Word: guam
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Under pressure from the Philippine government, the U.S. had reduced the number of refugees it was sending to Clark and designated Guam as the premier staging area in the Pacific. Worse still, Philippine officials threatened that they would arrest South Vietnamese military and government officials who were expected to arrive there at week's end aboard U.S. naval vessels: whether the Filipinos would choose to enter a U.S. base to do so remained uncertain. At the same time, U.S. authorities were coping with disgruntled American evacuees who did not fancy their lodgings and were impatient to be on their...
...operation was a logistical nightmare, particularly on Guam. In one night, Navy personnel transformed a tangle of spiky tangantangan trees and underbrush into what one poor speller christened "Camp Fourtuitous," the beginnings of a temporary settlement which may house up to 40,000 evacuees. When the first group arrived at 6 a.m., tents were in place and four-holer lavatories were set up. In succeeding nights, Seabees installed lights, field kitchens, showers and running water...
Among the first Vietnamese evacuees on Guam were old men and women, rambling, extended families and former U.S. Government employees. Last week a new and jaunty type appeared for the first time: flight-suited Vietnamese air force officers who had fled with their planes, their wives, children and cousins. Colonel The Ban Huu squeezed two passengers into the second seat of his A-37 fighter and headed for Thailand. Colonel Dang Duy Lac, a transport pilot, somehow piled 200 passengers into his C-130 for the flight to Utapao. Lieut. Tring Thiet Thach, 24, who escaped from Danang two months...
...folklore of the evacuation had it that a conspicuous number of bar girls had also succeeded in escaping from Saigon, and last week there was a rumor that a group of prostitutes had managed to set up an informal teahouse in the evacuation camp on Guam. The reports may or may not prove out, but they tended to obscure the fact that the majority of refugees represented the middle class or the privileged elite of South Vietnamese society, the ones with foreign educations and foreign employers. A few were even rich. A volunteer worker at Camp Fourtuitous told Correspondent Aikman...
...first the big bottleneck in the process had been immigration. But last week the 80 immigration officers and clerks flown to Guam were working 12-to 16-hour shifts, processing 3,000 Vietnamese a day. By week's end 17,000 refugees had been cleared and were flown to the U.S. mainland...