Billions of US dollars had been spent and sizeable tracts of Vietnam sprayed with two million gallons of ‘Agent Orange’, some containing dioxins that continued to affect the health and economic well-being of the Vietnamese people well after the war was over. No wonder that the Vietnam War has been described as ‘ the war with the difficult memory’. The meaning of the ‘fall of Saigon’ has since been interpreted through many competing filters.

Effie Pedaliu writes that even 45 years later, the fall of Saigon has lessons for US foreign policy, such as the need to plan an exit strategy in armed conflicts, and the importance of diplomacy for mending relationships between former enemies.įorty-five years ago, on 30 April 1975, the ‘fall of Saigon’ signified the end of the Vietnam War – a war of challenging and lingering legacy for both America and Vietnam. Difficulties over how to remember the ‘fall of Saigon’ and the Vietnam War arise not just from contested memories, political manipulation and intellectual disputes, but also from how individuals, groups and nations deal with the ramifications of what was a profoundly divisive and traumatic experience. The war ended with more than 58,000 Americans dead, and at least three million Vietnamese civilians and combatants on both sides of the conflict killed (though numbers are not precise).

In late April 1975, the last remnants of the American presence in South Vietnam were removed as the North Vietnamese Army prepared to take over Saigon.

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