>> the curfew in baltimore isnow back in effect and we're waiting to see what transpires after another day of protest. i'm antonio mora and you're watching al jazeera america, for the second night people in blower are being told to go home. a show of support 60 miles away in the nation's capital. a crowd of demonstrators marched

to make short speeches. also demonstrators marched in other cities, in new york city, in union square, and other cities, others gathered in a park in boston, police walked with the protesters as they moved through roxbury blocking them from streets. paul beban is in baltimore tonight and paul, 24 hours ago there were a few stragglers at this hour but there were a lot more protesters out in the street this evening compared to yesterday. have they cleared out? >> reporter: antonio actually, things have -- the situation here at the intersection of pennsylvania and north has changed dramatically just in the past few minutes. just as the curfew went into effect you could hear that chopper overhead telling people to go home. there was a scuffle in the street just a few minutes ago

between demonstrators there was a bit of a scuffle sort of move down the street here, we saw a smoke grenade or flash grenade. riot police with shields at the ready, one group to the left, another to the right tactical vehicles. the worst fears are being realized that we're going to see another night of confrontations here. it looks again as if -- oh, we've got elijah cummings coming out to try calm things down. the situation quite a bit more volatile than it was just a couple of minutes ago antonio. >> hopefully the congressman can calm things down. paul thank you. hundreds are marching with what's going on in baltimore. melissa chan in times square, what have you seen from the streets of new york tonight?

>> reporter: toint we started antonio, we started out in union square, we didn't see numbers, but definitely a sizable crowd and then people started marching. you have different marches in different parts of the city. right now we are in times square. i don't know how clearly can you see, there are protesters behind us they have been chanting black lives matter. we have talked to protesters asking them why they came out a lot of them were out here in december in the post-ferguson and death of eric garner case, they say they're coming out again, some people feel they are participating in an historic moment here in the united states, meaning this is a pivotal moment. >> melissa i know -- >> i look on tv there's another innocent black father son student person that quite frankly looks like me, being killed or being reported as

unjustly handled in some way. i couldn't stay at home. >> vie son who is 15 and also black and i just don't want to see him get killed with all these changes happen. >> reporter: and we do expect these protests to continue for a couple more hours antonio. >> thanks melissa. i'm be back with the situation in a half an hour. maintain iis up next. >> on "america tonight", the longest journey to save the youngest lives. >> we are going 270 knots. and when we touched down we touched down in a rice paddy. just fallow fields but i'd left the gear behind, which broke up the integrity of the cargo department where most of the kids were. >> the turbulent and tragic stories of those final days. also in our special look back.

>> during the last day we played god. we determined who would be safety and who wouldn't. and it was heart-rending. we separated families in a wink because we hadn't planned adequately. >> "america tonight's" michael okwu on the tough choices and the consequences 40 years after the fall of saigon. >> thank you for joining us, i'm joie chen. tonight a special look at a moment in time seared in the memories of many americans but one that 40th years later is slipping into the history books. to many vietnamese who survived it was known as black april as communist forces fled in, to force the fall of saigon. and many fled for their lives. one of the last to get out an american who tells "america

tonight's" michael okwu who says of the days he could never forget. >> the i had to beat the vietnamese out of the way so i could get into the chopper. it arced up and i could see on the edge of the city, 140,000 north vietnamese troops moving in with the lights on. >> reporter: the final moments before the fall of saigon. seared forever into the memory of frank snap, one of the last americans to leave vietnam. ♪ i'm dreaming of a white christmas ♪ >> bing cross crosby's holiday classic blared on the radio.

it was secret code for code wind the biggest operation of its time. fearless pilots flew over 600 flights, air lifting more than 6,000 people out that day including 900 from the u.s. embassy alone. as word got out that the americans were leaving thousands of south vietnam vietnamese swarmed the gates many worked directly for the u.s. mission in vietnam and were considered high risk. >> during the last day we played god. we determined who would be saved and who wouldn't. and it was heart-rending. would you get one person from the family, but not the child not the mother not the father. we separated families in a wink because we hadn't planned adequately. >> reporter: it was every man woman and child for themselves. this footage taken by british television crew showing just how

crazed those final moments were. >> the embassy gates were closed and we like the frightened vietnamese and their families had to fight and claw their way up and we did claw and we did fight. and if it wasn't for one single american marine whose name i didn't have the time or chance to discover we would never have climbed our way to our evacuation. >> reporter: it's estimate they'd close to 800,000 vietnamese fled their home land as a direct result of the war. many of those refugees settled right here in orange county, california where some 200,000 200,000 vietnamese americans lived around the neighboring cities of garden grove and westminster aka little saigon. it is a location that frank snap the central intelligence agency's former chief strategist in vietnam rarely visitors

despite the fact he livers just an hour away. >> what's it like being here in little saigon? >> i feel as though i'm in a hall of ghosts. i look around at these faces and i'm always unconsciously trying to identify somebody i know. a face, an expression, a smile. >> reporter: so you're looking for someone who might not have had a chance to say good-bye to? >> i'm always saying good-bye to the memory that i carry with me. >> reporter: what specifically hurts you the most? >> the opportunities to rescue people to help people out. we could have done it. and we so often failed in that. >> a failure snap believes the state department and the u.s. embassy could have prevented. the fall of saigon had been coming for months. but u.s. ambassador graham martin wouldn't even talk about

a possible evacuation. >> we've been seeing scenes of people fighting their way onto choppers for a month. we had a human tsunami rolling south towards saigon. that in the last two months of the war. so the scenes of the last day had become terribly terribly familiar and unfortunately there would be -- there would be more of them. >> reporter: the launch of operation frequent wind catch the operations in saigon by surprise? >> graham martin never thought that day would come. he was the ambassador in vietnam. he had convinced himself the communists would accept a negotiated settlement to the latest hostilities. but he simply had not considered that the war would ever be lost. how could he? graham martin was a cold warrior

in the old stripe. he had lost an adopted son in vietnam. it wasn't in his constitution to admit the war was finished. he would not surrender to the godless commune is. >> reporter: but the communists were intent ops on taking saigon. pounded south vietnamese targets, around the clock. the violent barrage cleared the way to clear key cities lie hue and danang. obliterated half of the south vietnamese army. >> i flew into the embattled areas soon after the worst began to happen and i saw the south vietnamese army retreat into the sea throwing away its yurms. ituniforms. it was a horrible sight.

bad leadership, on president tu's part was what led to that route. >> the north viet snam ease vietnamese army had surrounded saigon. they had to protect their life's work. >> what did you do about all the sensitive equipment documents et cetera that were in the embassy? >> on the last day we had done so little to get rid of classified material that we were basically running the incinerators on the roof all the time. and what that meant was building itself, the embassy was shaking all the time because the incinerators were going they were burning tons and tons of classified material. and during the hours of -- early hours of the last mortgage we began using thermite grenades,

to destroyed nsa's documents on the third floor using thermal grenades to blow them up. >> but despite their best efforts they couldn't blow them all up. revealing sensitive documents had been left behind in the rush to leave viet flam, he insisted the cia's local operatives were named in the files leaving them vulnerable to arrest or worse. >> how many lives do you think were lost as a deregulate result of the documents captured by the north viet flam vietnamese? >> we don't know how many were killed. they were concentration camps many worked with us in the cia were treatextremely harshly. it is futile to determine the numbers, one vietnamese lost because we left one secret behind is all you need to know

about betrayal. >> it is a sense of bee trailed betrayal had a has haunted frank snap for decades. wung wound deeper than the others. >> in those final hours this vietnamese woman who claimed to have had my child and showed up out of nowhere after months and months of my not seeing her told me that i had to get her out and that if i didn't get her out she would kill herself. i said look i've got to do something for the ambassador, call me back in an hour or so. >> what makes you think she did in fact kill herself? >> when she called back, i missed her call. i missed her call. and it is my fear that she killed herself and that child. >> when you look back on this moment as i imagine you have

done countless times, do you believe there is something you ought to have done differently? >> i should have grabbed the ambassador by the neck and said, will you start an evacuation? will you start the planning at least for one! but i was a good southern boy. i had good manners. and i sat on my anger. and i think about that all the bloody time. if only i had had the guts to say to the ambassador, get going, sir! we got all the information we need. i didn't do that. i am haunted by my failure to do that to this day. >> reporter: 40 years after the fall of saigon, frank snap spends a lot of time here at these bluffs looking out at the

pacific, exercising the demondaysdemonshe brought home from the war. >> 40 years ago the waters washed over the terrible images i brought with me and began to soothe me, beginning of the healing process. so i come here. to be reminded that there was an end to the horror. >> reporter: so this is solace? >> this is a moment away from vietnam. >> michael okwu, al jazeera, los angeles. >> next, they rose trt cries i offrom thecries of the final days. sarah hoye, the flight that changes changed her life

forever. >> three years ago i found out i was on the plane. >> what was that like? >> devastating disbelief. >> thursday night a deeper look at the unrest in baltimore and what led to it. "america tonight's" adam may with a man who says he heard freddy gray's screams. led away with police. thursday on "america tonight". n "america tonight".

>> the fall of saigon was for many the first step to a new beginning. but the youngest survivors of those difficult days faced a long and in many cases controversial journey to their new likes of. because in the darkest days a desperate effort known as operation baby lift brought together 30 military flights more than 5,000 volunteers as well trying as "america tonight's" sarah hoye found to save lives. >> i have directed that money from a $2 million special foreign aid children's fund be made available. >> mr. ford announced an air lift to the united states from vietnam. >> that air lift would become operation baby lift. an operation in which 3,000 very young children many of them orphans were air lifted out of

south vietnam just after the fall of saigon on april 30th, 1975. many to be adopted by american families. >> i did not know at the time that gerald ford himself an orphan by the way had decided to air lift some of the victims out of viet flam. >> bud schrader was authorized to fly some of the orphans outside of vietnam. he had no idea he would be carrying orphans in his cargo hold. his survivor instinct came in to play. >> what we needed were blankets and pillows and orange juice and all that stuff. >> more than 300 people on board. 12 minutes into the flight, at 22,000 feet, disaster struck.

the locks on the plane's rear loading ramp failed. >> the locks all broke. the ramp dipped into the slipstream, ripped off and when it did it broke the back of the pressure door. the trouble was when the door went through tail, it took all of the flight control cables. >> trainer had very little control of the monster cargo plane but he and hi co-pilot managed to turn the c-5 around for emergency landing down at tan son nut. >> we touched down on a rice paddy. but it broke up where the kids were basically all died just a handful survived. >> 138 died, including 78

children. to get an idea what it would have felt like in the belly of the cargo plane we traveled to travis air force base, we complete up with captain garrett martin a c-5 cargo pilot. >> tell me where we are. >> we're down in the cargo hold of the c-5 m galaxy. as you can see we can carry a vast amount of cargo. >> so where are we in the plane now? >> so now we're in the aft part of the cargo compartment, this is the aft ramp where it blew off. >> hypothetically what would lap if you are at say 22,000 feet and this blows open? >> when that came off they lost two of the four hydraulic systems which made the plane almost unflyable. >> in short it was

catastrophic. >> catastrophic. >> if anyone survived it was a miracle. >> slum miracle. >> laura price was one of the survivors. like most baby lift adoptees, laura was air lifted out of saigon with almost no papers, with basically no papers of her birth parents. >> three year ago i found out i was on the plane. >> what was that like hearing that? >> devastating disbelief. it was -- i mean not that you want to be part of a plane crash. sounds really odd. but i did want that to be part of my history because that is what i grew up believing. i went to vietnam and i cried at

the plane crash side. for what i thought happened to me and visualized this trauma and it was -- it was hard. and then you find out guess what? that is not part of your history at all. >> just turned out beautifully. >> the crash was also traumatic for laura's adoptive mother, laura olmstead who took two years filling out paper work to adopt a baby from vietnam. >> when the crash happened, i.t. was like i'm not going to get a baby now. all those beabd died. >> devastated, loretta believed her chances for adopting from vietnam, were gone. two weeks later her baby girl was waiting in a denver hospital. loretta and her husband jumped at the chance to get the girl, just a pr stunt carefully

orchestrated 50 white house. >> i know they -- orchestrated by the white house. >> i do know when gerald ford met the plane in the presidio, i know in the confusion of war some things happened that made people uncomfortable. but in the long run it was wonderful to have those children come here. it was saving those kids that we didn't know what their future was going to be like. >> loretta was determined to give her daughter the life she deserved. a six month old baby girl nicknamed principle says. princess. >> what was life like growing up? >> it was all i'm the daughter not the friend. if there was a blond kid it was no i'm her kid. what does the mother look like? i'm definitely her daughter.

>> for laura life hasn't always been filled with unconditional love and acceptance. >> did you ever want to be someone else and kind of wrestle with that? >> i think racial thing didn't happen until more later as an adult. because you know when i walk into get a pedicure or something like that, so are you vietnamese? yes i am. well how come you don't know your language? >> i was getting my nails done one time, sorry sorry to bring up that stereotype and i was so proud you know my daughter is vietnamese. i showed her a picture and she said she's mixed. it was the first time i'd experience they'd. >> laura says over the years she's become more comfortable in her skin. she's embraced her vietnamese heritage. laura recently ventured back to her home land, a journey she says was birth sweet.

>> first week i was a wreck it was laughing and crying, latching and crying. landing was cheerful. the first thing i thought was my mother could be down there somewhere, somewhere. >> it was a reality in the journey of discovery she's determined to continue, one that brought her here to the presidio in san francisco for an expedition commemorating the 40 years of the air lift. volunteers who made the operation a success. for the first time laura and her mother met sister mary nell gauge, a nun that was at the orphanage in saigon. >> laura is an established blues singer in san francisco.

>> what's one song that represents you? >> there's a song, i'm a fire and let me burn if you love me let me burn. >> that's emotional why? >> i feel like when i'm singing that to maybe a vietnam vet i'm hoping that maybe he can let some of these ghosts go. i want to help these guys if i can. and women. if i can. and so maybe if they listen to my music they can let things go. >> sarah hoye, al jazeera, half moon bay california. >> a song and a voice to remember. that's our special look at the fall of saigon 40 years later. tell us what you think. at aljazeera.com/americatonight. talk to us