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Summary

ABBOTT, GEORGE MANLOVE (1904–1988). The US consul general in Saigon from 1948 until 1950, he was born on 5 February 1904 in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Walter H. Abbott and Winifred (née Manlove). Studying at the Case School of Applied Science, he joined the US consular service, and was vice consul in Calcutta, India, 1928–29; Oslo, Norway 1930–34; and then was US consul in Marseille, France, 1938–41; and at Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1941. Serving in Paris in 1944, he was then posted to Saigon.

On 12 September 1946, Abbott met with Ho Chi Minh, and the latter mentioned his admiration for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and for his own wartime collaboration with Americans. Whilst in Vietnam, Abbott also reported on what he saw as the inevitability of a communist victory in the whole of Indochina, unless it was to be an ‘advance bastion against [the] Bolshevist tide in Southeast Asia’. He was also critical of the Elysée Accords and the special rights given to French citizens without any corresponding rights accorded to the Vietnamese. A Republican, he retired in June 1962. He died on 22 February 1988 in Morristown, Vermont.

ADAMS, EDDIE (1933–2004). The photographer who captured the famous image of the shooting of a Viet Cong agent by General Nguyen Ngoc Loan in Saigon, Eddie Adams was born on 12 June 1933 in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, and became interested in photography at high school.