Early contacts between the United States and Vietnam began around 1787, when US minister to France Thomas Jefferson met the exiled Vietnamese Prince Cảnh, son of future Gia Long in Paris, as Jefferson
Meeting between President of the United States Joe Biden and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Tô Lâm in 2024, being cited as a significant bilateral meeting between the two leaders.
Letter of Quảng Nam Provincial Commissioner Ngô Bá Hy to Vietnamese emperor Tu Duc (r. 1848-1883) reporting on the arrival of USS Plymouth in Da Nang harbor, sent on March 9, 1850, Vietnamese State Archive. Content by translation: "The president of the Ma-ly-can country said that, four years ago (1845), a naval commander from his country came to our country and allowed his soldiers to go ashore and kill our people, but because his country is so distant, he only learned of it now. He has since punished that naval commander. That commander acted without proper restraint and thus harmed the friendship between the two countries. The president of that country originally did not wish to cling to old grievances and cut off all trade relations... Moreover, fourteen years earlier (1836), they had already sent an envoy named (
Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson visiting a textile mill in Saigon, 1961
U.S. Army soldiers burning a National Liberation Front base camp during the Vietnam War, 1968
The Vietnam War POW/MIA issue concerns the fate of United States servicemen who were reported as Prisoners of war or missing in action during the Vietnam War and associated theaters of operation in So
United States–Vietnam relations
…South Vietnam in 1975, the U.S. applied a trade embargo and severed ties with Vietnam, mostly out of concerns relating to Vietnamese boat people and the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue. Attempts at re-establishing relations went unfulfilled for decades, until U.S. president Bill Clinton began normalizing diplomatic relations in the…
U.S. service members unfold a U.S. flag over transfer case containing the remains of unidentified U.S. service members in Vietnam, at Hanoi.
By the late 2000s, the Vietnam POW/MIA issue had largely faded from view, but the U.S. public still saw the POW/MIA Flag flying at many public facilities.