Before the Second World War, Vietnam was occupied by the colonial French empire. [29] American bombing in Cambodia is estimated to have killed between 30,000 and 150,000 civilians and combatants. By nearly every metric, the Vietnam War was, in the common sense of the word, a war. [27] Estimates for the number of North Vietnamese civilian deaths resulting from US bombing range from 30,00065,000. American Foreign Policy in the First Indochina War. the Vietnam War). SOG had a casualty rate of 100 percenteveryone who served in SOG was either wounded, most multiple times, or . Fighting continued on a lesser scale for some time afterwards and refugee numbers rose sharply due to the continued conflict, but the development of a strong trading market in the 80s helped the nation become more unified. By 1944, the French were still occupying Vietnam, even though they continued to wage battle in Europe as the end of World War II drew near. As a member, you'll also get unlimited access to over 84,000 Sources: World War II Honor List of Dead and Missing, June 1946; Battle Casualties of the Army, 30 September 1954; List of Casualties Incurred by U.S. Military Personnel in Connection with the Conflict in Vietnam, 30 September 1975. [26], RJ Rummel estimated that American forces killed around 5,500 people in democide between 1960 and 1972, from a range of between 4,000 and 10,000. In 2002, an early version of the Coffelt Database was deeded to the National Archives, which made it available on-line as a searchable database. [33][34] The United States government has challenged these figures as being unreliable. It is estimated that South Vietnam lost between 200,000 and 250,000 fighters. [5], Uppsala University in Sweden maintains the Armed Conflict Database. non-hostile occurrence or who were missing in action or prisoners of war in the Southeast Asian combat area during the Vietnam War, including casualties that occurred in Cambodia, China, Laos, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and Thailand. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died. The first two names listed on Panel 1, East Wall, at the apex are from July 8, 1959. Rummel does not give a medium or high estimate. The vietnam war Pictures That Moved Them Most . Memorial pages honoring Vietnam War casualties, listed by their last names. 7,484 women served in Vietnam, of whom 6,250 or 83.5% were nurses. There are some limitations on the search capabilities and downloading records en masse is not allowed. Officer casualties of all branches were overwhelmingly white. He received his B.A. Last combat unit departs Vietnam ending the ground war August 11, 1972. . A Korean War era soldier and later an attorney in Hays, Kansas, Richard became aware that the government had not made public a central source of information regarding the servicemen and women who died as a result of service in Vietnam. 1975. These statistics were sourced from the appendix of On the offensive: the Australian Army in the Vietnam War 1967-1968. . Vietnamese soldiers and an unknown number of civilian casualties in South and North Vietnam (Browne 1994: 1). By the height of the Vietnam War in the late 1960's, the U.S. Air Force had 1,900 medics conducting medical operations in Southeast Asia. [4] 13,091. Since body counts were a direct measure of operational success, US "operations reports" often listed civilian deaths as enemy KIA or exaggerated the number. 58,148 were killed in Vietnam, 75,000 severely disabled, 23,214 were 100% disabled, 5,283 lost limbs and 1,081 sustained multiple amputations. Corrections? California (5,572 Estimated Casualties). Called the American War in Vietnam (or, in full, the War Against the Americans to Save the Nation), the war was also part of a larger regional conflict (see Indochina wars) and a manifestation of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. The Viet Cong lost around 1.1 million combatants. The wide disparity among the estimates cited below is partially explained by the different time periods of the Vietnam War covered by the studies and whether casualties in Cambodia and Laos were included in the estimates. [93][94] With the draft increasing due to the troop buildup in South Vietnam, the military significantly lowered its admission standards. Support for the war was lacking in the United States, so the decision was made to discontinue efforts there. At the heart of the conflict was the desire of North Vietnam, which had defeated the French colonial administration of Vietnam in 1954, to unify the entire country under a single communist regime modeled after those of the Soviet Union and China. The Army instigated myriad reforms, addressed issues of discrimination and prejudice from the post exchanges to the lack of black officers, and introduced "Mandatory Watch And Action Committees" into each unit. Army Huey's totaled 9,713,762 flight hours in Vietnam between October 1966 and the end of American involvement in early 1973. The United States also reduced support troops, and in March 1971 the 5th Special Forces Group, the first American unit deployed to South Vietnam, withdrew to Fort Bragg, . Refighting the Vietnam War. . Vietnam War Casualties 1956-1998. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died. (1) GROUND FORCE PERSONNEL, including Army aviation, generally are indexed at the Regimental level but there are exceptions. Chrissy has taught secondary English and history and writes online curriculum. [36][37][38][39] The My Lai Massacre was initially written off as an operational success and covered up. [49] The Second Marine Brigade perpetrated the Phong Nh and Phong Nht massacre on 12 February 1968. From refugee camps in Southeast Asia, the great majority of boat people were resettled in more developed countries. Richard Coffelt's health began failing, and on 29 October 2010 he made his last contributions to the Coffelt Database. Although demographers have developed a reper- Chapter 17 index: "Communists provided further corroboration of the proximity of their casualty figures to American figures in a postwar disclosure of total losses from 1960 to 1975. * The 143 men subsequently declared dead between 1973 and 2002 are not included in these totals. About 2 million Vietnamese civilians were killed in the fighting. According to RJ Rummel, from 1964 to 1975, an estimated 1,500 people died during the forced relocations of 1,200,000 civilians, another 5,000 prisoners died from ill-treatment and about 30,000 suspected communists and fighters were executed. Not all mines were detonated during the war and as a result they are still being either dug up or mistakenly stepped on today. The Vietnam War was a long, deadly . The 'shameful gamesmanship' practiced by 'certain reporting elements' under pressure to 'produce results' also shrouded the process. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress sole authority to issue declarations of war. In the days before "embeds" this generation's enforced melding of photographer and military unit there was a certain sense of . They also assert that the U.S. overall suffered fewer casualties than its opponents. Create your account. Reference Information Paper 103", "From the Archives: President Nixon welcomes Marines home from Vietnam", "MILITARY: Marine unit that suffered most casualties coming home", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=American_units_with_the_highest_percentage_of_casualties_per_conflict&oldid=1125722100, This page was last edited on 5 December 2022, at 13:58. "UCDP/Prio Armed Conflict Database", Uppsala University, sfn error: no target: CITEREFRummel1997 (. The officially-reported numbers and categories below cover American Vietnam War deaths by age group, branch of service, service component, type of death, reason for death, race, religion, sex, state/protectorate and deaths by war year (including post-war). [19], Other casualties for the ARVN included up to 1,170,000 military wounded,[59] and 1,000,000 surrendered or captured. In 1980 Richard set out to determine the unit of assignment for each Army soldier who died in Vietnam. There was strong pressure to produce body counts as a measure of operational success and enemy body counts were directly tied to promotions and commendation. The Vietnam War is one of the most unpopular wars in American history. Two major war memorials commemorating the dead soldiers in the Second Indochina War (a.k.a. In 1995 Vietnam . Trade between the two nations ultimately resumed in the 1990s. Though North Vietnam lost, it won a major psychological victory. Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010: see the "National Cemeteries and Beneficiaries" section below. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., lists more than 58,300 names of members of the U.S. armed forces who were killed or went missing in action. Week of November 22. Necessarily, more is lost to time than is remembered. The US entered into war with Vietnam because they did not want the spread of Communism to occur in the democratic state of South Vietnam. Once a unit assignment has been determined, a link to the individual's memorial page is included in the appropriate Unit Index. [71] The official US Department of Defense figure was 950,765 communist forces killed in Vietnam from 1965 to 1974. For more information see Vietnam War casualties and Aircraft losses of the Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos . Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Estimates of the total number of deaths in the Vietnam War vary widely. According to the Vietnamese government, unexploded ordnance has killed some 42,000 people since the end of the war. Bomb Tonnages Dropped on Laos and Cambodia, and Weighing Their Implications", "Association between Agent Orange and birth defects: systematic review and meta-analysis", "The History, Toxicity and Adverse Human Health and Environmental Effects Related to the Use of Agent Orange", http://ls-tlss.ucl.ac.uk/course-materials/POLS6016_65225, Story of Tiger Force atrocities had to be told, "On War extra Vietnam's massacre survivors", Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact & Propaganda, "Anatomy of US and South Korean Massacres in the Vietnamese Year of the Monkey, 1968 | Japan Focus", "VIETNAM KILLINGS LAID TO KOREANS (Published 1970)", "The 'forgotten' My Lai: South Korea's Vietnam War massacres", "Citizens' court to investigate Vietnam War atrocities committed by South Korean troops", "Chuyn 4 CNG TC TM KIM, QUY TP HI CT LIT S T NAY N NM 2020 V NHNG NM TIP THEO, datafile.chinhsachquandoi.gov.vn/Qun%20l%20ch%20o/Chuyn%20%204.doc", "Lost Souls: The Search for Vietnam's 300,000 or More MIAs", 300.000 lit s cha xc nh danh tnh l ni trn tr ln, "North Vietnamese Army's 1972 Eastertide Offensive", i tng V Nguyn Gip vi cng tc hu cn qun i, "2021 NAME ADDITIONS AND STATUS CHANGES ON THE VIETNAM VETERANS MEMORIAL", "US Military Operations: Casualty Breakdown", "Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency Vietnam (PMSEA) Report for CIVILIAN (Unaccounted For)", "Capture Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency Vietnam (PMSEA) Report for CIVILIAN (Accounted For Identified Since 1973)", "Vietnam-era unaccounted for statistical report", "Vietnam Prisoners of War Escapes and Attempts", http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/vietnam/reports/pmsea_escapee.pdf, "Vietnam War U.S. Military Fatal Casualty Statistics", "Learning from America's Wars, Past and Present U.S. Battlefield Medicine Has Come a Long Way, from Antietam to Iraq", "African-Americans In Combat | History Detectives | PBS", "Vietnam War Bomb Explodes Killing Four Children", Vietnam: Report Details Unexploded Ordnance, "Vietnam War Bombs Still Killing People 40 Years Later", "U.S. in first effort to clean up Agent Orange in Vietnam", "U.S. starts its first Agent Orange cleanup in Vietnam", "After the Nightmare: The Population of Cambodia", "KOREA military army official statistics, AUG 28, 2005", "Australian servicemen listed as missing in action in Vietnam", https://books.google.com/books?id=qh5lffww-KsC&lpg=PA53&dq=the%20encyclopedia%20of%20the%20vietnam%20war%20page%2064&pg=PA176&output=embed, "POW Remembers McCain and Tapping Through Walls in Hanoi Prison", "New Zealand Rolls Of Honour By Conflict", "Overview of the war in Vietnam | VietnamWar.govt.nz, New Zealand and the Vietnam War", "America Wasn't the only Foreign Power in the Vietnam War", "Vietnam Reds to hold 17 From Taiwan as Spies", https://kienthuc.net.vn/quan-su/nhung-chuyen-gia-quan-su-lien-xo-trong-khang-chien-chong-my-1796800.html, Vietnamese Casualties During the American war, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vietnam_War_casualties&oldid=1142285241, includes an estimated 50,000/65,000/70,000 civilians killed by U.S/SVN bombing/shelling, includes 360,000/391,000/720,000 civilians, 25,000/50,000/75,000 killed in North Vietnam, 106,000/164,000/227,000 killed in South Vietnam. The following year, in 1976, Vietnam was united as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Both American/South Vietnamese forces and the Viet Cong can be held accountable for the number of civilian deaths, but the Viet Cong had a larger hand in overtaking villages and using more offensive military tactics to draw out the South Vietnamese forces. He recalled the attack and said, "We go in, and the helicopter started . Nick Turse, in his 2013 book, Kill Anything that Moves, argues that a relentless drive toward higher body counts, a widespread use of free-fire zones, rules of engagement where civilians who ran from soldiers or helicopters could be viewed as VC, and a widespread disdain for Vietnamese civilians led to massive civilian casualties and endemic war crimes inflicted by U.S. The war also spilled over into the neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos which also endured casualties from aerial and ground fighting. The film follows the experiences of both Moore, portrayed by Mel Gibson, and his wife, Julia, played by Madeleine Stowe. Get unlimited access to over 84,000 lessons. In 1995 Vietnam released its official estimate of the number of people killed during the Vietnam War: as many as 2,000,000 civilians on both sides and some 1,100,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. USA.gov, The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration A South Vietnamese plane seeking Vietcong hiding places accidentally dropped its flaming napalm on civilians and government troops instead. This was part of the Cold War effort to prevent the spread of Communism across the globe. [35], For official US military operations reports, there was no established distinctions between enemy KIA and civilian KIA. Grand total of war deaths: Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos (1954-75) 1,450,000: 2,450,000: 3,595,000: Civilian deaths in the Vietnam War . The U.S. technically did not lose the Vietnam War, as they withdrew in 1973 to allow South Vietnam to fight their own battles. These records were transferred into the custody of the National Archives and Records Administration in 2008. The study's authors stated that methodological limitations of the study include imbalance between rural and urban areas and the potential exclusion of high mortality areas. North Vietnamese troops launched the Tet Offensive in January 1968, which was successful against South Vietnam and the U.S. Kennedys expansion stemmed in part from Cold War-era fears about the domino theory: if communism took hold in Vietnam, it would topple democracies throughout the whole of Southeast Asia, it was thought. This prompted the official start of the Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War. War on Terrorism, 2000-2014. Joseph L. Rhodes, 22, Marines, L. Over 58,000 American troops were killed in Vietnam, with more still not identified. During the height of the conflict, Navy personnel scouted the rivers and canals of the sprawling Mekong Delta for communist guerrilla forces, arms, and ammunition. [25], Operating under the direction of the CIA and other US and South Vietnamese Intel organizations and carried out by ARVN units alongside US advisers was the Phoenix Program, intended to neutralise the VC political infrastructure, whom were the civilian administration of the Viet Cong/Provisional Revolutionary Government via infiltration, capture, counter-terrorism, interrogation, and assassination. The names of those who gave their lives and of those who remain missing are inscribed in the order they . Back in the US, support for the war waned and calls to withdraw from Vietnam grew louder. 38,179 total casualties (KIA and wounded) The 1st Cavalry Division lost the most men, from Aug 1965 to Aug 1972 they had 5,444 KIA, with 26,592 wounded. Of those killed, 61% were younger than 21 years old. 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