that justified the evacuation, or “transit papers.” These were supposed to be for his “relatives.” Finally, he found an embassy staffer whose responsibility was to hand out these transit papers. Only he had 55 evacuees. When White explained the situation, the embassy staff took a long pause, then handed him a large stack of transit papers which White began to fill out one by one, claiming each evacuee was a “relative.” The evacuees finally boarded a large cargo plane, which had no seats, and set out to begin new lives.
White was filled with guilt and despair about those he left behind. Then he got a second call from the embassy that there was another bus, this time with 70 seats. He went back to the embassy, made arrangements, and the remaining employees and their families boarded the bus. But by now the South Vietnamese had set up their own roadblock in front of the US roadblock to the airport. The South Vietnamese were checking these buses for Vietnamese trying to flee their country; some of them were shot and killed on the spot.
When the second bus was stopped at the South Vietnamese checkpoint, an officer came onto the bus. White had been a hunter, was familiar with guns, and had brought a small handgun to Vietnam. What he was going to do with it was unclear, even in his own mind. But he said, “I’m not proud of it, but I came within a hairsbreadth of pulling my gun when that officer boarded the bus.” But the officer turned around and left the bus. The bus got through both checkpoints, and the second group of employees (and White) were able to board another cargo plane and escape—just hours before the North Vietnamese Army invaded the city.
Many years later, White’s publisher asked if he could locate some of the evacuees. This was a daunting task. He described going to a party organized by a Vietnamese expatriate organization where he and his wife were the only non-Vietnamese in the room. He was sitting alone, when an elder Vietnamese woman sat down beside him. They got to talking and he explained what he was trying to do. Without hesitation, the woman said, “I know just the person to call,” and promptly called and handed the phone over to him. This led to his finding many of his former evacuees. Now he gets invitations to family gatherings, weddings, births, and upcoming celebration of the Lunar Year put on by the evacuees.
Ralph Robert White was and is a hero, in the fullest and finest aspects of the word. He was given a mission by Chase Bank, in his words “because I was 27 years old and was unmarried.” In other words, expendable. It was a nearly impossible mission, but he prevailed. White is a humble, straight-shooting, inspiring man who took his mission with the attitude that failure is not an option.
Unfortunately, due to technical issues this presentation is not available for viewing on the RMA website.
The RMA’s next presentation, “It’s Complicated: The Decision by the United States on How–Not If–To Use the Atomic Bomb During World War II,” by Ted Aldrich, is scheduled for 11 AM on Wednesday, September 18, 2024.
To stream the presentation by Ted Aldrich at 11 AM on Wednesday, September 18, click on https://bit.ly/30IBj21. This presentation will also be available on local public access TV channels, Verizon FIOS channel 24 and Optimum (Cablevision) channel 79. The public is also invited to attend the presentation in person at the First Presbyterian Church of Greenwich at 1 West Putnam Avenue.
Note: The views expressed in these presentations are those of the speakers. They are not intended to represent the views of the RMA or its members.
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