Operation Passage to Freedom was a term used by the United States Navy to describe the propaganda effort and the assistance in transporting in 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communistNorth Vietnam (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) to non-communist South Vietnam (the State of Vietnam, later to become the Republic of Vietnam) between the years 1954 and 1955. The French and other countries may have transported a further 500,000. In the wake of the French defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the Geneva Accords of 1954 decided the fate of French Indochina after eight years of war between the French Union forces and the Viet Minh, which fought for Vietnamese independence under communist rule. The accords resulted in the partition of Vietnam at the 17th parallel north, with Ho Chi Minh's communist Viet Minh in control of the north and the French-backed State of Vietnam in the south. The agreements allowed a 300-day period of grace, ending on May 18, 1955, in which people could move freely between the two Vietnams before the border was sealed. The partition was intended to be temporary, pending elections in 1956 to reunify the country under a national government. Between 600,000 and one million people moved south, including more than 200,000 French citizens and soldiers in the French army while between 14,000 and 45,000 civilians and approximately 100,000 Viet Minh fighters moved in the opposite direction.
The 1954–1955 Great Migration of Northerners was facilitated primarily by the French Air Force and Navy. American naval vessels supplemented the French in evacuating northerners to Saigon, the southern capital. The operation was accompanied by a large humanitarian relief effort, bankrolled mainly by the United States government in an attempt to absorb a large tent city of refugees that had sprung up outside Saigon. For the US, the migration was a public relations coup, generating wide coverage of the flight of Vietnamese from the perceived oppression of communism to the "free world" in the south. The period was marked by a Central Intelligence Agency-backed propaganda campaign on behalf of South Vietnam's Roman Catholic Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem. The campaign was usually viewed to exhort Catholics to flee "impending religious persecution" under communism, and around 60% of the north's 1.14 million Catholics immigrated. The Viet Minh also tried to forcefully prevent would-be refugees from leaving, especially in rural areas where there were no French or American military forces. (Full article...)
Image 1Wooden doors in the Imperial palace in Huế, Vietnam
Image 2Dong Ho painting is a line of Vietnamese folk painting originating in Đông Hồ village (Song Hồ commune, Thuận Thành District, Bắc Ninh Province.
Image 13Hanging fishing nets in the Cu Đê River, just before it merges with Da Nang Bay
Image 14Water puppetry, lit. "Making puppets dance on water") is a tradition that dates back as far as the 11th century when it originated in the villages of the Red River Delta area of northern Vietnam.
... that Don Luce led a group of Americans to a secret part of a South Vietnamese prison where inmates were kept in squalor in what were called "tiger cages"?
... that Charles Larson became one of the first Americans to teach African literature, after working in Nigeria for the Peace Corps to avoid the Vietnam draft?
... that Nothgottes, a pilgrimage destination in the Rheingau since the 14th century, is a monastery of Cistercians from Vietnam?
... that Lài dogs were instrumental in the Vietnamese Lam Sơn uprising against Ming China in 1418–1428?
Image 9A lantern procession during Tết Trung Thu in Vietnam, which is also celebrated as "Children's Festival". (from Culture of Vietnam)
Image 1019th-century manuscript of "Mysterious tales of the Southern Realm" (Lĩnh Nam chích quái), a copy of 15th-century original tale. (from Culture of Vietnam)
Image 12Vietnamese calligraphy depicting people on a boat, the calligraphy says, "Thuyền nhân" (from Culture of Vietnam)
Image 13A Kinh Vietnamese woman with blackened teeth. (from Culture of Vietnam)
Image 14A trio of Vietnamese musicians performing together. The man on the far left plays kèn đám ma, the man in the middle plays the đàn nhị and the man on the right plays the trống chầu. (from Culture of Vietnam)