The Fall of Saigon....

30 years ago to the day, Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam fell to the forces of the North Vietnamese Army, marking the end of almost three decades of war in South East Asia.

It was estimated that approximately 1.1 million North Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong guerillas and 2 million Vietnamese civilians died from 1954 to 1975. 58,226 Americans were also killed.

Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in honor of the Communist Party leader who led the Viet Minh independence movement.

While the Vietnam war was, more or less, another front for the United States in the Cold War versus the Soviet Union and the spread of communism, the Vietnamese people were fighting a war of independence. It was perhaps the inability of the United States to recognize this fact which may have ultimately led to the victory of the North Vietnamese forces.

In the aftermath of the war, the United States Congress has curtailed the power of the President to wage war via the War Powers Resolution of 1973. The country as a whole has also learned the difficulties...perhaps even the impossibility of winning a war without the popular support of its citizens.

Thirty years of conflict in Vietnam have ravaged the lives of its inhabitants, created losses in families from all sides, and left much of Vietnam in ruin, but the determination and spirit of the Vietnamese people have remained strong. While the country has for the most part rebuilt itself, the healing process still continues to this day...for both sides who fought the war.