Operation Passage to Freedom was a term used by the United States Navy to describe the propaganda effort and the assistance in transporting 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist North 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 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.
The migration was conventionally supposed to boost the Catholic power base of Diem; whereas the majority of Vietnam's Catholics previously lived in the north, now most were in the south. Fearing a communist victory, Diem cancelled the elections. Believing the newly arrived Catholics to be a bastion of solid anti-communist support, Diem supposedly treated the new constituents as a special interest group. In the long run, the northern Catholics never fully integrated into Southern society and Diem's alleged favouritism toward them were often thought to cause tension that culminated in the Buddhist crisis of 1963, which ended with his downfall and assassination. In fact, Catholics moving to the South were foremost the active agents of their own lives, not because of the CIA or Ngô Đình Diệm's efforts. About 25% of the migrants were non-Catholic and a number of Catholics who moved to the South did not do so because of their religion. Northern Catholic émigrés actually brought complex challenges to the Church in South Vietnam, and Ngô Đình Diệm also did not resettle northern Catholics in and around Sài Gòn as a deliberate and strategic policy. As Vietnamese Catholics were far from monolithic, and were not in any way unified in their political stances, it is a myth to conflate "Catholic refugees with all Catholics, with all refugees or with staunch supporters of Ngô Đình Diệm". In reality, the Personalist Revolution under Diệm's regime promoted religious freedom and diversity to oppose communism's atheism. However, this framework itself ultimately enabled Buddhist activists to threaten the state that supported their religious liberty.
Operation Passage to Freedom was a term used by the United States Navy to describe the propaganda effort and the assistance in transporting 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist North 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 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.
The migration was conventionally supposed to boost the Catholic power base of Diem; whereas the majority of Vietnam's Catholics previously lived in the north, now most were in the south. Fearing a communist victory, Diem cancelled the elections. Believing the newly arrived Catholics to be a bastion of solid anti-communist support, Diem supposedly treated the new constituents as a special interest group. In the long run, the northern Catholics never fully integrated into Southern society and Diem's alleged favouritism toward them were often thought to cause tension that culminated in the Buddhist crisis of 1963, which ended with his downfall and assassination. In fact, Catholics moving to the South were foremost the active agents of their own lives, not because of the CIA or Ngô Đình Diệm's efforts. About 25% of the migrants were non-Catholic and a number of Catholics who moved to the South did not do so because of their religion. Northern Catholic émigrés actually brought complex challenges to the Church in South Vietnam, and Ngô Đình Diệm also did not resettle northern Catholics in and around Sài Gòn as a deliberate and strategic policy. As Vietnamese Catholics were far from monolithic, and were not in any way unified in their political stances, it is a myth to conflate "Catholic refugees with all Catholics, with all refugees or with staunch supporters of Ngô Đình Diệm". In reality, the Personalist Revolution under Diệm's regime promoted religious freedom and diversity to oppose communism's atheism. However, this framework itself ultimately enabled Buddhist activists to threaten the state that supported their religious liberty.
Background
At the end of World War II, the Viet Minh had proclaimed independence under the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in September 1945. This occurred after the withdrawal of Imperial Japan, which had seized control of French Indochina during World War II. The military struggle restarted in November 1946 when France attempted to reassert control over Indochina with an attack on the northern port city of Haiphong. The DRV was recognised by the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (PRC), while the western powers recognised the French-backed State of Vietnam, nominally led by Emperor Bảo Đại, but with a French-trained Vietnamese National Army (VNA) which was loyal to the French Union forces. In May 1954, after eight years of fighting, the French were surrounded and defeated in a mountainous northern fortress at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. France's withdrawal from Indochina was finalised in the Geneva Accords of July 1954, after two months of negotiations between Ho's DRV, France, the PRC and the Soviet Union. Under the terms of the agreement, Vietnam was temporarily divided at the 17th parallel north pending elections in 1956 to choose a national government that would administer a reunified country.
The communist Viet Minh were left in control of North Vietnam, while the State of Vietnam controlled the south. French Union forces would gradually withdraw from Vietnam as the situation stabilised. Both Vietnamese sides were unsatisfied with the outcome at Geneva; Ngo Dinh Diem, Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam, denounced France's agreement and ordered his delegation not to sign. He stated "We cannot recognise the seizure by Soviet China . . . of over half of our national territory" and that "We can neither concur in the brutal enslavement of millions of compatriots". North Vietnamese Prime Minister Phạm Văn Đồng expressed bitterness after his Soviet and Chinese backers threatened to cut support if he did not agree to the peace terms; Dong had wanted to press home the Viet Minh's military advantage so they could lay claim to more territory at the negotiating table.
Under the accords, there was to be a period in which free civilian movement was allowed between the two zones, whereas military forces were compelled to relocate to their respective sides. All French Far East Expeditionary Corps and VNA forces in the north were to be evacuated south of the 17th parallel, while all Viet Minh fighters had to relocate to the north. The accords stipulated that civilians were to be given the opportunity to move to their preferred half of Vietnam. Article 14(d) of the accords stated that:
Any civilians residing in a district controlled by one party who wish to go and live in the zone assigned to the other party shall be permitted and helped to do so.
Article 14(d) allowed for a 300-day period of free movement between the two Vietnams, ending on May 18, 1955. The parties had given little thought to the logistics of the population resettlement during the negotiations at Geneva, and assumed the matter would be minor. Despite claiming that his northern compatriots had been "enslaved", Diem expected no more than 10,000 refugees. General Paul Ely, the French Commissioner-General of Indochina, expected that around 30,000 landlords and business executives would move south and proclaimed that he would take responsibility for transporting any Vietnamese who wanted to move to territory controlled by the French Union, such as South Vietnam. French Prime MinisterPierre Mendès France and his government had planned to provide aid for around 50,000 displaced persons. Mendes-France was sure that the FFEEC would be able to handle the work all by itself. The Americans saw the period as an opportunity to weaken the communist north.
Evacuation
The predictions made by Diem and Ely were extremely inaccurate. There had been heavy fighting in northern Vietnam, where the Vietminh were at their strongest, and many people had been forced to abandon their homes. Although French charities had been operating in the north, the refugee camps were disorganised and were able to provide little more than shelter. As a result, there was a great number of northerners who wanted to leave and start a new life in the south.
The French started their evacuation with their pre-conceived notion that few would want to head south. As knowledge of the migration program spread through the communist-controlled north, thousands of predominantly northern Catholic asylum-seekers descended on the capital Hanoi and the port of Haiphong, both of which were still in French control. This led to anarchy and confusion as the emigrants fought over limited shelter, food, medicine and places on the ships and planes that were bound for the south. By early August, there were over 200,000 evacuees waiting in Hanoi and Haiphong. Initially the ad hoc camps had insufficient sanitation and water quality control, leading to the possibility of outbreaks of disease. Some American representatives said that they were the worst conditions they had seen, with open sewers of human waste frequented by rodents, vermin and flies a common sight. The conditions continued to be poor and chaotic after the evacuation got into full swing, and did not improve significantly for a month. There was no organization infrastructure as far as registration or medical records and immunization of the waiting evacuees. The communists thus sent their propaganda activists through the camps and said that the lack of organisation proved that life for prospective refugees would be even worse in the south, where they would be completely under the control of South Vietnam.
The French Navy and Air Force had been depleted during World War II. They were unable to deal with the unexpectedly large number of refugees. This was exacerbated by their unwillingness to allow civilian evacuees to travel on trains from outlying districts to Hanoi and Haiphong, as their priority was evacuating their military personnel and equipment. France asked Washington for assistance, so the US Department of Defense ordered the US Navy to mobilise an evacuation task force.
The American government saw the evacuation as an opportunity to weaken the communists by providing for and thereby winning the loyalty of the refugees to the anti-communist cause. The United States Operation Mission proposed that aside from helping to evacuate refugees to the south and thereby draining the communist population base, the Americans should provide free healthcare, shelter, food and clothing in order to help the anti-communists win the fidelity of their compatriots. Another benefit of participating in the evacuation was that American personnel would be on the ground in North Vietnam, allowing them to gather intelligence on communist activities.
Accordingly, Task Force 90 (CTF-90) was inaugurated under the command of Rear Admiral Lorenzo Sabin. US servicemen renovated and transformed cargo vessels and tank carriers to house the thousands of Vietnamese who would be evacuated in them. The repairs were frequently done en route to Haiphong from their bases at Subic Bay in the Philippines. Sabin had no prior involvement in humanitarian matters, and he and his staff prepared Operation Order 2–54—the 114-page policy framework for the operation—in the space of a week during their sea voyage from Japan to Vietnam.
The first US vessel to participate in the mass evacuation was the Menard, which left Haiphong on August 17. It carried 1,924 refugees for a 1,600 kilometre, three-day journey to the southern capital. By this time, there were already 132,000 people registered at the waiting areas, although very few had any identification. As a result, there would be more work to be done in identifying their needs once they arrived in the south. The Montrose followed on the next day, with 2,100 passengers. Both were originally built as attack transport vessels. In August, the US policy was liberalised so that Vietnamese and French military personnel could also be evacuated at the discretion of CTF-90 and the Chief Military Assistance Advisory Group (CHMAAG). To cope with the rising volume of southbound sea transport, CHMAAG established a refugee debarkation site at Vũng Tàu, a coastal port at the entrance of the Saigon River. This site relieved congestion in the Saigon refugee camps and decreased the traffic bottlenecks along the river. A setback occurred when a typhoon struck the Haiphong area, destroying almost half of the refugee staging area. Despite the problems, by September 3, the US Navy had evacuated 47,000 northerners after only two weeks of operations. The high rate of evacuation caused the South Vietnamese government to order that only one shipment of at most 2,500 passengers was to arrive in Saigon or Vũng Tàu per day, until September 25. The population pressure in the south was eased as incoming numbers fell due to Viet Minh propaganda campaigns and forcible detention, combined with the rice harvesting season, which had prompted some to delay their departure. Some were even waiting to finish all their business deals before moving in the Lunar New Year. On October 10, the Viet Minh were given full control of Hanoi, closing off one point of evacuation for those who wanted out. Some also decided to stay behind and see how the Viet Minh would treat the inhabitants of Hanoi before making a decision on whether to leave their ancestral lands. On October 20, the French authorities that were still in control of the ports decided to waive docking fees on US vessels engaged in the evacuation. Because of the high demand, the naval vessels had to travel quickly; one ship completed one round trip in a record of only six days. The record for the most passengers taken in one journey was set by the USS General Black, which sailed on October 29 with 5,224 Vietnamese aboard. In November, the evacuation was further hampered by another typhoon, while the entire crew of one American vessel were struck down by a scabies outbreak. In December, because of Viet Minh obstruction, which prevented people from rural and regional areas from travelling to Hanoi and Haiphong to emigrate, the French Navy sent ships to hover just off the coast near the regional town of Vinh to evacuate refugees.