In the vast literature about the U.S. war on Vietnam there is nothing quite like Those Who Stayed—a rare glimpse of life in Vietnam among a small group of American humanitarian workers during the months after the 1975 Communist victory. Through vivid first person accounts, Claudia Krich provides us a valuable counterpoint to the narratives and images of panicky evacuation that dominate American perceptions of the “Fall of Saigon.”

Nearly fifty years have passed, and now there is a book that tells what happened at that historic moment in Việt Nam back in April 1975. It was a moment of transition that Heaven granted to the Vietnamese. The media has long had images of Sài Gòn and Đà Nẵng, while Quảng Ngãi and the countryside remained a mystery. Thanks to Claudia Krich's Those Who Stayed that mystery has been solved. For those interested in Vietnamese history, this is a must-read.

A gripping first-hand account of life in Saigon after the American withdrawal. In intimate detail, the author shares her personal and historical story of the American War from an insider perspective. While in America little or nothing was known about what happened in Vietnam after the US pulled out, in Vietnam the end of the war signaled the beginning of peace and recovery.

In a landscape of Vietnam War literature saturated with accounts of U.S. servicemen, Krich offers a fresh account of life on the ground in Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon that handily counters popular U.S. understandings of those events.

Krich and her AFSC colleagues were among the very few Americans or Westerners who were in Saigon to witness these events. Her book is especially valuable because she was fluent in Vietnamese and interacted with a wide variety of people, including soldiers of the conquering army.. . .She recounts the scary final days of the war and frustrating dealings with newly installed and often disorganized government officials. . . .She also conveys the joys and fears of ordinary Saigonese as they face a new world: one without war and a corrupt regime but with an unknown new administration. It’s a fascinating story that is told engagingly and entertainingly.

A useful and long overdue corrective to the historical record. And it’s a good read.

For years before the end of the Vietnam War, Americans and Vietnamese were bombarded with dire warnings of a bloodbath if the communists ever won the war. But Claudia Krich was in Saigon when the war ended, and her vivid account of the following months tells a very different story. 

The story Krich tells of her experience in Vietnam is a moving one, and her insights on that time provide a unique and thought-provoking perspective about what actually happened after the Americans left.

Claudia Krich was a Quaker volunteer in a particularly dangerous province during our war in Vietnam. Speaking Vietnamese, she kept a sharp eye and a carefully detailed diary. Instead of fleeing home to the U.S. when the North took Saigon, she stayed to bring us this amazing look into that revolution.

A unique and illuminating primary source, it will be valuable to scholars who study humanitarian groups, war and society, and especially the Vietnam War and its aftermath.