As the international media descends on the city for the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, travel companies report a growing demand from returning American veterans for tours which point out the buildings and installations they once occupied. Historian Tim Doling takes us on a tour of Saigon’s most important surviving US vestiges.
You can find Part 1 of this series here.
In addition to the former MAAG and MACV buildings, the Saigon residences of the US generals who ran these two organisations have also survived intact.
The villa at 60 Võ Văn Tần (known before 1975 as 60 Trần Quý Cáp) in District 3 is said to have been built originally for a wealthy French wine importer, but it was later acquired by Prince Nguyễn Phúc Ưng Thi (1913-2001), founder of Vikimco Steel, who also built the Rex Hotel. In the late 1950s, he made the villa available to the United States of America to house its military commanders-in-chief. Thereafter it became the residence of two consecutive MAAG Chiefs – Lieutenant General Samuel T Williams (November 1955-September 1960) and Lieutenant General Lionel C McGarr (September 1960-July 1962). In 1962, when MAAG was integrated into MACV, the head of MAAG was found new lodgings at 121 Trương Định (see below), while 60 Trần Quý Cáp became home to successive MACV Chiefs, including General Paul D Harkins (February 1962-June 1964), General William C Westmoreland (June 1964-July 1968), General Creighton Abrams (July 1968-June 1972) and latterly General Frederick C Weyand (June 1972-March 1973).
The MACV chiefs' villa at 60 Võ Văn Tần.
After MACV took over the mansion at 60 Võ Văn Tần/Trần Quý Cáp, the last MAAG Chief, Major General Charles J Timmes (July 1962-May 1964) was rehoused in another grand old colonial pile, just up the road at 121 Trương Định. Originally constructed as a managerial residence for the Diethelm import-export company, this building is now in poor condition, but it is still in use as the Hoa Mai Kindergarten (Trường mầm non Hoa Mai).
Midway between those two former residences, on the east side of the Trương Định/Nguyễn Đình Chiểu street junction, stands another relic of the US presence. In the late 1960s, the down-at-heel apartment building at 218 Nguyễn Đình Chiểu (formerly 218 Phan Đình Phùng) briefly functioned as the headquarters of US Naval Support Activity Saigon (NSAS). Unfortunately its close neighbour, the former Naval Forces Việt Nam (NAVFORV) building at 117 Nguyễn Đình Chiểu, didn’t fare quite so well – it was demolished a few years back to make way for a luxury apartment block.
The former at US Naval Support Activity Saigon (NSAS) building at 218 Nguyễn Đình Chiểu.
At the outset, the United States devoted considerable resources to information and culture programs in South Việt Nam, and by the late 1950s the United States Information Service (USIS) Saigon office was one of the largest posts of its kind in the world. From 1956 to 1962, USIS Saigon was housed in the large grey building which still stands on the eastern corner of the Hai Bà Trưng/Lý Tự Trọng intersection, originally 82 Hai Bà Trưng but now designated as 37 Lý Tự Trọng. According to an American report of 1956, “The USIS occupies excellent, roomy quarters in three floors of a street corner building at a prime location in downtown Saigon, about a mile from the Embassy. It is completely air-conditioned. The facilities include a library (ground floor); 150-seat auditorium; radio studios; and film editing and recording rooms. The square footage totals 33,454.”
The former USIS building at 37 Lý Tự Trọng.
In 1962, the USIS expanded its operations, moving its administrative offices and Abraham Lincoln Library into the new Rex complex and transforming the building at 82 Hai Bà Trưng into an annex.
Built by Prince Nguyễn Phúc Ưng Thi (see above) in 1959, the Rex Hotel Complex at 141 Nguyễn Huệ was snapped up on completion by the American government. Down to 1964, it not only housed the USIS offices and Abraham Lincoln Library, but also provided hotel accommodation for many US military advisers. During this period it was also home to the first broadcasting studio of Armed Forces Radio Vietnam (AFRVN), which went on air for the first time at 6am on 15 August 1962. Two years later, AFRVN was found larger facilities at the nearby Brink Bachelor Officers’ Quarters (BOQ, see below).
The Rex Hotel.
As the insurgency got under way and it became clear that US culture and information programs had failed to win widespread support for the Ngô Đình Diệm regime, the United States began to switch to a primarily military strategy. By 1964, the Abraham Lincoln Library had been relocated to a quiet villa at 8 Lê Quý Đôn (demolished in 2010), and in the following year, as the first US combat troops set foot on Vietnamese soil, the USIS operation at the Rex was subsumed into the Joint US Public Affairs Office (JUSPAO, also incorporating the Communications Media Division of USAID Việt Nam). The annex at 82 Hai Bà Trưng was then redesignated “JUSPAO 2.” Meanwhile the Rex Hotel became a BOQ for US military personnel.
At its height in the late 1960s, the Rex complex had around 600 employees and was frequented regularly by over 450 international journalists covering the US war effort. Between 1965 and 1972, JUSPAO and the MACV Information Office jointly hosted daily press briefings for foreign correspondents, which became known as the “Five O’Clock Follies” because, according to one cynical reporter, “they seldom bore any resemblance to the facts in the field.” Initially held in a 200-seat conference room on the ground floor of the Rex, these press briefings were moved in 1969 to the National Press Center building at 15 Lê Lợi (since redeveloped as the Opera View complex) opposite the Caravelle.
During the same period, the Caravelle Hotel, also opened in 1959, became the hostelry of choice for the US media. By the late 1960s it was home to the Saigon bureaux of numerous American news agencies, including NBC, ABC, CBS, the Washington Post and the New York Times, while its rooftop bar (now Saigon Saigon Bar) famously became an unofficial “press club” to which journalists such as Walter Cronkite, Neil Sheehan and Peter Arnett would retreat in the evenings.
The Caravelle Hotel.
The Park Hyatt Saigon Hotel, located behind the Municipal Theatre, also stands on a site of historical interest. An earlier hotel, constructed on this site in the late 1950s, was acquired by the American military and later transformed into the Brink BOQ at 103 Hai Bà Trưng. A residential block for US army officers with its own mess hall and in-house bakery, Brink also became home to the studios of AFRVN from 1964 to 1967. While the BOQ building no longer exists today, a monument on the corner outside the Park Hyatt Hotel commemorates the car bombing of the Brink residence by NLF Special Forces on Christmas Eve 1964, an event which killed two and injured around 60. The Brink BOQ and its radio station were subsequently repaired, and it was from here in 1965-1966 that the real Adrian Cronauer – immortalised by Robin Williams in the Hollywood film “Good Morning, Vietnam!” – broadcast his radio programmes to American troops.
A monument outside the Park Hyatt Hotel commemorates the car bombing of the Brink residence by NLF Special Forces on Christmas Eve 1964.
The Kỳ Hoà Hotel at 238 Ba Tháng Hai (formerly 12 Trần Quốc Toản) in District 10 is another building with a fascinating story to tell. In the 1960s and early 1970s, it served as the headquarters of the Free World Military Assistance Organization (FWMAO), which housed the various country liaison offices for allied operations during the Việt Nam War. In addition to co-ordinating the activities of military personnel sent to Việt Nam by Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand, FWMAO also managed the flow of non-military (medical, transportation, construction, agriculture) support by a variety of other nations. All of the “Free World Forces” received logistical support and operational guidance from the United States Military Assistance Command Việt Nam (MACV).
The Kỳ Hoà Hotel at 238 Ba Tháng Hai in District 10, once the headquarters of the Free World Military Assistance Organization (FWMAO).
For foreigners who lived and worked here before 1975, the streets of Saigon remain a treasure trove of faded reminders of the American presence – from the old USAID buildings at District 1’s Cách mạng Tháng 8 and Nguyễn Khắc Nhu streets and District 3’s Ngô Thời Nhiệm street, to the former Pershing Field Ball Park (now the Military Zone 7 Stadium) near Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport, the so-called “Thieves’ Market” on Tôn Thất Đàm street and the numerous former BOQ and BEQ buildings dotted all over the city.
Many veterans have spent years trying to forget the horror and futility of the Việt Nam War, but tour guides report that those who have made the effort to return have found great solace in seeing for themselves just how much the country and its people have recovered and grown in the intervening years.
Tim Doling is the author of the walking tour book Exploring Hồ Chí Minh City (Nhà Xuất Bản Thế Giới, Hà Nội, 2014) and also conducts Heritage Tours of Saigon and Chợ Lớn - see www.historicvietnam.com.
