Postscript: Vietnam War

NOTE from Jill: Much of the information below, was research from my dad, Hal, when putting this section together. I presumed he had taken much of it from Wikipedia, so please note that as you read through this postscript.

I was busy with my young family, night school, and my job at Lockheed and really didn’t understand or have much interest in the background behind the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. It didn’t make much sense to me at the time since no one from the military, the media, or politicians articulated a logical reason for the US intervention. Only many years later did I start to learn what was behind the rationale that led the US to enter the conflict.

To understand the sequence of events that led up to the United States’ major role in the war you had to understand the history of the region known as French Indochina from at least as far back as 1945. I was born in 1944, so this stuff was well before my time.

What was known as French Indochina was a grouping of French colonial territories in Southeast Asia. These colonies were a hold-over from the colonial era when several European Nations including England, Netherlands, and France held sway over other nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America among others. At the end of WW II, the era of colonialism was coming to an end but there were still a few holdouts.  France in French Indochina was one such holdout.

French Indochina included three regions of Vietnam, Tonkin in the north, Annam in the center, and Cochinchina in the south, along with Cambodia and Laos and the leased Chinese territory of Guangzhouwan.  These territories were under French rule since the 1890’s.

In Saigon, the anti-Communist State of Vietnam, led by former Emperor Bảo Đại, was granted independence in 1949. On 9 November 1953, the Kingdom of Laos and the Kingdom of Cambodia became independent. Following the Geneva Accord of 1954, the French evacuated Vietnam, and French Indochina came to an end.

Sailing south, de Genouilly then captured the poorly defended city of Saigon on 18 February 1859. On 13 April 1862, the Vietnamese government was forced to cede the three provinces of Biên Hòa, Gia Định and Định Tường to France. De Genouilly was criticized for his actions and was replaced by Admiral Page in November 1859, with instructions to obtain a treaty protecting the Catholic faith in Vietnam, but refrain from territorial gains.