About this item
The gripping and remarkable true story of author Ralph White's desperate effort to save the entire staff of the Saigon branch of Chase Manhattan bank and their families before the city fell to the North Vietnamese Army.In April 1975, Ralph White was asked by his boss to transfer from the Bangkok branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank to the Saigon Branch. He was tasked with closing the branch if and when it appeared that Saigon would fall to the North Vietnamese army and ensure the safety of the senior Vietnamese employees. But when he arrived, he realized the situation in Saigon was far more perilous than he had imagined. The senior staff members there urged him to evacuate the entire staff of the branch and their families, which was far more than he was authorized to do.
About the Author
In his first two years after college, Ralph White managed branches of the American Express International Banking Corporation in Okinawa and Vietnam under contract with the U.S. Treasury. In 1973 White joined The Chase Manhattan Bank and, following a yearlong training program in New York, worked as a business development officer in Chase branches in Thailand and Hong Kong. During his stint in Thailand, he was temporarily assigned to Vietnam to close the bank's Saigon branch during the fall of Saigon, for which he was awarded the organization's highest honor: Chase's President's Award. Upon return to Chase's New York headquarters in 1981 he worked in the International Strategic Planning Division. At the time he left Chase he was a vice president. Over the next twenty years, White enjoyed a rewarding career as a business development officer with three foreign banks, while also finding the time to earn an MBA at Columbia University. He completed his career as a senior vice president in financial engineering at Marsh and McLennan Securities. On April 1, 2001, White was turned down for an internal transfer within Marsh which would have put him on the 93rd floor of World Trade Center, Tower One. Four months later, on September 11, everyone in that office was killed, including the officer who got the job for which White was turned down. He lost five friends that day. The incident precipitated an epiphany and White resolved to change the trajectory of his life. In 2009 he founded the Columbia Fiction Foundry, a shared interest group and writing workshop under Columbia University's Office of Alumni and Development. After serving as the organization's president for its first decade, White continues to serve as its chairman. He is the author of Getting Out of Saigon, published by Simon and Schuster on April 4, 2022. The book describes the author's rescue of the Vietnamese employees of the Saigon Branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank during the fall of Saigon in 1975. He is the author of Litchfield, a local history including 200 vintage photographs of his Connecticut hometown, published in 2011 in Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series. Mr. White lives in New York City and Litchfield, Connecticut. He is single and childless - unless you count the 113 Vietnamese refugees he adopted and brought to America during the fall of Saigon in 1975.
