In a Saigon school, orphans are cared for and rounded up before their departure for the United States in April 1975 during Operation “Babylift.” Credit – Jean-Claude Francolon/GAMMA—Getty Images
The Vietnam War technically ended 50 years ago when the communist North Vietnamese captured Saigon in the U.S.-supported South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. But the war didn’t feel like it was over for American and Vietnamese people on the ground. The U.S.’s withdrawal from Vietnam caused turmoil and long-lasting psychological effects.
Turning Point: The Vietnam War, a documentary series out on Netflix, focuses on the human costs of what was America’s longest war at the time (1955-1975) through interviews with U.S. veterans, Vietnamese survivors, recordings of U.S. presidents analyzing the state of play, and never-before-seen CBS News footage. An estimated 58,220 Americans and more than a million Vietnamese died.
Over and over again, American presidents said they were simply trying to prevent South Vietnam from being taken over by the communists, arguing that if it did, there would be no hope for democracy in Asia. But as the war went on, the roadmap to winning the war became less clear-cut.
“There wasn’t a clear enemy,” director Brian Knappenberger tells TIME. “Were they there to stop communism? Were they there to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people? A lot of the veterans that we talk to say they often felt like they were just trying to survive.”
Over five episodes, Turning Point examines some of the most horrifying moments of the Vietnam War and how its consequences are still felt today.
Drug use among U.S. soldiers
In Turning Point, U.S. veterans open up about using drugs while serving in Vietnam.
Marijuana was plentiful. They were able to get their hands on opium in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The series includes footage of a CBS News correspondent Ed Rabel reporting on a congressional investigation that found 10-15% of all U.S. troops were using heroin.
“A lot of veterans we interviewed turned to heavy drug use to sort of deal with the day-to-day life of war and what they were seeing,” says Knappenberger. “They came home with those addictions, which lasted many years after the war and some almost never got over it. It destroyed a lot of people’s lives and the lives of their families.”
“I started to smoke marijuana every day all day to mask, hide the pain and the fear,” Dennis Clark Brazil, U.S. Army veteran, says in the doc.
Eldson J. McGhee, another U.S. Army veteran, says that when doctors stopped giving him morphine for an injury, he became addicted to heroin. “It completely ruined my life.”
Drug testing in the military became more routine after Vietnam.
U.S. soldiers killed their bosses on purpose
In what’s known as fragging, some disillusioned American soldiers killed or attempted to kill their officers. Fragging is slang for the M67 fragmentation hand grenade that sends tiny metal fragments in all directions. In the series, CBS News correspondent Jed Duvall is seen holding the M67 fragmentation hand grenade during a TV news segment.
There were some 90 instances of “fragging” in the U.S. Marine Corps and 600-800 instances in the U.S. Army during the war, carried out by soldiers as a form of retaliation.
U.S. Marine veteran Mike Nakayama says in the series that a pot of money was collected and given to whoever killed an officer.
While Nakayama was in Vietnam, an explosive was put under a sergeant’s tent, killing the man, and three soldiers split the pot of money.
“You can kind of call it justice,” Nakayama said.
The torture of South Vietnamese people
After the fall of Saigon, the new communist government sent hundreds of thousands of former Vietnamese soldiers who helped the American cause in some way to re-education camps.
At these prison-like facilities, detainees were separated from their families and subjected to starvation, beatings, and disease. The re-education camp’s goal was to “brainwash and force us to do hard labor work,” Chung Tu Buu, a detainee who had been a prisoner of war for about 14 years, says in Turning Point.
The filmmakers interviewed some men who were in the re-education camps, as well as a woman who lost her husband in a camp.
South Vietnamese journalist Vu Thanh Thuy said her husband was sent to a re-education camp and she had to take care of their two-month-old baby all by herself. “I thought about committing suicide during those days,” she says in the series. Her husband escaped from the camp, and a priest hid him in a church, part of an underground movement of South Vietnamese people. They were reunited and managed to flee the country in 1979.
“The re-education camps…with harsh conditions, I do not hesitate to say this was one serious mistake that we made,” Ton Nu Thi Ninh, former Vice Chair of Foreign Affairs of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, says in the series.
The tragic Operation Babylift plane crash
This year also marks fifty years since a tragedy: Operation Babylift, a humanitarian mission designed to evacuate Vietnamese orphans to the United States, went awry when a cargo plane carrying hundreds of infants and toddlers crashed shortly after takeoff on April 4, 1975, in one of the worst civilian airplane disasters in history. About 50 adults and 78 infants died, plus 35 American military personnel.
Turning Point features the recollections of the crash from a survivor of Operation Babylift, Jennifer Kruse, a South Vietnamese orphan who was adopted by American parents. Growing up, Kruse said she was always told that she was put on that plane because her mother wanted her to have a better life. During the war, it was common for U.S. soldiers to impregnate Vietnamese women, and some of those children were on the plane, in the hopes that they would face less discrimination in the U.S.
Kruse remembers seeing smoke as she was floating on some type of debris. Her last memory of Vietnam is “floating on that debris, looking out…I kind of just blacked out. I have no memory of my rescue. My next memory would be in America.”
Write to Olivia B. Waxman at Turning Point: The Vietnam War&body=https%3A%2F%2Ftime.com%2F7281781%2Fturning-point-vietnam-war-netflix%2F” data-ylk=”slk:olivia.waxman@time.com;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas” class=”link rapid-noclick-resp”>olivia.waxman@time.com.
