Ralph's Friend Comments

Yikes, Getting Out of Saigon gets a starred review on Kirkus:

GETTING OUT OF SAIGON
HOW A 27-YEAR-OLD BANKER SAVED 113 VIETNAMESE CIVILIANS
BY RALPH WHITE ‧ RELEASE DATE: APRIL 4, 2023

A retired banker makes his memoir debut with a unique, gripping story from the Vietnam War.

As the final days of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War sputtered to their ignominious end, White, age 27, was told by his boss at Chase Manhattan that he was being transferred from Bangkok to Saigon, where his job would be to close the branch and ensure the safety of the top-level Vietnamese employees. “I had a primitive affection for Saigon,” he writes, imagining that he would be “following in the footsteps of Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, Joseph Conrad.” But when he arrived in April 1975, he learned that all 53 employees would be executed when the North Vietnamese took the city—not if, but when. Matters were seriously complicated by the fact that the delusional American ambassador to South Vietnam, Graham Martin, was making it nearly impossible to arrange evacuations. Lucky for the Vietnamese employees of Chase, White's "basic view was that if you thought you couldn’t do something, you were probably right, whereas if you thought that you could, you stood a decent chance of pulling it off." He set his mind to getting the employees and their families—113 people—to safety, even if he had to steal a plane to do it. "I was a guy who struggled to resist an idea once it lodged in my mind,” he writes. “Whether it was buying something, doing something, going somewhere, or drinking something, I was anxious until I bought it, did it, went there, or drank it." As he chronicles how he built his rescue plan and navigated the streets of the city with a briefcase containing a revolver and $25,000 in cash, White's persona seems like something out of a Terry Southern or Ian Fleming novel—as does his writing.

White tells his inspiring story with wit, panache, humility, and a captivating sense of time and place. A fantastic read.

The original publication date for my book Getting Out of Saigon was to have been June 18, 2022, but supply chain issues disrupted that plan and now the publication date is scheduled for April 4, 2023.

There's a silver lining in the delay. I've been able to establish contact with many of the Vietnamese I rescued during the fall of Saigon. We've now had three reunions, and I've been invited for Christmas dinner with one family.

Thanks, Publishers Weekly for a great review:

Getting Out of Saigon: How a 27-Year-Old Banker Saved 113 Vietnamese Civilians
Ralph White. Simon & Schuster, $28.99 (320p) ISBN 978-1-982195-17-5

In this stirring debut, White recounts his extraordinary mission rescuing civilians during the fall of South Vietnam. An American, 27-year-old White was assigned in February 1975 as an entry-level corporate banking officer at Chase Manhattan’s Bangkok branch. But, as he reveals, his career took a significant turn when, two months later, he was assigned to work in Saigon. As the North Vietnamese army began to close in on the city, White was charged with the increasingly fraught task of ensuring the safety of the bank’s employees. In a propulsive and suspenseful narrative, he recalls the lengths that he went to do so, battling American bureaucracy to get the branch’s Vietnamese workers out of the city and past allies who were “shooting suspected deserters.” With the help of diplomats running a clandestine rescue operation “behind the ambassador’s back,” White was able to commandeer an abandoned cargo plane and save over 100 Vietnamese lives. What he modestly refers to as his 15 minutes of fame is made more resonant by his deep humanity, as when he writes that “more than refugees, employees, staff,” the people he rescued “were my families.” Admirers of Antonio Mendez’s Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History will be hooked.

I recently read some great books about the fall of Saigon. Last Men Out, Drury and Clavin. Black April, George Veith, Honorable Exit, Thurston Clarke, Decent Interval, Frank Snepp. Happy to have my book, Getting Out of Saigon, next to theirs.