30 years

This week marks 30 years since the fall of Saigon and the media is focusing some of their attention to cover the anniversary. Two articles appeared in Sunday's Washington Post (free registration required): 30 Years Later, Immigrants Shed Vietnam War's Burdens and Vietnamese in U.S. Take Stock of Community. Two travel articles appeared in Sunday's New York Times (free registration required): A Former Enemy Rolls Out the Welcome Mat and Going to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). This evening, PBS reaired a 1983 documentary on American Experience, Vietnam: A Television History, Episode 11: The Fall of Saigon. Two other documentaries aired on American Experience in the past that I enjoyed were Daughter from Danang, about an Amerasian adoptee's quest to find her birth mother in Vietnam and Return with Honor, which tells the story of American prisoners of war in North Vietnam.

On a related, but more personal note, the 30th anniversary of the end of the war also marks 30 years since my parents arrived here in the states from Saigon.