22 Gia Long Street

Photo location

The image was widely misreported as showing Americans crowding on to the roof of the United States Embassy to board a helicopter. In reality, the apartment complex, then called the Pittman Apartments, housed employees of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), with its top floor reserved for the Central Intelligence Agency's deputy chief of station; the embassy was located at 4 Thống Nhứt Boulevard (now Lê Duẩn Boulevard), about 950 m to the north-northeast.

The frequent misunderstanding of what the photograph shows stems from a change made to the photograph's caption at the Tokyo office of United Press International (UPI). Although the photographer van Es submitted the photo to UPI with an accurate caption, UPI's Tokyo office changed the caption so it falsely read: "A U.S. helicopter evacuating employees of the U.S. embassy." Although van Es repeatedly attempted to correct the error, his efforts were "futile" and he eventually "gave up." Thus, as van Es has explained, "[O]ne of the best known images of the Vietnam War shows something other than what almost everyone thinks it does."

Aftermath

At the end of the war, Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, and Gia Long Street (named for the emperor Gia Long, reigned 1802–1820) was renamed Lý Tự Trọng Street, in honor of a 17-year-old communist executed by the French. Visitors are allowed access to the roof by taking the elevator to the 9th floor.

As the 2021 Taliban offensive led to the Fall of Kabul, reporters drew comparisons between the evacuation at 22 Gia Long Street to images of helicopter evacuations from the U.S. embassy in Kabul. The BBC continued to misreport the photo as showing the US Embassy, later changed to "CIA station".

References

References

1. (15 May 2009). "Hubert Van Es, Photojournalist, Is Dead at 67". The New York Times.
2. (23 April 2000). "The World; Getting It Wrong in a Photo". The New York Times.
3. (29 April 2005). "Thirty Years at 300 Millimeters". The New York Times.
4. Bradley, James. (2015). "The China mirage: the hidden history of American disaster in Asia". Little, Brown and Company.
5. "Rash Report: In Kabul, shadows of Saigon". [[Star Tribune]].
6. (15 August 2021). "Editorial: President Biden's Saigon moment". [[Boston Herald]].
7. "Kabul evacuations 'sequel to humiliating fall of Saigon in 1975'". [[Al Jazeera English.
8. (17 August 2021). "Why is the Taliban's Kabul victory being compared to the fall of Saigon?". BBC News.