April 30 marks half a century since the official end of the Vietnam War, which killed more than three million Vietnamese and 60,000 American servicemembers over two bloody decades of fighting—and which has left a lasting impression on both nations ever since.
TIME (and its then-sister publication LIFE) covered the 20 years of conflict with a range of groundbreaking reporting and photojournalism, documenting everything from the politics and protests in Vietnam and the U.S. to scenes from the frontlines.
The Vault: See all of TIME’s Vietnam-related covers and browse our archive of print issues.
But the story didn’t end with the collapse of the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government on April 30, 1975.
Less than a week later, on May 5, TIME ran a 14-page package of stories under the print-cover headline “Hanoi’s Triumph” and the in-magazine headline “Preparing to Deal for Peace.”
It was the first of more than 10 covers and dozens of stories to look at what came—and is still to come—next.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the war’s end, below is a selection of some of that coverage to revisit.
The late Vietnamese revolutionary and politician Ho Chi Minh was depicted as “The Victor” on the May 12, 1975, cover of TIME. The issue featured 14 stories about Ho’s ultimate triumph, Henry Kissinger’s failure, the exodus from Saigon, and the arrival of refugees to the U.S.
The cover story of the March 5, 1979, issue of TIME focused on the Sino-Vietnamese border conflict, with sidebars on ‘The Military Balance’ between China and Vietnam as well as ‘Hard Times for Hanoi,’ about the economic and agricultural struggle that continued in North Vietnam.
The July 13, 1981, issue of TIME focused on Vietnam veterans, with a cover story by Lance Morrow titled ‘The Forgotten Warriors’ and two sidebars about specific vets Bobby Muller and William Corson.
The April 15, 1985, issue of TIME featured a special section of eight essays to mark the 10th anniversary of the war’s end, including ‘Hush, Timmy – This Is Like a Church’ by Kurt Andersen on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
The January 26, 1987, issue of TIME featured a cover story by Richard Corliss on the Vietnam War film Platoon as well as sidebars about the film’s director Oliver Stone and technical adviser Dale Dye, both Vietnam War veterans.
For the 15th anniversary of the war’s end, TIME published a package of stories in the April 30, 1990, issue, including a cover story by Paul Witteman, ‘Vietnam: A War on Poverty’ by William Stewart, and ‘Vietnam: Still A Killing Field’ by Stanley Cloud, as well as an interview with Vietnam’s Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach.
For the 20th anniversary of the war’s end, TIME published a package of stories in the April 24, 1995, issue, under the banner ‘Re-Examining a Wound That Won’t Heal.’ The package included reports on the final 10 days in Saigon by George J. Church, Vietnam’s struggle toward capitalism by Frank Gibney Jr., and ‘Lessons from the Lost War’ by Bruce W. Nelan, as well as an essay by writer and veteran Tobias Wolff.
For Memorial Day on May 29, 2000, TIME published a cover story by historian Douglas Brinkley about correspondence from soldiers, including in Vietnam, who never made it back, as well as an essay by Roger Rosenblatt called ‘How We Remember’ about war memorials, including the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
The cover story of the May 7, 2001, issue of TIME focused on former Senator Bob Kerrey’s war record controversy, with sidebars: ‘Veterans’ Forum,’ which asked other prominent Vietnam vets to weigh in, and ‘When Hell Visited the Village,’ which reported from Thanh Phong. The issue also included an accompanying essay by Stanley Karnow called ‘Lost Inside the Machine’ about “the paranoia of soldiers trapped in an unwinnable war.”
More from TIME.com:
Martha Ann Overland reported from Da Nang in December 2009 on the U.S.’s slow attempts to begin addressing the legacy of Agent Orange and its continuing impact on Vietnamese people living near dioxin hot spots.
David Stout profiled American veteran Chuck Searcy’s work on demining programs in Vietnam in September 2014.
In April 2015, Hannah Beech reported on how Vietnam has changed as a country in the four decades since the war’s end, and TIME published a photo essay by Vietnamese photographer Maika Elan and another photo essay of LIFE photos that “captured the human side of the Vietnam War.”
In September 2017—as Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s widely acclaimed 18-hour, 10-part docu-series The Vietnam War was released—Lily Rothman wrote about the music that came out of the war, and historian Jon Meacham reflected on the experiences of his father and other veterans in an essay titled ‘My Father’s Vietnam.’ TIME also asked Vietnam war photographers and the people they lived and worked with about the photographs from the war that moved them most, and Gary Jones wrote about Nguyễn Thị Tròn, the young Vietnamese girl who was the subject of famed photographs by Larry Burrows for LIFE.
In January 2018, Meacham penned another essay, this time about 1968, writing of the pivotal year for America in which the U.S. was still mired in the Vietnam War that “we are still living in its shadow.”
Peter Ross Range recalled in March 2018 what it was like covering for TIME the trial of William Calley, an officer convicted of the murder of 22 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians in the 1968 My Lai massacre.
In a November 2018 essay, writer Viet Thanh Nguyen reflected on his heritage as he and his family fled Vietnam for the U.S. in 1975.
In June 2020, as Spike Lee released his film Da 5 Bloods, Andrew R. Chow and Josiah Bates reported on “the real injustices” that Black veterans of the Vietnam War faced.
Novelist Jamie Jo Hoang wrote an essay in August 2023 about finding “Viet joy” as a form of honoring and not forgetting the suffering endured in the war.
Miranda Jeyaretnam and Chad de Guzman reported on April 30, 2025, for the 50th anniversary of the war’s end, on how President Donald Trump is undermining U.S.-Vietnam reconciliation.
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