Operation Passage to Freedom

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Around a million refugees left the communist North Vietnam during Operation Passage to Freedom after the country was partitioned.

Operation Passage to Freedom was the term used by the United States Navy to describe the mass exodus of Vietnamese from the communist North Vietnam (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) to South Vietnam (the State of Vietnam, later to become the Republic of Vietnam). 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 French Union forces and the Viet Minh, which sought Vietnamese independence. The accords resulted in the partition of Vietnam at the 17th parallel, 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 800,000 and one million northerners fled communist rule, while a much smaller number of Viet Minh fighters moved north.

The mass emigration 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, primarily bankrolled by the United States 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 under American auspices. The period was marked by a CIA-backed propaganda campaign on behalf of South Vietnam’s Catholic Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem. The campaign exhorted Catholics to flee impending religious persecution under communism, and around 60% of the north's 1.5 million Catholics obliged. The migration boosted the Catholic power base of Diem; whereas the majority of Vietnam’s Catholics previously lived in the north, they were now in the south. The campaign was intended to strengthen the population of the south in preparation for the reunification elections. Fearing a communist victory, Diem cancelled the elections. Believing the northern Catholics to be a bastion of solid anti-communist support, Diem proceeded to treat his new constituents as a special interest group. In the long run, the northern Catholics never fully integrated into southern society and Diem's favoritism toward them caused tension that culminated in the Buddhist crisis of 1963, which ended with the downfall and assassination of the South Vietnamese leader.

[edit] Background

Main articles: First Indochina War and Geneva Conference (1954)

At the end of World War II, Ho Chi Minh and his 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 the French colony during World War II. The military struggle started in November 1946 when France attempted to reassert control over Indochina with an attack on the northern Vietnamese port city of Haiphong.^[1] The DRV was diplomatically recognised by the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (PRC). On the other hand, the western powers recognised the French-backed State of Vietnam, nominally led by Emperor Bao Dai, 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.^[2] 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 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.^[3] 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".^[4] North Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong 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.^[4]

Under the accords, there was to be a 300-day 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.^[5] 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.^[5]

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, assuming that the matter would be minor. Despite claiming that his northern compatriots had been "enslaved",^[5] Diem expected no more than 10,000 refugees. General Paul Ely, the French Commissioner-General of Indochina, expected that around 30,000 landlords and businessmen 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 Minister Pierre Mendes-France and his government had planned to provide aid for around 50,000 displaced persons. The Americans saw the period as an opportunity to weaken the communist north.^[5]

[edit] Evacuation

Vietnamese refugees move from a French landing ship to the USS Montague during Operation Passage to Freedom in August 1954.

The predictions made by Diem and Ely were extremely inaccurate. 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.^[5]

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. France asked Washington for assistance, so the US Department of Defense ordered the US Navy to mobilise an evacuation task force. 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.^[5]

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. 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).^[6] To cope with the rising volume of southbound sea transport, CHMAAG established a refugee debarkation site at Vung Tau, 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.^[7] 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 Vung Tau 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. 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.^[8]

USS Menard, the first American ship to participate in the naval evacuation

According to COMIGAL,^[9] the South Vietnamese government agency responsible for the migration, French aircraft made 4,280 trips, carrying a total of 213,635 refugees. A total of 555,037 passengers were recorded on 505 sea trips. The French Navy accounted for the vast majority of the naval evacuees, with 388 voyages, while the US Navy made 109. British, Taiwanese and Polish ships made two, two and four journeys respectively. The official figures reported that a total of 768,672 people had migrated under military supervision. The official figures recorded that more than 109,000 people journeyed into the south by their own means, some arriving outside the 300-day period. These people typically crossed the river that divided the zones on makeshift rafts, sailed on improvised watercraft into a southern port, or trekked through Laos. As of 1957, the South Vietnamese government claimed a total of 928,152 refugees, of whom 98.3% were ethnic Vietnamese. 85% were engaged in farming or fishing for their livelihood and 85% were Catholics, while the remainder were Buddhists or Protestants. The official data excluded approximately 120,000 anti-communist military-related personnel and claimed that only 4,358 people moved north. The northward migration was attributed to itinerant workers from rubber plantations who returned north for family reasons.^[10]

An independent study by the French historian Bernard B. Fall determined that the US Navy transported around 310,000 refugees. The French were credited with around 214,000 airlifted refugees, 270,000 seaborne refugees and 120,000 and 80,000 Vietnamese and French military evacuees respectively. Fall believed that of the 109,000 refugees who went south by their own means, a large number hitchhiked on southbound French transport vessels that were not related to the migration operation. Fall felt that the figures were likely to have been overestimated, due to immigration fraud. Some refugees would travel south and register themselves, before smuggling themselves onto vessels returning north for another shipment of humans. They would then return south and re-register to claim another aid package. Likewise, with instances of entire villages moving south, the authorities frequently did not explicitly count the number of villagers, but simply took the word of the village leaders. The chiefs would often inflate the population figures to claim more aid rations. The mass exodus did not disrupt the north to a great extent because whole villages often emigrated, instead of half a village moving and leaving the remainder of the community in disarray. Fall estimated that around 120,000 Viet Minh troops and their dependents went north. Most of these evacuations were attributed to Viet Minh military strategy, with some being ordered to stay behind in readiness for future guerrilla activities. The northward movement was facilitated by vessels leaving from assembly areas at Qui Nhon and Ca Mau at the southernmost extremity of Vietnam. The voyages to North Vietnam were provided by empty French ships heading back north to fetch more southbound anti-communists, as well vessels from communist nations such as Poland. The Viet Minh also actively cultivated the Montagnard indigenous people of Vietnam, whose land in the central highlands were encroached upon by incoming northern settlers. The communists spread propaganda via broadcasts in tribal languages and infiltrated the highland areas. According to a study by the Michigan State University Group, some 6,000 tribespeople went north with the communists, accompanied by some Viet Minh who had adopted the indigenous culture.^[11]

The US provided emergency food, medical care, clothing and shelter at reception centres in Saigon and elsewhere in the south. American sources donating through the United States Operations Mission were responsible for 97% of the aid. In order of contributions to the aid efforts, the US were followed by France, United Kingdom, Australia, West Germany, New Zealand and The Netherlands.^[12]

With most of the refugees being Catholic, the voluntary agencies most prominent in helping the US and French governments with humanitarian relief efforts were Catholic. The National Catholic Welfare Conference and Catholic Relief Services contributed over USD35m and sent hundreds of aid workers to South Vietnam. US clerics such as Joseph Harnett spent more than a year supervising the establishment of humanitarian and religious projects in Saigon. These included the establishment and maintenance of orphanages, hospitals, schools and churches. Harnett's volunteers fed rice and warm milk to 100,000 refugees on a daily basis. Tens of thousands of blankets donated by the American Catholic organisations served as beds, makeshift roofs against monsoonal downpours and as temporary walls in mass housing facilities.^[13] The United Nations Children's Fund contributed technical assistance and helped to distribute merchandise, foodstuffs and various other gifts.^[12]

[edit] Propaganda campaign

Colonel Edward Lansdale

The US ran a propaganda campaign through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to enhance the size of the southward exodus. The program was directed by Colonel Edward Lansdale, who masqueraded as the assistant US air attaché in Saigon while leading a covert group that specialised in psychological warfare. Lansdale had advised Diem that it was imperative to maximise the population in the south in preparation for the national reunification elections. When Diem noted the limited ability of the south to absorb refugees, Lansdale assured him that the US would bear the burden. Diem thus authorised Lansdale to launch the propaganda campaign. According to the historian Seth Jacobs, the campaign "ranked with the most audacious enterprises in the history of covert action".^[14]

Lansdale employed a variety of stunts in order to compel more northerners to move south. South Vietnamese soldiers in civilian clothing infiltrated the north, spreading rumours of impending doom. One story was that the communists had a deal with Vietnam's traditional enemy China, allowing two communist Chinese divisions to invade the north. The story reported that the Chinese were raping and pillaging with the tacit approval of the communists. Lansdale hired counterfeiters to produce bogus Viet Minh leaflets on how to behave under communist rule, advising them to create a list of their material possessions so that the communists would be able to confiscated them more easily, thereby fomenting peasant discontent. Soothsayers were bribed to predict disaster under communism, and prosperity for those who went south.^[14] The most inflammatory rumour was that Washington would launch an attack to liberate the north as soon as all anti-communists had fled south. It claimed that the Americans would use atomic bombs and that the only way of avoiding death in a nuclear holocaust was to move south. Lansdale's team disseminated pamphlets that depicted Hanoi with three circles of nuclear destruction superimposed on it.^[15]

Lansdale's campaign focused on northern Catholics, who were known for their strongly anti-communist tendencies. His staff printed tens of thousands of pamphlets with slogans such as "Christ has gone south" and "the Virgin Mary has departed from the North",^[15] alleging anti-Catholic persecution under Ho Chi Minh. Posters depicting communists closing a cathedral and forcing the congregation to pray in front of Ho, adorned with a caption "make your choice", were pasted around Hanoi and Haiphong.^[15] Diem himself went to Hanoi while the French were still garrisoned there to encourage Catholics to move. The campaign resonated with northern Catholic priests, who told their disciples that Ho would end freedom of worship, that sacraments would no longer be given and that anyone who stayed behind would endanger their souls.^[15] The Catholic immigrants helped to strengthen Diem's support base. Before the partition, most of Vietnam's Catholic population lived in the north. After the borders were sealed, the majority were now under Diem's rule. The Catholics implicitly trusted Diem due to their common faith and were a source of loyal political support. One of Diem's main objections to the Geneva Accords—which the State of Vietnam refused to sign—was that it deprived him of the Catholic regions of North Vietnam. With entire Catholic provinces moving south en masse, in 1956 the Diocese of Saigon had more Catholics than Paris and Rome. Of Vietnam's 1.45 million Catholics, over a million lived in the south, 55% of whom were northern refugees.^[13]

The Viet Minh engaged in counter-propaganda campaigns in an attempt to deter the exodus from the north. Evacuees reported being ridiculed by the Viet Minh, who claimed that they would be sadistically tortured before being killed by the French and American authorities in Haiphong. The communists depicted the personnel of Task Force 90 as cannibals who would eat their babies, predicting disaster in the jungles, beaches and mountains of South Vietnam. The Viet Minh boasted to the emigrants that it was a high and futile risk, asserting that the 1956 reunification elections would result in a decisive communist victory.^[16]

[edit] Media and public relations

A Vietnamese Catholic evacuee. Catholics formed the vast majority of the refugees.

The United States reaped substantial public relations benefits from the mass exodus, which was used to depict the allure of the "free world".^[13] This was enhanced by the comparatively negligible number of people who voluntarily moved into the communist north. The event generated unprecedented press coverage of Vietnam. Many prominent news agencies sent highly decorated reporters to cover the event. The New York Times dispatched Tillman and Peggy Durdin, while the New York Herald Tribune sent the Pulitzer Prize-winning war reporters Marguerite Higgins and Homer Bigart. Future US embassy official John Mecklin covered the event for Time Life. The press reports presented highly laudatory and emotional accounts of the mass exodus of Vietnamese away from the communist north. Time Life called the mass migration "a tragedy of almost nightmarish proportions …Many [refugees] went without food or water or medicine for days, sustained only by the faith in their heart."^[13]

The hyperbole used in the mainstream media reports paled in comparison to the outpouring by the American Catholic press. The migration was given front page coverage in America's diocesan newspapers. The accounts were often sensationalist, demonising the communist Viet Minh as religious persecutors who committed barbaric atrocities against Catholics.^[17] Our Sunday Visitor called the "persecution" in Vietnam "the worst in history",^[17][18] alleging that the Viet Minh engaged in "child murder and cannibalism".^[17][18] San Francisco's Monitor told of a priest whom the Viet Minh "beat with guns until insensible and then buried alive in a ditch".^[17][19] Newark's The Advocate posted an editorial cartoon titled "Let Our People Go!",^[17][20] depicting mobs of Vietnamese refugees attempting to break through a blood-laced fence of barbed wire. Milwaukee's Catholic Herald Citizen described two priests who had been chained together and "suffered atrocious and endless agony".^[17][21] Other papers depicted the Viet Minh blowing up churches, torturing children and gunning down elderly Catholics. One paper proclaimed that "the people of Vietnam became a crucified people and their homeland a national Golgotha".^[17]

[edit] Social integration

The mass influx of refugees presented various social issues for South Vietnam. The new arrivals needed to be integrated into society with jobs and housing, as long periods in tents and temporary housing would sap morale and possibly foster pro-communist sympathies. Diem had to devise programs to ease his new citizens into the economic system.^[22]

Diem appointed Bui Van Luong—a family friend and devout Catholic—as the head of COMIGAL, the government resettlement agency. COMIGAL worked in cooperation with the United States Operations Mission, the non-military wing of the American presence and the Military Assistance Advisory Group. They were supplemented by American Catholic aid agencies and an advisory group from Michigan State University, where Diem had stayed while in self-imposed exile in the early 1950s. With more than 4,000 new arrivals per day, the northerners were housed in tents at a hippodrome, before buildings such as schools, hospitals, warehouses, places of worship were built for them. Temporary villages were later built and by mid-1955, most of the one million refugees were living in rows of temporary housing along highways leading out of Saigon.^[22]

The next objective was to integrate the refugees into South Vietnamese society. At the time, there was a lack of arable land in secure areas. In early 1955, the Viet Minh still controlled much of the Mekong Delta, while other parts were controlled by the private armies of the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao religious sects. The Binh Xuyen organised crime gang controlled the streets of Saigon, having purchased the operating license for the national police from Emperor Bao Dai. The new arrivals could not be safely sent to the countryside until the Viet Minh had moved north and Diem had dispersed the sects and gangs. The urban areas were secured when the VNA defeated the Binh Xuyen in the Battle for Saigon in late April and early May. Lansdale managed to bribe many of the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai military commanders to integrate into Diem's VNA, but some commanders fought on. It was not until early 1956 that the last Hoa Hao commander, Ba Cut, was captured in an Army of the Republic of Vietnam campaign by General Duong Van Minh. This allowed COMIGAL to send expeditions to survey the rural land for settlement.^[22]

COMIGAL dispatched inspection teams throughout South Vietnam to identify areas that were suitable for accommodating the new arrivals according to their professional skills. This required a search for arable land for farmers, favourable coastal areas for fishing and areas near large population centres for industrially oriented arrivals. Having identified the relevant areas, COMIGAL would set up plans for settlement subprojects, sending proposals to the USOM or the French Technical and Economic Cooperation Bureau to gain approval and funding. The bureaucracy was relatively low, with most applications taking less than a fortnight for finalising paperwork and receiving approval. Each subproject was given a nine-month deadline for completion.^[23]

When suitable areas were found, groups of refugees usually numbering between one and three thousand were trucked to the site and began creating the new settlement. This involved digging wells, building roads and bridges, clearing forests, bushes and swamps and constructing fishing vessels. Village elections were held to select members for committees that would liaise with COMIGAL on behalf of the new settlement.^[23]

COMIGAL provided the settlers with agrarian implements, fertilisers and farm animals. By mid-1957, 319 villages had been built. Of these, 288 were for farmers and 26 for fishermen. The refugees settled predominantly in the Mekong Delta, where 207 villages were built. 50 were created further north near the border with North Vietnam, while 62 were built in the central highlands. In total, 92,443 housing units were constructed, serviced by 317 and 18 elementary and secondary schools respectively. 38,192 hectares of land were cleared and some 2.4 million tons of potassium sulfate fertiliser were distributed.^[24] At the end of the 1957, Diem dissolved COMIGAL, declaring that its mission had been accomplished.^[25]

[edit] Difficulties and criticism

See also: Hue Vesak shootings, Xa Loi Pagoda raids, and Arrest and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem

President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam saw the predominantly Catholic refugees as his most reliable constituency.

The program had some loose ends that manifested themselves later. Many refugees were not economically integrated and lived from government handouts. Critics noted that the refugees had become a special interest group that fostered resentment. The COMIGAL officials decided not to split up refugees belonging to the same village, hoping to maintain social continuity. Many Catholic villages were effectively transplanted into southern territory. This was efficient in the short run but meant that they would never assimilate into southern society. They had little contact with the Buddhist majority and often held them in contempt, sometimes flying the Vatican flag instead of the national flag. Diem, who had a reputation for heavily favouring Catholics, granted his new constituents a disproportionately high number of government and military posts on religious grounds rather than merit. He continued the French practice of defining Catholicism as a "religion" and Buddhism as an "association", which restricted their activities. This fostered a social divide between the new arrivals and their compatriots. While on a visit to Saigon in 1955, the British journalist and novelist Graham Greene reported that Diem's religious favouritism "may well leave his tolerant country a legacy of anti-Catholicism".^[26] In 1963, simmering discontent over Diem's religious bias exploded into mass civil unrest during the Buddhist crisis. After the Buddhist flag was prohibited from public display for the Vesak celebrations commemorating the birth of Gautama Buddha, Diem's forces opened fire and killed nine protesters.^[27] As demonstrations continued through the summer, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam Special Forces ransacked pagodas across the country, killing hundreds and jailing thousands of Buddhists.^[28] The tension culminated in Diem being overthrown and assassinated in a November coup.^[29]

The indigenous population in the central highlands complained bitterly about the intrusion of ethnic Catholic Vietnamese onto their land. As a result of their discontent with the southern government, communist propagandists in the highlands found it easier to win them over.^[30]

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Jacobs, Seth (2006). Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America's War in Vietnam, 1950–1963. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 0-7425-4447-8. 
• Jones, Howard (2003). Death of a Generation. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505286-2. 
• Karnow, Stanley (1997). Vietnam: A history. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-670-84218-4. 
• Lindholm, Richard (1959). Viet-nam, the first five years: an international symposium. Michigan State University Press.