As 5000 Americans, mostly civilians, pulled out of Saigon, President Ford made the decision to evacuate almost 6,000 Vietnamese as well . Later he explained: “I did it because the people would have been killed otherwise and I'm proud I did it. It was a question of saving as many lives as could be saved.”
Altogether 45,000 Vietnamese were evacuated from the war-torn country prior to the Communist capture of Saigon. Several thousand of these were flown by South Vietnamese pilots to Utapao Air Base in Thailand.