Frantic images show thousands of frightened people storming the gates of the American Embassy, desperately trying to get out before the communists arrive. It was the end of the war and the beginning of a new era on both sides of the globe.
Today, Saigon, renamed Ho Chi Minh City, is constant frenetic energy. The first thing you'll notice is the astounding 6 million motorbikes swarming on its crowded streets.
Ho Chi Minh City has exploded since the fall of Saigon in 1975. Eleven million people now live in this metropolitan area, which is the economic capital of Vietnam. People work hard for their money for an average income of about $2,000 per person.
Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Nick Ut is famous in Vietnam. Although he now lives in Los Angeles and regularly meets with old friends from the war, the people of Vietnam still know him for the "Napalm Girl" photo. Its portrayal of the innocent victims of war is credited with shortening a conflict that was already being called unwinnable.
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"Their struggle with the North Vietnamese was turned into a stalemate," said journalist Peter Arnett. "There was no military solution to Vietnam."
America got out and Saigon fell. Ut remembers escaping to a refugee center at Camp Pendleton.
"When I was there, I don't believe it. I see so many people," Ut said. "Like 30,000 people, everywhere."
There were so many Vietnamese, they called it Little Saigon.
"They all worried about what their family do there, but they're happy coming to the United States," Ut said.
George Lewis was a war correspondent and covered the camp.
VIDEO: Little Saigon residents march down streets for 40th anniversary of fall of Saigon
"I was just struck by the sheer numbers of people at Pendleton," Lewis said. "I just remember them as being very hopeful while they were living in this kind of squalor of the tent camps."
With that hopefulness, they trickled into society.
I met Lewis and Arnett in Westminster. It was in Westminster, in 1975, that many from that camp started over, establishing their own thriving community, becoming the permanent Little Saigon.
"It's astounding. It's the perfect illustration of the American dream. These people have thrived and prospered here," Lewis said.
"I'm so happy to see in Little Saigon, everyone is Vietnamese. There's good business. Their children are doctors and lawyers, everything," Ut said.
Four decades later, communities on both sides of the globe are thriving. But as Kim Phuc, that little girl in Ut's famous photo with clothes burned off her body, will tell you, it doesn't diminish how much the war still hurts.
"I was 9 years old, now you know how old I am, but I still suffer with that pain. It's not finished yet," Phuc said. "I think that we have to learn from the war that no one wins."
Phuc is one of the few known survivors of Napalm and now lectures around the world about war's innocent victims.
There are now 200,000 Vietnamese-Americans living in Little Saigon and almost 500,000 in Southern California. Two communities, on opposite sides of the globe, changed forever.