The TV Column

PBS, AETN look at divisive events of '70, '75

A CIA employee (probably O.B. Harnage) helps Vietnamese evacuees onto an Air America helicopter from the top of 22 Gia Long Street, a half mile from the U.S. Embassy. (Copyright Bettmann/Corbis / AP Images)
A CIA employee (probably O.B. Harnage) helps Vietnamese evacuees onto an Air America helicopter from the top of 22 Gia Long Street, a half mile from the U.S. Embassy. (Copyright Bettmann/Corbis / AP Images)

Viewers about my age are in for an unsettling flashback tonight -- back to a dark time in our youth.

It begins with "Ohio" and Neil Young's haunting lyrics:

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,

We're finally on our own.

This summer I hear the drumming,

Four dead in Ohio.

The tale behind the song is told in the PBS documentary The Day the '60s Died airing at 7 p.m. today on AETN

For those not around, or who have forgotten, it was April 30, 1970, when President Richard Nixon announced that U.S. troops were invading Cambodia. The shock waves rumbled across the land.

At many college campuses, students took to the streets in protest. Five days later in Ohio, four Kent State University students were shot dead by National Guardsmen.

The special notes, "The mayhem that followed has been called the most divisive moment in American history since the Civil War."

The Day the '60s Died chronicles the chaotic month "when it seemed America was at war with itself. The young against the old. Conservatives against radicals. Radicals against themselves. The government against its citizens, and citizens against the government."

The story is told by the people who were there: students and guardsmen involved in the campus shootings, young soldiers fighting in the Cambodian jungle, construction workers battling anti-war demonstrators on Wall Street, survivors of the May 15 police shootings at Jackson State College in Mississippi, and staff of the Nixon administration.

"During May 1970," the special notes, "frustration and anger split American society apart, and we still live in the aftermath of that rift."

Goodbye, Vietnam. The Day the '60s Died is followed at 8 p.m. on AETN with the two-hour documentary American Experience: Last Days in Vietnam. It's set almost five years to the month after the events at Kent State.

Unlike May 1970, I was far more cognizant of what was going on in April 1975. By then, I had finished my tour of duty in the Air Force (including a stint in Bangkok and remote, up-country Thailand) and started graduate school in Fayetteville. The haunting images I saw on the news from Saigon looked like people with whom I had served. It hit close to home.

Last Days in Vietnam comes from Emmy-winning director/producer Rory Kennedy. The 46-year-old Kennedy is the youngest child of Bobby and Ethel Kennedy, and was born six months after her father was assassinated.

Kennedy's films cover a variety of topics, including poverty, politics and human rights. Last Days in Vietnam was nominated for a 2014 Academy Award for Documentary Feature.

As the title suggests, Last Days in Vietnam chronicles the chaotic final days as South Vietnamese resistance crumbled and the North Vietnamese Army closed in on Saigon.

With a communist victory inevitable and the U.S. preparing to withdraw, U.S. diplomats and military operatives still in Saigon faced a moral dilemma -- follow policy and evacuate only Americans and their dependents, or ignore orders and save allies, co-workers and friends who faced imprisonment or possibly death when the North Vietnamese arrived.

Risking their careers, a handful of individuals engaged in makeshift operations in desperate efforts to evacuate as many South Vietnamese as possible.

"When we conceived of this film three years ago, we knew it was a powerful story of individual acts of courage set against a background of chaos," said American Experience Executive Producer Mark Samuels. "But we didn't know how relevant it would prove to be."

On April 29, 1975, the Saigon airport was attacked, forcing an immediate evacuation. Most of the action on that final, fateful day took place at the besieged U.S. Embassy, where thousands of South Vietnamese hoping to secure a last-minute evacuation scaled the walls.

The photos from that day form some of the most iconic of the entire Vietnam experience.

Heads up. The three-part HBO miniseries The Casual Vacancy premieres at 7 p.m. Wednesday with the first two parts. Part 3 follows at the same time Thursday.

The miniseries is based on the best-selling 2012 novel of the same title by J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter series) and deals with a seemingly idyllic English town whose dirty laundry is aired following the sudden death of a member of the Parish Council.

Fair warning: Rowling isn't in Hogwarts with this adult fare. Themes include politics, class and serious social issues such as drugs, prostitution and rape.

The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email:

mstorey@arkansasonline.com

Style on 04/28/2015

Upcoming Events