Word: saigon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Foreign Minister Vuong Van Bac accused China of landing military personnel and civilians and raising its flag on Duncan Island in the Paracels. Bac declared that the Chinese action was "a sudden challenge" to South Viet Nam's sovereignty over the islands, and pointed out that Saigon has maintained a meteorological station on neighboring Pattie Island for decades. The South Vietnamese government ordered two of its 2,800-ton coastal cutters and four smaller ships to the Paracels to shadow a Chinese flotilla of seven ships including Komar-class gunboats equipped with Russian-made Styx surface-to-surface missiles...
Chinese and Vietnamese naval ships exchanged fire for the next 48 hours. The Chinese flotilla was supported by MIG warplanes based on Hainan Island 200 miles to the north. At least one Vietnamese ship was sunk, and 122 Vietnamese were killed or captured. Although Saigon claims to have sunk two Chinese ships (Peking has refused comment), all Vietnamese were driven from the Paracels and Saigon Radio admitted defeat...
Peking insists that its legal right to the Paracels dates back 2,000 years, to the Han dynasty. Saigon traces its claim back to the reign of Vietnamese Emperor Gia Long at the beginning of the 19th century. Whatever the legalities. Western analysts were surprised that China regarded the Paracels as important enough to warrant the use of arms, especially when Peking has been portraying itself as a peaceful member of the Asian community. Certainly neither the guano deposits nor swallows' nests nor tortoise shells nor edible sea slugs that constitute the islands' sole resources could have prompted...
...country was chaotic. Frances FitzGerald was in Saigon the same time that I was. The city was all confusion. Americans were every where and stuck together, meeting only other Americans and those Vietnamese who, for one reason or another, were compelled to deal with our self-sufficient and insulated enclaves...
...Saigon's population tripled in ten years. Refugees poured into the city, pushing its edges outward every year and straining the capacities of a pre-industrial urban center to the breaking point. The city had a huge, white presidential palace at its center and rows of homes made entirely of flattened Budweiser beer cans on its outskirts...