Wednesday marked a 50th anniversary that most Americans have forgotten, and those who do remember don’t feel like celebrating.

It was on that day, April 30, 1975, that Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, fell to North Vietnamese forces, marking the end of the Vietnam War. The event concluded decades of conflict and led to the formal reunification of Vietnam under communist rule on July 2,

The nightly news showed desperate South Vietnamese civilians flooding the U.S. Embassy grounds as helicopters ferried evacuees from rooftop landings while North Vietnamese artillery fell nearby. The footage included footage of the chaotic scenes of South Vietnamese pilots ditching helicopters into the sea after dropping off passengers onto U.S. Navy vessels. Ships and aircraft were abandoned to make room for more incoming evacuees.

Americans watched on television something that always seemed impossible: a war that ended with an American defeat. It was a blow to the national psyche and the inevitable outcome for a war considered lost for half-dozen years or more. Walter Cronkite, the CBS anchor known as the most trusted man in America, pronounced the war unwinnable in 1968, a month after the Tet Offensive, which seemed to crumble the resolve of the American people.

Those disturbing images from 50 years ago came after the U.S. had essentially conceded defeat, having withdrawn its last combat troops not quite two years earlier.

By then, the horrors of a war that would cost the lives of 58,220 Americans, including the older brother of my best friend from elementary school, a helicopter pilot, had subsided. Certainly, the daily casualty reports that were once part of the nightly news had ended. The 304,000 American wounded included my across-the-street neighbor, Gary Dickerson, a Navy corpsman who lost his right arm at the elbow and mangled his left leg so badly that he walked with a cane the rest of his life.

The war dragged on, but it no longer seemed personal. The anti-war marches had ended too.

Eras don’t always fit into a neat chronological period. The ‘60s belonged to both The Everly Brothers and Led Zeppelin, after all.

As I reflect on that time, I believe the fall of Saigon and end of the Vietnam War marked the end of the 1960s – the most turbulent era in American history, with the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy and movements ranging from Civil Rights to Women’s Rights, Latino Rights and LGBT Rights. And, then there was the Vietnam War and the carnage wreaked not only in Vietnam, but also at Kent State where National Guardsmen fired on and killed four college students. LBJ chose not to run, Nixon resigned in disgrace.

If the reaction to April 30, 1975 seemed muted, it may be that Americans were just emotionally exhausted.

After the fall of Saigon, some 620,000 Vietnamese relocated to the U.S., including about 2,500 to the Mississippi Gulf Coast which allowed them to continue as fishermen. By 2010, there were 7,025 first- and second-generation Vietnamese in Mississippi. The vast majority live on the Coast. They have their own Catholic church (a religious faith brought to Vietnam during French occupation) as well as a Buddhist Temple (the nation’s traditional religion).

Biloxi’s annual Tet celebration (Vietnamese New Year) is a major cultural celebration that attracts thousands of visitors, who are treated to the best of Vietnamese cuisine, culture and art.

Fifty years ago marked the end of a war that should never have been fought.

It wasn’t the last war we could say that about, unfortunately.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].