The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2023

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2023 55 The Real Heroes in Getting Out of Saigon U.S. FOREIGN SERVICE OFFICERS D.Z. Stone is a journalist and author. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times and Newsday . A young banker’s firsthand account of the unofficial evacuation when Saigon fell. BY D. Z . STONE R alph White, author of the recently published memoir, Getting Out of Saigon: How a 27-Year-Old Ameri- can Banker Saved 113 Vietnamese Civilians (Simon & Schuster, 2023), noticeably flinches when asked if he considers himself a hero. “The heroes,” White says, “were the Foreign Service officers [FSOs] who defied U.S. policy and their delusional ambassador, risking their careers and their own lives to evacuate thousands of at-risk Vietnamese who had worked for Americans. The only Vietnamese officially allowed to leave the country were intelligence assets and depen- dents of Americans.” Indeed, if White had not chanced upon a clandestine evacu- ation program operated out of the U.S. embassy by a small group of FSOs without Ambassador GrahamMartin’s knowledge, he never would have found a way out for the entire Chase Manhat- tan Bank Saigon staff and their families—113 people. “What’s FEATURE interesting,” White notes, “is that getting everyone out was never part of my mission.” During an evening-long conversation, I asked Ralph White about his Saigon experience. Remarkably, I had first met White more than 20 years ago at Columbia University and never had a clue until recently that he had saved these people. A Temporary Assignment White’s Saigon assignment began in mid-April 1975, just two weeks before the fall of the city, when he was an entry-level banking officer with Chase in Bangkok. Asked to temporarily head up the Saigon branch, this young man from a small New England town who enjoyed scuba diving, riding motorcycles, and piloting small planes welcomed the stint as an adventure. “I already knew the country and spoke some Vietnamese, thanks to my first job out of college, a year managing the American Express Bank on a military base in Pleiku.” White would replace Cornelius “Cor” Termijn, Chase Saigon’s country manager. Termijn was leaving while there were still daily Pan Am flights out. He feared if he stayed too long, his Dutch passport made it less likely the U.S. embassy would help him evacuate. White was tasked with keeping the Chase Saigon branch open for as long as possible and to close it only if necessary: “I was told if I had to close, I was to contact the embassy for help in getting the four top bank officers and their families out of the