22 Gia Long Street
22 Gia Long Street, now 22 Lý Tự Trọng Street, is an apartment building in Ho Chi Minh City, then called Saigon, that became an icon of the Fall of Saigon when chosen as an assembly point for Operation Frequent Wind in 1975. A Dutch photographer, Hubert van Es, working for UPI, took a photograph that captured the last chaotic days of the Vietnam War, which many people believed showed desperate Americans crowding on to the roof of the United States Embassy to board a helicopter.[1] The building in fact was an apartment building that 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 photo depicts an Air America Huey helicopter landing on the roof of the elevator shaft to evacuate employees of the U.S. government as North Vietnamese Army troops entered Saigon.[1]
The current address is 22 Lý Tự Trọng Street (named after Lý Tự Trọng, a 17-year-old communist executed by the French) and visitors are allowed access to the roof by taking the elevator to the 9th floor.
Notes
- 1 2 The World; getting it wrong in a photo, New York Times Archive
External links
- Los Angeles Times, May 15, 2009
- dead link: Bangkok 2002 Reunion Photo Gallery (Van Es is pictured)
- dead link: "Thirty Years at 300 Millimeters" (Written by Van Es)
Coordinates: 10°46′42″N 106°42′05″E / 10.778276°N 106.70138°E