Giving Ford credit where credit is due on Vietnam

In the Jan. 3 issue of the Bangor Daily News it was good to see President Gerald Ford recognized for his generosity toward Indochinese refugees and doubly gratifying that the words of appreciation were from a former refugee from Vietnam.

I was at the State Department in 1975 as it became clear that the U.S.-backed governments in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos were doomed. When the gravity and scope of the refugee problem became evident, Gerald Ford never hesitated. His administration quietly put together an evacuation effort and obtained from a largely uninterested Congress parole authority to admit up to 150,000 refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia.

By April 30, 1975, when the last helicopter flew off the U.S. Embassy roof, about 125,000 refugees had been airlifted to U.S. military facilities in the Philippines, Guam and elsewhere, even several thousand to tiny Wake Island in the middle of the Pacific. A vast system was then established to move the refugees forward to the U.S. through a number of intermediate camps set up in various parts of the country from the U.S. Marine base at Camp Pendleton across to Fort Chafee in Arkansas.

The message from the Gerald Ford White House to all of us working on the evacuation was to resettle the refugees well and quickly. But nobody really knew how the American public would react to so many refugees, from a then-exotic part of the world and an unpopular war.

The American public came through with flying colors. I can recall a banner on a local Baptist Church near the entrance to Fort Chafee outside of Fort Smith, Arkansas, welcoming the Vietnamese refugees in their own language. I knew then that the refugees would be made to feel at home and not scorned.

Nevertheless, the political risks to President Ford would remain until the last camp was closed successfully and we – like the president used to say about himself – “worked like hell” to get this done.

But as we worked, refugees continued to flee to Thailand and other countries of the region.

After an assessment of the situation there, we decided that history would not judge us kindly if we closed the evacuation program, leaving refugees stranded in Thailand and elsewhere in the region.

It would have been easy and politically expedient to close the program after the last U.S. resettlement camp closed by Christmas 1975. Instead, without hesitation, as recommended by Julia Taft, the director of the Interagency Task Force, the Gerald Ford White House approved the use of the remaining authority for the evacuation of 150,000 Indochinese to resettle the 11,000 more refugees from the region-in effect the transition to a refugee program which ultimately saw 1.5 million Indochinese refugees resettled around the world- about two-thirds in the U.S.

Gerald Ford never sought personal credit for his generous approach to our allies in the Indochina War, but he did the right thing and many lndochinese-Amercans are weaving a distinguished record of success into the American tapestry, as well-exemplified by Mr. Quang X. Pham, former U.S. Marine pilot, businessman and author. Gerald Ford would be very proud.

Lionel A. Rosenblatt lives in Bucksport.