Iowa (RI) — This week Wednesday was the fiftieth anniversary of the final day of the Vietnam Warfare.
A US Marine and Iowa native remembered the day that just about seven thousand individuals had been evacuated from the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon, as North Vietnamese troops stormed in. John Morgan was a 26-year-old Iowan flying individuals out of Vietnam by helicopter that day. Morgan says if he hadn’t helped evacuate Vietnamese and Cambodian allies, they may have been tortured and executed.
Morgan was one of many many helicopter pilots on that mission. He says he pushed down his worry so his feelings wouldn’t get in the way in which of doing the job he wanted to do.
Morgan says on a few of his journeys there have been near 100 individuals within the helicopter. Morgan says he’s grateful to be alive. In 2020, he wrote a memoir about his experiences known as, “Fly the Pleasant Skies of Cambodia and Vietnam.”
Some 115 thousand Iowans served within the Vietnam Warfare, and 868 of them died there.
(Lucia Cheng, Iowa Public Radio)
KIWA Employees Photograph
