Escape From Saigon

• USS Kirk Rescue April 29, 1975

After a swift campaign against a rapidly collapsing South Vietnamese army, North Vietnamese forces entered Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital, on April 29, 1975. With the city falling, government employees and military personnel raced to escape by foot, by car, by boat — and, in the case of pilots like Ba Van Nguyen, by helicopter.

The story of Ba’s escape with his family is told at the end of Rory Kennedy’s Oscar-nominated documentary “Last Days in Vietnam,” which PBS produced as part of its American Experience series. Recently, WGBH, the PBS member station in Boston, commissioned the artist Eoin Coveney to retell Ba’s tale in graphic form.

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