You might have seen the famous photo of a U.S. helicopter incongruously perched atop the roof of a Saigon building, with people lined up on a sloping ladder, backlit by the sky, hoping to board. The image illustrates the final hours of the evacuation of U.S. citizens, South Vietnamese allies and others from what was then South Vietnam on the day its capital, Saigon, fell to the North Vietnamese army and its allies at the end of the Vietnam War.
When so many were scrambling to leave, a few Americans chose to stay. Claudia Krich, a retired teacher who lives in Davis, was among them. Her journal of the experience is the basis of her new book, Those Who Stayed / A Vietnam Diary. She went to Vietnam in 1973 to work in a medical relief program. On today’s Davisville she talks about why she stayed when Saigon surrendered, her experiences in Vietnam, and what she saw that day. She’ll talk about her experience at the Davis library at 6 p.m. April 30, exactly 50 years after the end of the war.
