 Thank you very much for for being here today. I appreciate the nice crowd We're going to talk a little bit about the the role that this relatively small Navy ship destroyer escort played in the last days of Vietnam. It's a story that hasn't been heard before. I shouldn't say that it we we made a documentary about the about the Kirk Back in 2010 the Navy did I produced it and it was shown around the country to good results At first glance the story of USS Kirk and the lucky few the title of the book seems a little story and Almost insignificant tale at that and for 35 years it remained unknown and untold and That's probably for a very simple reason It's a Vietnam story And those of you who were around during the Vietnam War and I can see most of you were Some of you may have been around for earlier conflicts than that when our most divisive Conflicts since the Civil War ended in chaos and some say shame in 1975 Americans wanted nothing more to do with Vietnam Vietnam was a national nightmare that was best left forgotten and We moved on the story of the Kirk a little story an insignificant one on the contrary This is a Vietnam story very Much worth telling and in the next few minutes allow me to give you a little sample of it Lieutenant Bob Lemke wandered into USS Kirk's Combat Information Center Amid the many radar scopes was a large radar repeater that consolidated information from the other displays one look at the repeater screen Put everything in a perspective Each green blip was a ship of some sort making it easy to quickly see the location of every craft on a master grid But the screen image appeared odd The shoreline was out of focus He motioned to a tech who was standing nearby and said when was the last time this radar was tuned And the tech said it was tuned very recently sir. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the radar Well empty wasn't satisfied with that so he went topside and he grabbed the big eyes the big binoculars and he looked out and Suddenly the mystery of the blurry radar screen cleared up for him Hundreds of boats were heading out to sea in Kirk's direction As the distance closed he noted every type of watercraft from small fishing vessel to rubber rafts The lieutenant was then shocked to see a small wooden dugout With a man woman and two children clinging for dear life They even had a motor scooter on that dugout. That was all they had left in their lives He said these people were simply paddling out to sea hoping to get to the rescue ships The magnitude of a nation's final collapse suddenly became very real and personal to lieutenant Bob Lemke For days prior to the fall of Saigon The byproducts of that relentless conquest by the north Were thousands of panic refugees trying to flee the country in anything that would float the loss of South Vietnam a South Vietnam's capital Saigon Which was really the final chapter in this tragic drama Began with a ferocious ground and artillery attack on the Tansenot air base On April 29th, 1975 at dawn on that day a special assistant working for the secretary of defense a man named Richard Armitage Recalls looking up and seeing a Vietnamese Air Force C-130 that had been hit by a missile trailing smoke Circling down and crashing really before his very eyes We drove through Saigon. He remembers it was absolute chaos Looting drinking raping and shooting going on throughout the city on That same Tuesday that he witnessed this The 430 foot destroyer escort USS Kirk a Worship that had been designed to protect carrier task forces from Soviet submarines mind you the Cold War was still on at this point this small vessel Was cruising near the port of Vung Tau as large ch-53 and ch-46 helicopters Began shuttling American and Vietnamese evacuees from Saigon Now those of you who remember the vivid TV images from that period remember the chaos of those final days People questioned later on weren't their preparations made for the evacuation. There were still Americans in Vietnam Of course the troops had been withdrawn Paris peace accords had seen to that in 73 the ambassador Graham Martin feared Making preparations he feared that The very preparations of leaving Vietnam would panic the South Vietnamese and their armies would crumble. Well, they were crumbling anyhow There were there were large large amounts of material that had to be burned They were there were names of Vietnamese who had helped us during the war their names their addresses what they had done and no provisions had been made to destroy this material and so Preparations to leave Vietnam were left for essentially the last minute It was hoped that fixed-wing aircraft could go into Ton Son Ut C-130 C C-140 ones and an aircraft such as that could go in to Ton Son Ut air base and evacuate people in large numbers, however The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were already surrounding the city and they had pummeled the runways with mortar and rockets So fixed-wing aircraft could no longer be used And so they went to plan B, which was called operation frequent wind. That is the helicopter evacuation of Saigon as the CH-53 and CH-46 helicopters which were stationed aboard a Task force of approximately 40 ships off the coast of South Vietnam. These were amphibious assault ships several carriers and and Landing craft and other other ships The helicopters took off from these these decks these flight decks with the intention of providing a I guess you call a shuttle service. They would fuel they would go into Saigon. They would land in predetermined locations soccer fields schoolyards and They would pick up Americans who were still there and they again there were there were no American troops there in large numbers any longer just advisors, but there were CIA operatives There were embassy personnel and There were these sensitive I say sensitive Vietnamese That is the Vietnamese who had helped us during the war whose lives were not going to be worth much Once the North Vietnamese took over So this was plan B Frequent wind and these helicopters went in and that they went in and they Loaded up and they headed out to sea Just as suddenly hordes of unknown contacts again This is a board Kirk began fogging Kirk's radar screens. This is the second time and these South Vietnamese Army and Air Force UH-1 Huey's packed with fleeing refugees were following the American aircraft out to sea Imagine the shock of a CH-53 pilot or copilot looking in his rear of your mirror and seeing Perhaps hundreds at least Tens hundreds of small UH-1s these were the helicopters we had given the Vietnamese during the war and And now they were filling up with refugees a pilot would would have a fueled bird And he would land in his community a town where he grew up and he take aboard his family And he had room for more and they loaded these things up a helicopter designed for perhaps a dozen troops tended to a dozen troops We're now filled with some with as many as 25 to 30 Men women children and you've seen scenes of people even clinging to the skids That some of these helicopters can actually get airborne Was amazing much less staying airborne until they got out to these ships out ships of the of the task force Now they had no permission to land on these ships, but They're going to give it a shot anyway Operation specialist Jim Bond guard was glued to his radar screen down in CIC in the combat information Center This is what he remembers. He says all of a sudden these dots came racing out across the radar screen They were too fast to even mark What are these things and we're calling the bridge asking for visuals and they're saying we have helicopters coming in and They were just swarms of them Airman Donald Cox in the ships chief engineer lieutenant Hugh Doyle Recognized what was happening? They saw the excitement of all of this the sky was smeared with exhaust from all these helicopters and And lieutenant Doyle said we knew what evacuation was going on and with each helicopter that would pass us we had an open deck Now being an anti-submarine platform the Kirk had its own flight deck it had its own lamps helicopter That would go out in scout looking for Soviet submarines it could drop sauna buoys in the water and do that type of thing could even destroy Soviet subs with torpedoes that it had But it was out of order it had a bad engine so it was in a collapsible hangar on the flight deck So the entire flight deck wasn't available, but a good portion was and they're looking up and thinking well We have a clear flight deck. Why don't they land we could take a couple of these things we could take at least one Anyway, lieutenant Doyle and the others so the members of the crew with mounting excitement the possibilities Were caught up in all of this and Doyle said we never anticipated a helicopter landing on us But we started talking about it Wouldn't it be great to grab a helicopter? Wouldn't it be great to take part in all of this in an attempt to advertise Kirk's hospitality the ship's first-class Storekeeper who had been to Vietnam previously and other deployment spoke some rudimentary Vietnamese and he was allowed to bro. In fact, he was encouraged to begin broadcasting on the air distress frequency Ship 1087 land here. Of course, that was the whole number of the Kirk 20 minutes later Airman Gerald McClellan waved the first Huey on to Kirk's flight deck with a load of refugees And these refugees were armed many of them some of them had automatic weapons pistols hand grenades and Of course members of the Kirk crew couldn't know whether they were North Vietnamese Whether there were VC involved in this and whether they would try to commandeer the ship so the first order of business was to have these folks disarmed and Whatever arms were confiscated from these people were put in a in a compartment that became Became a locker became the what would you call it armory? It became the ship's armory and by the end of this whole operation that armory was loaded almost to the ceiling with weapons The following night 30 April Commander Paul Jacobs Kirk's commanding officer received a cryptic message from the Task Force commander Now mind you many other helicopters had landed on Kirk One landed and then I said they took they decided to keep one as a trophy I mean that that was the intent all along to come home with a trophy or maybe two So they took those and they kind of moved to Maft with the booms kind of leaning outboard to make more room Well, they had no idea, but within a short time. They almost took a dozen helicopters There wasn't room for a dozen helicopters In fact, it was very dangerous to land more than one at a time on the ship So Captain Jacobs had to make a fateful decision and Those of you who are around then remember seeing those images iconic images of passengers disembarking from these small Huey's and crews Dragging them over to the side and throwing them overboard throwing not the passengers the helicopters to make room for more It was not a matter of trying to save these birds any longer Which were well in the millions each one about maybe two million and a million and a half to two million dollars for one of these Aircraft it was it was a matter of saving lives and so that decision had to be made in an instant and by the way that decision was made without any Permission from the Pentagon or anyone else. I Remember when I was writing the book I interviewed Former secretary defense James Schlesinger We had a long conversation And I asked him how much he knew about what was going on out there at that time in the last days of April in the first days of May of 1975 And he said you have to you have to understand we didn't have sat phones Back then he said I had to trust my people who are out there to make the right decisions They were on the scene they could make a better decision than I could back to Pentagon And I told him the story of the Kirk and he didn't know very much about it. And when the conversation ended He said Mr. Herman, I believe you have I have learned more from this conversation than you have What I learned was how little was known back in Washington about what was going on out there anyway, the captain received this cryptic message that he was to send a motor whale boat alongside the flagship of the task force USS Blue Ridge and They were to take a passenger back to Kirk He was a civilian his name was Richard Armitage Just turned 30 years old a GS-12 at that time and They were to take their orders from him Well, this was odd Naval officers aren't Trained or designed to take orders from civilians There are only two civilians in their chain and that is sect F and sect NAF And generally they don't take orders directly from those two civilians But now they're told to take this man aboard and whatever he says they will do When he came aboard mind you, this is the South China Sea in April It's hot. It's humid and he's very incongruously dressed in a sports coat Some say it was a blue blazer a tie and a 45 and a shoulder holster and the skipper Said to him. I'm not used to having armed civilians come aboard my ship in the dead of night upon which Armitage replied in a very gruff voice, which he still has I'm not used to coming aboard armed in the dead of night, but I've got a job to do I Work for the Secretary of Defense Then Armitage outlined a secret mission that the Kirk would now Proceed on the remnants of the South Vietnamese Navy about 32 ships in all Would gather at Kansan Island just off the South Vietnamese coast These were ships that we had given the South Vietnamese during the course of the war So it was a conglomeration of cast-off ships Some of them from World War two vintage LSTs LSMs Coast Guard cutters Even a destroyer escort from World War two And a bunch of other swift boats and a couple of fishing boats thrown in for good measure, but there were 32 of these ships It was really a tall order from this diminutive for this diminutive warship USS Kirk Most of South Vietnam at this time was in the hands of the North Vietnamese They hadn't quite consolidated their power, but they had they were in place to do so several South Vietnamese Vietnamese pilots had already defected and were flying American-built jets on missions against their former countrymen The folks on the Kirk question this decision to go down. They said are we going down alone and the answer is yes We're going down alone Now Kirk was well equipped to defend itself against hostile Soviet submarines But whether it was Well equipped to defend itself against a concerted air attack was something else Had a five-inch deck gun Which might have taken a toll on some aircraft, but Essentially the ship was defenseless against a determined air assault if the North Vietnamese decided to contest this evacuation The following morning as the sun came up Kirk had already arrived at Kansan Island, which was a roughly 115 miles from where they had been cruising off the Port of Vung Tau What was evident to everyone in the crew Was a humanitarian disaster in the making these folks had Expected 32 ships of the former South Vietnamese Navy to be there and that they found What they hadn't counted on was the fact that these ships were absolutely crawling With refugees men women children without food without adequate water with no medical care in fact Lieutenant Doyle Said it reminded him of someone who might have taken a couple of Hershey bars and put them on a hot summer sidewalk and waited a few Hours and came back That's what it looked like. It looked like ants crawling all over these ships Kirk CEO Paul Jacobs recalled the scene He said some of them were anchored some were not some were adrift They were just loaded with people all the way up to the bridge. I Estimated two to three thousand people on one of those ships. I Said oh my god This is going to be an insurmountable problem. How are we going to pull this off? And when he says how are we going to pull it off? He's talking about how we're going to pull it off alone Just how USS Kirk pulled off the rescue of an estimated 30,000 refugees aboard those 32 ships is the real story There are a lot of stories connected with the Kirk the early part of the mission of the early part when they take aboard the helicopters That's pretty dramatic in itself. And now it's phase 2 part 2 or chapter 2. How do they how do they handle this mission? And that's the subject of my book the lucky few In 2009 I was completing a book at the time. I was the chief medical historian for the Navy. I Was writing a trilogy about Navy medicine in the conflicts The Navy Participated in in the late 20th century starting with World War two So I wrote a book on World War two and Navy medicine world and then the Korean War and Navy medicine participation in that conflict and then of course Vietnam Which was the war of my? Adulthood I wasn't in the Navy at that time. I was in the Air Force I saw the error of my ways and I went to work for the Navy afterward, but nonetheless So I was working on the last of the trilogy Navy medicine in Vietnam, and I was working on the last the very last chapter and Of course that last chapter focused on the humanitarian assistance the Navy provided to the refugees who fled South Vietnam And to complete that last chapter I first had to get the stories of those medical personnel How would I do it? Well in the old days, I'm not sure how I would have done it But in the age in the age of the internet it became a little simpler and it becomes a lot easier for researchers To get to the meat of things when you have the internet. I knew there were 40 ships roughly 40 ships in that task force I knew the names of those ships. I I Suspected that many of those ships would have reunion organizations That would have websites and What I could do is perhaps gin up a an email in which I would ask for Names of medical personnel who served on those ships So I did and I sent an email to I found 13 ships that had reunion organizations out of the 40 So I sent essentially the same email a boilerplate email looking for medical personnel to interview sent it Was within an hour. It wasn't no it was no longer than an hour My phone rang at Bumed your medicine and surgery where my office was and it was a Retired captain Paul Jacobs of USS Kirk And I remember saying I'd like to interview members of your medical staff And he laughed and he said medical staff. He said I had two corpsmen I had a a chief hospital corpsman, and I had a third class corpsman. That was it. That was my medical staff Well over the next few weeks he and I talked frequently over the phone He did tell me he said his ship took had a special role in the evacuation and he told me about the mission going back to Vietnam and I Did his oral history? I did his I he gave me names of other members of the crew and before long I was phoning or emailing other members of the Kirk crew and Captain Jake Epstein invited my boss the Surgeon General of the Navy Vice Admiral Adam Robinson invited him to a reunion of the Kirk that was being held that year 2008 Excuse me. It was 2007. It was fall of 2007 And I remember he was new in the job the Surgeon General had only been in his job Perhaps two weeks three weeks. He'd just taken command And I got a phone call from him and he said I got this invitation. Well Captain Jacobs asked me if he thought it the cat the the Admiral would accept an invitation to be the speaker at this reunion of the Kirk And I said I didn't know I said what do you got to lose send him an invitation and he all he can say is no So he sent the letter off and I got a call at my office the Admiral wanted to see me. That's not always a good thing When the Admiral wants to see you Could be one of two things either he's going to give you a medal or he's going to kill you one of the other Or or cut your career short. Let's put it that way So I went to his office and he said he's holding up this letter from Captain Jacobs He said I got this invitation from Captain Paul Jacobs of the USS Kirk some kind of destroyer escort or something. He said They're asking me to be the guest speaker at their reunion, which was going to be held locally in suburban, Virginia He says I'm new here. I haven't accepted any invitations to anything Why should I accept this? What do you know about this? So I told him briefly what I knew about it He says well, why should I go to this thing? I said to look at him. Well, if you don't go you're going to kick yourself and wish you had He accepted and he went to the reunion And I remember walking in To that it was a hall where tables were set up for a banquet and first thing we saw as we walked in Was a room filled with highly charged emotion There were former Vietnamese refugees in attendance a number of them not only them But their children in some cases grandchildren and they were sailors Former crew members of USS Kirk there all I can say is there was a lot of hugging and kissing going on These folks had not seen each other since the rescue in 1975 many of them This was an opportunity For the Vietnamese not only to thank their rescuers, but it was an opportunity for the crew members To see the results of the work they had done back in 1975 Anyway, the Admiral was introduced after the dinner and he got up at the lectern He had a prepared speech that a speechwriter had written for him And I remember he took this speech and he threw it down on the table and he says I'm not giving this speech It's totally inappropriate after what I've seen tonight and then he proceeded to talk from his heart About humanitarian assistance in what the Navy does As far as humanitarian assistance, yes, we're trained to fight wars. That's what we do That's item number one item number two is to provide Humanitarian assistance on the high seas and that's a tradition that goes back to the founding of our nation and even before that following that event Admiral Robinson invited Captain Jacobs to come to the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery to have lunch at his office And he invited me. He says you're the historian you need to be there And we're sitting at a nice table and the mess steward is prepared a beautiful lunch for us and During the appetizer course the Admiral says to me He says, you know you do documentaries you've done a number of documentaries for the Navy You need to make a documentary about the USS Kirk and what those sailors accomplished out there. I Figured it was idle lunchtime chatter Admiral's making conversation with me. We got to the dessert course and This was probably a major mistake on my part. I said Admiral. Are you really serious? You really would like me to make a documentary about this And his eyes bored into mine as only a vice-admdle's eyes can And he said what I have suggested it if I weren't serious Yes, I want you to make a documentary about this Aye aye sir I Went back to my office after lunch filled out the necessary paperwork That is required when you start a project like this and I took it over to what we call the front office The next morning at 0800 my phone rang You can come pick up the paperwork The Admiral has signed it himself Now I was stuck now I had to make a documentary And it's you know you go to a Hollywood extravaganza you go to one of these Hollywood films and when it's over and the End comes on the screen the credits roll for probably 15 minutes hundreds of names Roll down the screen. I'm looking at me and thinking I don't have a crew like this I got a few folks that work at the the Naval Hospital of Bethesda who will work in the TV studio and they They've done some work for me in the past, but what do I do? Well, I had to put all you know put all my ducks in a row and get everything going to get this project underway. I Think at very at first I probably thought the Admiral would forget about it, but he didn't every time I saw him I think it was just five days later. He said Has my movie coming has my movie coming it got to the point I had to hide when I saw him coming down the passage where you'd say how is my movie ready yet? The movie actually took two years to make and That was two years of challenging research Spending countless hours going through Kirk's logs and other ships that were involved I might point out and I should point out right now the Kirk was responsible for the first Day or so of this operation of rescuing these South Vietnamese ships other ships joined Sister ship USS cook we have a crew member of USS cook here today Helped out there were plenty of other ships that that in got involved a couple of seagoing tugs a couple of landing landing ships USS Barbara County being one of them The USS Mobile there were a bunch of other ships that provided food and water and even a physician at one point in several Corman So this was not a lone ranger operation. I don't want to give the impression that it was it started out that way But help arrived the 7th Cavalry showed up and helped Anyway, we went around the country interviewing not only members of the crew of The Kirk crew but also Vietnamese who had been rescued we got their stories on videotape And then when we got everything assembled I ended up having write a script for this again It's one of those I guess it was in a sense almost a lone ranger operation because we didn't have a large crew of people to put This film together But I did have help and after we wrote we got it We assembled all the components and put them together into this documentary at the next Kirk reunion in July of 2010 With vice-admiral Robinson in attendance we showed the lucky few at this reunion Shortly thereafter national public radio aired several stories about Kirk's rescue rescue mission and that's the three-part NPR series one national acclaim on Veterans Day November 11th 2010 the lucky few premiered at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington Which was a very proud moment in my life If you're from New York and they say you make Broadway you've made the big time if you work in Washington if you make the Smithsonian That's just as good It became obvious to me that a one-hour film could scarcely do justice to this previously untold story Why had the incident been overlooked for so many years as I've already indicated I think it was because it was a Vietnam story And it had to do with America's mood in 1975 Moreover the men of Kirk and the crewmen of other ships who had participated in the rescue Never thought they had done anything particularly extraordinary You've heard this many times from people you call heroes They say I'm not a hero. I was just doing my job That was also true of the Vietnamese who had been rescued And told their children Many of these kids didn't know how their families arrived in the United States But imagine being a crew member of the Kirk and going down to your local VFW hole or American Legion Hall And there are some of your comrades from Vietnam days and they're telling war stories or sea stories What are you going to talk about? feeding refugees Diapering infants these are kinds of stories. They didn't feel like sharing And again, they didn't discuss it with their family or any of their friends Writing a book on the lucky few documentary or based on that I should say offered new opportunities To tell more of the story and to incorporate what had unfortunately ended up on the proverbial cutting room floor You know in most Hollywood films the book comes first followed by the movie I Just did it in reverse But I had the advantage of now adding flesh to the bones of an already larger-than-life event. I Had the opportunity to tell a wonderful story of an extraordinary ship and its crew One of the players in the lucky few drama A man who worked for the secretary defense. He was assistant secretary defense Eric von Marbad He pointed out to me just a few years ago The story's true significance He reminded me that after the war president for its task force for the resettlement of Indochina refugees Resettled more than 130,000 evacuees from not only South Vietnam, but also Laos and Cambodia Settle these people in communities around the United States It wasn't long before almost all of them became American citizens Since Kirk and her sister US Navy ships Saved more than 30,000 South Vietnamese Refugees that means think of this that means one in every four Vietnamese refugees Resettled in the US by that test force Can trace their new beginning in this nation to the mission accomplished by USS Kirk? It's quite an achievement decades later The true significance of the rescue comes into perspective in very ironic ways. I Was going to tell the story myself, but I don't have to Because the man who witnessed this event is sitting in the rear row and he's going to come up and tell you the story Former Lieutenant Hugh Doyle of USS Kirk Hugh You can just take the mic. All right. Thank you, Jan Before I before I tell you this remarkable story. I'd like to where's our Admiral loose look alike Mike Thomas, would you stand up, please? Mike was a crewman was the calm officer ASW officer on USS cook Mike, well, I never left the Kirk. I was the chief engineer on Kirk Well, I never left the Kirk to go to one of the Vietnamese ships Mike did Mike went aboard HQ 17 and he was the he was the American officer who took Took the receipt of the ship and it's I'm kind of jumping ahead We had to reflag the ships to get him into the Philippines But I see you're what he's working on his Admiral loose whiskers here. So yeah The story that the Jan usually tells when he when he gives this talk is about Newport and it's about the Newport Clinic here right on the base. I'm retired Navy. I retired here in 1987. I I Was I had a doctor assigned to me here at the at the base I got a Perform a letter in the mail saying we're reassigning you to a new doctor Please come in and meet him and it was dr. Khan Von Nguyen lieutenant commander United States Navy Medical Corps I said all that's interesting of Vietnamese name so I came in to meet the man and he looked like a 14 year old kid He had braces he was just a little little guy very very intense and as I was a As I was talking with him as go, you know my initial Meeting I said can you tell me how your family came to to the United States? I figured he was born here Well, he was one year old when he escaped he was in his mother's arms when he escaped with his family They and I said do you know anything about it? He said no my father passed away shortly after we arrived in the States My mother never learned English just to to any extent so she never talked about it I had an older sister back then or have an older sister who was 15 years old when we escaped But I don't know anything about it. So I gave him a copy of the lucky few The the documentary and I said here this might be of interest to you He took it home watched it I saw him a couple weeks later on a follow-up and he said it was very interesting But I didn't learn anything more about my family well About three months later. I'm back to see him and he is over the top excited and He said my sister was here on the last weekend. She was cut. She came from Seattle Going to Boston with her young daughter to get her into into college She stopped to see her little brother and they watched the the documentary together and when the When the HQ one hike when one which was a destroyer escort Formerly the USS camp which was home ported here in Newport in the early 60s late 50s early 60s It was eventually turned over to the Vietnamese. It became one of their capital ships a destroyer escort became HQ one One this little girl now a mother of this college student saw the picture She said she jumped up and said that's the ship we were on So they came out on one of the 32 ships that we brought So and my and I got thinking about it later on I said, what are the odds? What are the odds that they would escape when so many didn't what are the odds that they would come out to our? Task group what are the odds that they would go all the way through their resettlement? This little boy who was one year old at the time would become a doctor He would decide to join a Navy could go on Air Force Army, whatever He decided to join a Navy on his third assignment as a as a Navy doctor He comes to Newport and luck of the draw the computer assigns me to him. So come full circle But By the way for those of you who were our trivia buffs the the when we reflagged these ships the United States Navy and Strength and call the end strength peaked by 32 ships immediately Immediately because they became Officially as far as the the government Philippines understood Vessels of ships of the United States Navy and now the real trivia is two of them were little yellow fishing boats So if anyone ever asked you that it was ever a commissioned ship of the United States Navy a little yellow fishing boat two of them for about three days Thanks to you He tells it a lot better than I do so I thought I'd just let him do it. He did a great job. Thank you very much Before I close my talk, I'd like to read a short segment From chapter 4 Entitled a ride out of the war. It's it's the story of a from the Vietnamese the Vietnamese point of view a family of Vietnamese who left Saigon boarded a Chinook helicopter and headed out to sea and I'm going to tell it from their point of view the point of view of the of the son who's now in his mid 40s who was just a Five and a half year old boy at the time. This is the story as he related it to me From far off the womp womp womp of a helicopter grew louder Portending another emergency landing But as the aircraft appeared Kirk sailors grew apprehensive This was not a Huey But a twin rotor ch 47 Chinook The largest helicopter in the South Vietnamese inventory Kirk's flight deck could not accommodate this bird The diameter of the rotor disk was so great that any attempt to land would result in disaster Its rotors would hit the helicopters already stuffed alongside the hangar those trophies that I mentioned earlier and Or take out the hangar in the ship's radar amassed in superstructure with great loss of life The Chinook's epic journey out to Kirk had begun that morning in one of Saigon's residential neighborhoods Mickey Nguyen Barely seven was the son of a Vietnamese Air Force pilot major Bob Van Nguyen The boy heard the chopper approach his grandmother's house where he and his family had sought refuge The helicopter set down in a soccer field near the house blowing dust and newspapers in all directions All my dad's younger brothers and sisters were standing around surprised to see my dad land the helicopter there and pop open the door The co-pilot came out waving at us to get on the Chinook There was little time for decision-making We knew that we were to grab our bag and get on that helicopter. This was our chance Our ride out of the war all hell broke loose Mickey recalled his father saying His father also said it was the Wild West and it was every man for himself in this case instead of you and your horse You had you in your Chinook With wife and children safely aboard both rattle the engines to full power and lift it off blowing the roof off a neighbor's house with the Chinook's downdraft as I learned that learned later those family members who elected to stay behind Were forced to pay for that roof On the neighbor's house It was excitement in a lot of ways not knowing what you were going to do in the next hour let alone the next day But I felt safe with my mom and dad in my family. I Know my mom would tell a different story on the other hand being frightful for her children her baby Her daughter in her hand and another very young brother in her other hand So for her very frightful But for a young six and a half year old It was a sense of adventure and one for me will always sear in my memory as the epic moment in our family My dad said let's give it a shot We're going to head out to the Pacific Ocean I'm hearing us Navy communications out there. Let's head in that direction and let's let's see how this goes He heard first on the radio several ships and eventually saw it in the distance as Mickey remembers at the almighty. It's a word his word the almighty USS Kirk Crew members frantically waved off the pilot, but he came around for another low pass He was determined. He was gonna land on that ship This time there were anxious faces pressed against the helo's plexiglass portholes Somehow the pilot made it clear that he would hover the aircraft over Kirk's fantail So his passengers could jump to the fantail deck Mindful of his precious cargo and urgent mission You win motion for his co-pilot to open the co-pilots right-hand door Lieutenant Commander Richard McKenna who was the Kirk's executive officer called for volunteers Their tasks would be dangerous to say the least Stand beneath this massive bird with its powerful downwash Trusting its pilot to maintain his position and then catch or at least break the fall of the passengers as they jumped Now mind you many of these helicopters that had come out previously to Kirk the UH-1 Hueys These pilots had never landed on a ship in their lives The water they had seen was generally the water in rice paddies Were the Saigon River Nevertheless, Nguyen coaxed the helo perpendicularly across Kirk's fantail cockpit port and tail starboard Conscious of his aircraft's rotors He had to maintain enough height for the rotors to clear the flight deck which was a one level up from the fantail deck And yet get low enough to the fantail deck for the passengers to jump from the right door with minimal chance of serious injury Below the howling rotor-induced hurricane Kirk sailors awaited the outcome Mickey recalls my mom jumped before me and then it was my turn As I got toward the edge of the door looking down several crewmen three of four I believe all of them were their hands raising up raising high stretching out My left arm held on to a rope and eventually I remember letting go and hoping that the crewmen down there would catch me They did and it was a happy moment It was the first step of freedom stepping on the deck of the USS Kirk In the pilot seat, Bon Nguyen now prepared to execute a maneuver he had never anticipated Now that Chinook is empty everybody is off except for him The maneuver he had never anticipated or trained for was ditching at sea Bob flew a safe distance to starboard of Kirk and then using the helicopter's cyclic control between his knees He eased the helo six tires into the water With a cyclic control force trim turned on he was able to keep the huge aircraft in a stable hover While he removed his holstered pistol and struggled out of his flight suit He then swung the emergency handle on the Chinook's left side door forward 90 degrees And the panel dropped into the sea It was now or never He depressed the thumb button atop the cyclic Moved the cyclic to the far right then released the button As the Chinook suddenly jumped right Nguyen leaped from the left door into the water Struggling to thrust his body beneath the surface to escape the rotor blades Unwinded buoyancy forced him back to the surface In its death rows the helicopter resembled a whining angry beast as its rotors exploded In a fury of hurtling shards I know it's not fair to leave you hanging So I will tell you what happened next And maybe Hugh can add a little to the story because he was a witness Not only was he an eyewitness to this but he took the photographs that are in the book That actually show this whole operation going on With the Chinook crashing into the sea and exploding Well it did explode And they looked for the pilot and they didn't see anything at first All they saw was red in the water, the color red in the water They figured that was it, he was probably chopped up in the rotor blades They only found out later that was red hydraulic fluid they were looking at Suddenly a head popped to the surface and there was Nguyen swimming for his life Well there were at least a dozen members of the Kirk who leaped into the ocean To save this guy There were two rescue swimmers They even got a chance to get into the water These other guys took off their shoes and they flew into the water And the motor whale boat, they sent the motor whale boat out And it wasn't just rescuing one man but it was rescuing I believe 13 altogether They had to rescue the 12 sailors They brought him aboard, a true hero The worst injury of any of those passengers was a sprained ankle And a couple of contusions but that was it Fortunately in writing the book we found the family I know finding the Nguyen family is like finding a family of smiths over here Or a family of chins in China It's not easy to do But we did find the family, I did interview Mickey Unfortunately his father pilot Bonnewin was suffering from Alzheimer's And he couldn't speak in the interview But he and the family Bonnewin and the family did show up for that reunion in 2010 And we didn't know whether Bonnewin actually knew what was going on Because of his advanced Alzheimer's disease But when that was shown on the screen He saw his story being portrayed and he got very agitated And began making sounds And we had decided earlier, Captain Jacobson, members of the Kirk crew Had decided they were going to give Bonnewin an air medal for his heroism They couldn't give him an air medal from the U.S. Navy He wasn't in the U.S. Navy But they got their hands on an air medal And on behalf of the Kirk Association At that dinner, at that reunion in 2010 Bonnewin on signal wheeled his father to the front of the room In his wheelchair And then the citation was read Captain Jacobs And then Lieutenant Rick Sotter who was the Head of the Air Detachment aboard Kirk Ended the air medal onto Bonnewin's sport jacket And he was impassive There was no recognition on his face that he knew what was going on But then he suddenly struggled to get to his feet He motioned for his son to help him to his feet And his son helped him to his feet And he saluted There wasn't a dry eye in the house When we saw that because we knew he was there with us that night And he witnessed this He saw his story being told Unfortunately, he passed on last year He's no longer with us But the family is around And there are a good number of Vietnamese American communities That trace their origins back to this operation That's the end of my prepared remarks I'd be happy to answer any questions Or if you have any questions you'd like to direct to To Hugh Doyle, I'm sure he would be happy to answer Thank you Thank you very much Right here I'm pretty quick to turn my ignorance here Yesterday, I think the G.S. Swell that came on board the Kirk And took command, quote, unquote Who was that again? Richard Armitage Richard Armitage most recently He held several posts in the government His most recent official post was deputy secretary of state Under Colin Powell But he's had several positions in DOD also In the back You mentioned the Philippines How did they handle 30,000 Vietnamese Some entering the first step? Well, that's an interesting story As this flotilla of South Vietnamese ships And Navy ships approached the Philippine coast President Ferdinand Marcos Recognizing the new reality in Southeast Asia Said they're not coming in my country These ships are not coming in the Philippines And nor are these people coming into the Philippines Which immediately initiated an international crisis Of course, the Philippines, an ally of the United States Well, why did Ferdinand Marcos suddenly decide He didn't want to have any part of this? Well, he recognized the new reality The United States had just abandoned an ally South Vietnam Who's to say that the United States Wouldn't abandon the Philippines? And so he began making nice to the North Vietnamese He recognized the North Vietnamese government Of all of Vietnam now Not just the North But their consolidation of their power He recognized them very, very quickly And the North Vietnamese demanded those ships back Part of their fleet The spoils of war had been stolen from under their noses And they wanted them back Well, we weren't going to give them back And we certainly weren't going to send The South Vietnamese refugees back To a very uncertain, unpredictable future So some serious negotiating took place And I was able to determine who did the negotiating It was our ambassador to the Philippines William Sullivan, who was a genius He convinced Marcos He had a good relationship with Marcos He was one of Kissinger's boys, Bill Sullivan He later became ambassador to Iran Before the Iran hostage crisis took place But he had the trust of certainly the people back at state And he negotiated and he convinced Marcos And it was done within five minutes They were at a public ceremony Commemorating the fall of Corregidor in 1942 To the Japanese and he only had a few minutes And he convinced Marcos by saying Those ships had been loaned to the Vietnamese Under an agreement The South Vietnamese no longer needed those ships Could they come into the Philippines as US Navy ships And to sweeten the pot just a little further He said, I know you in the south In the Philippine Navy Have a lot of the same kinds of ships I'm sure the Navy would not object Or the US government would not object to you Incorporating those ships into the Philippine Navy Hands were shaken and the deal was The ships would come in reflags South Vietnamese flags come down US Ancestors would fly from the mast Of these ships as they came in The ships would be disarmed They would have to throw all those weapons into the sea And Q was taking some photographs Of a lot of those weapons being thrown The breach blocks of some of the larger guns Had to be disassembled and thrown into the ocean And they had to come in disarmed And under US flags and they did That doesn't answer your question What happened to the 30,000 people on these ships Some of them were immediately put aboard Transport that had of the military Seal of command or transports That had been contracted And were sent to Guam Where there was a large refugee camps Were being set up to accommodate these people Others were put on Grandi Island out in Subic for just a short time And then they were also taken to Guam So that's what happened with that Other questions, yes sir Were these all South Vietnamese or any Latin yards Or among them? No, I don't believe any of them were They may have been, we don't know The makeup of the people on the ships The first refugees that came aboard in the helicopters Were, these were upper class These were middle upper class people Who knew pilots But the people of the 30,000 We don't know exactly how many were monks Or how many were Montagnards Just don't know Yes sir? I had a friend who ended up on another island That was his friend And in a refugee camp What island that was The 10th is 1000 Well there was one on Guam also There was refugees on Guam Q? The island in the Subic Bay was Grandi Island in the middle of the bay And that's where the first stop And then on to A rotate point in Guam And from Guam Many of them went to Hickam field And the area of Hickam field in Hawaii And then on to four or five Community centers in the United States Camp Pendleton Port J.P. Arkansas Indian town Gap in Pennsylvania And two others I just can't remember I'm just trying to think back But he was on an island For quite a long time And he was extraordinary He was rescued Because a college friend He had been to Harvard A college friend of his He was also a friend of mine Saw a Boston Globe article And subsequently Pictures the paper And he saw the picture of his college friend there As a refugee Penalist on this island And actually paid for him To come back to the states He subsequently Went back to Vietnam I think two or three years later And unfortunately He helped the country Because he was a professor Reestablished himself And he ended up in a reeducation camp For five years It's kind of a sad story But he rescued the island A college friend You want to cap the laws on that? One point, he might have been All this that we're talking about Now took place in April and May 1975 But the people For ten, twelve years I was XO and Fanning years later In 1980 But many of those people In the boat people group That were going to the Philippines Over the next ten, twelve years That wasn't all of them A lot of them went the other direction Ended up going to Malaysia And there was a series of islands In Malaysia where there were camps Also under the UN auspices I suspect that They were very good circumstances No primitive That second wave Of the so called boat people These were the poorer people Who couldn't get out at the beginning But they would do anything to get out And risking their lives on these Incredibly unsee worthy craft Yes sir Do you have any idea Was there much loss of helicopters From enemy fire during this time? I'm not aware of it Well I do know that one helicopter That landed aboard Kirk And Q can talk about it It landed aboard and they wanted To refuel and go back So they took the, I guess the pile And they said why don't you go below And get something to eat We'll give you some food and what not And we'll refuel your helicopter We don't encourage you to go back But if you want to go back we'll refuel it Well when they started refueling it It looked like one of those cartoons Coming out over The tanks of the plane Probably I think they were maybe three minutes Of fuel left, well the rest of it Had flowed out through the bullet holes And there are other stories of other Helicopters that had been shot down They hadn't even gotten, they'd just taken off When the Viet Cong or whatever Fired on them and they crashed in Saigon So yes there are some incidents I can't tell you how many incidents There are but they weren't They just pulled down the building Right Yeah, well that building is not The embassy itself, a lot of people Think it is, it's a side building With that helicopter landed In a very iconic picture, yes sir Well I, Hugh was nice Enough to bring 20 videos Here, which I'll distribute This is the lucky few, the documentary Which the book came out of If there aren't enough to go around It's available on YouTube You can actually see it on your computer And the best way to get in is Just go to Google and go to USS Kirk On Google and it'll It'll route you to the link To the lucky few and you can see it That way Yes Any other questions? Well again, thank you all for coming And thank you for having me