Word: saigon
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...Danang appeared to be returning to normalcy. Stores were open and cinemas were operating, featuring such Hanoi potboilers as The Revered Flag and Battlefield in Quang Due. North and South Vietnamese currencies were both in circulation, but the black-market value of Hanoi's dong increased daily against Saigon's piaster. Looters sold rice from government storehouses and motorbikes and boats left behind by those who had fled. Such enterprise stopped abruptly when Communist soldiers shot ten looters and led others away with hands bound...
Once public services have been completely restored in captured areas, Communist cadres are expected to begin methodically identifying and bringing to trial "traitors" who were closely identified with the Saigon government. Ironically, among the first "criminals" rounded up in the captured provinces were some South Vietnamese soldiers who had profiteered by selling U.S. military equipment to the Viet Cong. But ordinary soldiers were apparently not being punished. Instead they were required only to write "confessions" as part of a mass indoctrination program that included compulsory public rallies for civilians and, as schools reopened, the replacement of some textbooks...
Efforts to control and classify the population in some areas are already well along. In Danang, Communist officials have instituted a system of color-coded identity cards. People under investigation on suspicion of upper-level ties to Saigon were given dark red cards. Police and lesser suspects got light red cards. Girls, young men and laborers were issued yellow cards. Those over 50 who were not under suspicion received white cards. White-carders can travel anywhere within the Communist zone, while yellow-carders require a 48-hour wait for permission. Red-carders are forbidden to travel at all. The populace...
...appeared that the conquering forces intend to avoid mass punishments. For one thing, this time they mean to stay, and consolidation of their hold will be easier if they enjoy the support of the population. For another, reports of widespread cruelty might stampede those in areas still held by Saigon into panicky flight, thus blocking the roads for oncoming Communist forces...
...children who claimed they had at least one living parent. Interviewer Nhu Miller talked to a twelve-year-old boy and his two sisters who said their parents had been persuaded by nuns to turn them over to an orphanage. The children, who survived the C-5A crash near Saigon that killed 200 persons early this month, arrived in San Francisco and were destined to be separated and sent to three different European countries. Susan Shaffer, a volunteer in the Presidio's immigration room, found that most children being processed were accompanied by only the spottiest documentation...