Operation Passage to Freedom
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 communist North Vietnam to non-communist South 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.
Up to a million people (about 800 thousand of them are Roman Catholics) left communist North Vietnam during Operation Passage to Freedom after the country was partitioned (USS Calaveras County).
Propaganda poster exhorting Northerners to move South-title: "Go South to avoid Communism". Bottom caption: "Southern compatriots are welcoming Northern brothers and sisters with open arms."
North Vietnamese refugees move from a French landing ship to the USS Montague during Operation Passage to Freedom in August 1954.
USS Menard, the first American ship to participate in the naval evacuation
North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, was a socialist state in Southeast Asia that existed from 1945 to 1976, with formal sovereignty being fully recognized in 1954. A member of the Eastern Bloc, it opposed the French-supported State of Vietnam and later the Western-allied Republic of Vietnam. North Vietnam emerged victorious over South Vietnam in 1975 and ceased to exist the following year when it unified with the south to become the current Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
The North Vietnamese government in 1946.
Ho Chi Minh declaring independence at Ba Dinh Square on September 2nd, 1945
A Viet Minh rally outside the Hanoi Opera House during the August Revolution, 1945.
Ho Chi Minh (seated, right) with Tôn Đức Thắng (seated, left) and other DRV leaders in a liberated zone of northern Vietnam during the First Indochina War.