Return With Honor Timeline
1945 - 1964 | 1965 - 1975
1945
World War II ends. Allied powers must decide how to deal with Ho Chi Minh's nationalist movement in Vietnam,
which has expelled the Japanese. France goes to war to regain its former colony, and a long and bitter struggle
ensues between Ho's forces and the French. The French receive financial support from the United States, which
sees the French war against the Communist Ho as part of the Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union.
1950
August: The United States commits a few dozen advisors to the French in their
war against the Vietnamese and to agrees to pay for half of France's war effort.
During the same year, the United States recognizes a French puppet regime in
Vietnam. By 1954, the United States will bear three-quarters of the war's cost.
1954
April: At a news conference, President Dwight Eisenhower likens the dynamic in
Southeast Asia to a "falling domino" process: if one country should fall to
Communism, he argues, bordering countries would follow in rapid succession.
This political assumption guides the United States' growing involvement in
Vietnam over the coming years.
June 15: U.S. Army Privates Doyle Morgan and Leonard Sroveck as well as Air
Force Airmen Ciro Salas, Giacomo Appice and Jerry Schuller become the first Americans POWs in the Vietnam
wars. Soldiers of Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh, or Vietnam Independence League, detain the men, who are part of a
U.S. maintenance crew supporting French supply units. They are captured while driving a French military vehicle
they have borrowed to go swimming. After diplomatic intervention by American officials, the five are released on
August 30.
July: After the Vietnamese finally defeat the French at Dien Bien Phu, an international conference is held in
Geneva to end hostilities in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. As part of the agreement, Vietnam is divided into two
separate countries. Ho Chi Minh and the Communist forces hold power in the North; Ngo Dinh Diem and antiCommunist forces take power in the South. The United States does not sign the Geneva pact, but agrees to
abide by it, and supports the Diem government.
1955
January: The United States agrees to take over the training of the South Vietnamese army from the French. The
last French advisors depart in 1956.
Spring: Some 900,000 North Vietnamese refugees flee the increasingly oppressive regime
of Ho Chi Minh in the North. Dissidents in the North are forced into "reeducation" classes,
and "confessions" are extracted from dissidents. This practice of mind control is inflicted on
French and then later on American POWs.
1959
July 8: Major Dale R. Buis and Master Sergeant Chester Ovnand are killed by guerrillas at Bienhoa. They are the
first official American casualties of the Vietnam War.
1960
By the time Dwight D. Eisenhower leaves office, 675 military advisors are assisting the
South Vietnamese. Upon entering the presidency, John F. Kennedy expands U.S.
involvement even further, calling Vietnam the "cornerstone of the free world in Southeast
Asia."
1963
Popular support of South Vietnamese Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem, strongly backed by
the United States, crumbles. Many segments of the South Vietnamese population join the
National Liberation Front, the resistance organized to overthrow the repressive Diem.
Some of the most dramatic protests against Diem's regime are initiated by Buddhist
priests, who burn themselves alive in the capital of Saigon.
November: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. Vice President Lyndon B.
Johnson is sworn in as the new president of the United States. Henry Cabot Lodge,
America's ambassador to South Vietnam, tells Johnson that if he wants to save Vietnam
from Communism he will have to stand firm. Johnson's reply will guide him over the next
four years. "I am not going to lose Vietnam. I am not going to be the President who saw Southeast Asia go the
way China went."
December: Two dozen American soldiers and civilians are now prisoners of war in Vietnam and Laos.
1964
Mid-1964: While campaigning for president, Johnson says, "We are not going to send American boys nine or ten
thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves." Yet, behind closed
doors, he is planning to escalate the role of America in the war.
August 5: Naval aviator Lieutenant Everett Alvarez Jr. is shot down during U.S. air strikes against the North
Vietnamese port of Vinh. Eight and a half years will pass before he is released.
August: Johnson gains congressional authorization for United States involvement in the
war against North Vietnam after he announces that North Vietnamese torpedo boats have
made two unprovoked attacks against American destroyers in international waters. By
approving the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, Congress grants Johnson the power to commit
U.S. forces to Southeast Asia to turn back the North Vietnamese, giving the president the
freedom he wants to fight the war. Only later is it revealed that the American ships were in
the area, assisting South Vietnamese commando raids, and that the second incident never
took place.
1945 - 1964 | 1965 - 1975
Return With Honor Timeline
1945 - 1964 | 1965 - 1975
1965
February: When Viet Cong forces kill seven Americans and wound 109 more in
an attack on an American base, Johnson authorizes retaliatory bombing of North
Vietnam aimed at cutting off the flow of supplies to reduce the military pressure
on South Vietnam.
March 8: Johnson sends the first U.S. ground
troops into action, a crucial turning point in the
American involvement in the Vietnam War. At
the beginning of the year there are 25,000
American troops; by the end of that year there
are 185,000. The numbers increase to 385,000
in 1966, 485,000 in 1967, and 543,000 in 1968.
March 24: The first antiwar teach-in is held at the University of Michigan. At
first, both supporters and opponents of the war attend the teach-ins. Before
long, the campus teach-ins become anti-war rallies.
1967
Anti-war demonstrations are held all over the
United States. In 1967, 300,000 people take to
the streets in New York City, and in Washington
100,000 people try to shut down the Pentagon.
Expressing the views of more and more
Americans, Women Strike for Peace, a women's
anti-war organization, writes, "Stop! Don't
drench the jungles of Asia with the blood of our
sons. Don't force our sons to kill women and children whose only crime is to live
in a country ripped by civil war."
1968
The increased U.S. involvement in Vietnam adds 389 Americans to the ranks of
captured or missing during the year. In 1969, 189 more are added.
January-February: North Vietnamese forces mount a
surprise attack on provincial capitals and other towns in
South Vietnam, known as the Tet offensive. In Saigon,
Viet Cong forces strike the American embassy, Tan Son
Nhut air base, and even the presidential palace. The
attack is beaten back, but the offensive is a psychological
victory for the North Vietnamese.
1969
May: Two American POWs, Air Force Capt. John
Dramesi and a cellmate, Air Force Capt. Ed
Atterberry, attempt to escape from the "Zoo," a
prison facility southwest of Hoa Lo. The men get
out of the prison, but are caught a few miles
from the prison and returned. The failed escape
attempt has disastrous results for the POWs. In
"Honor Bound," their book about American
prisoners of war in Southeast Asia, Stuart Rochester and Frederick Kiley write:
"Beginning with the escapees and then rapidly moving . . . to other camps as
well, prison authorities conducted a sweeping inquisition and crackdown that, for
the scope and intensity of the reprisals, was the most violent episode of the
captivity."
May: In a major policy reversal regarding POWs, Secretary of State Melvin Laird
goes public with the statement that U.S. POWs are not being treated humanely.
Until then, the U.S. government policy was to make no public statements about
POWs in the belief that publicity about poor conditions would only lead to worse
POW treatment. Sybil Stockdale, wife of POW Jim Stockdale, had worked with
other POW family members to publicize the plight of POWs and had urged the
United States to condemn the brutal treatment. Speaking of the policy change,
she later said: "That was a great satisfaction to me and to all of us wives who
had been working so hard."
July: Wives and other family members of American prisoners of war and those
missing in action form the National League of Families of American Prisoners and
Missing in Southeast Asia. The group's goal is to attract national attention to the
plight of their imprisoned and missing family members. They also work together
to increase public awareness about the inhumane treatment of POWs by the
North Vietnamese -- a struggle that leads the U.S. government to speak out
against POW treatment.
September 3: Ho Chi Minh dies at the age of 79. His death coincides with a
dramatic improvement in the treatment of POWs, a link many believe is not
coincidental. The era of steady torture and poor treatment is replaced with
lighter punishment, better food, and generally improved living conditions. As
Vice Admiral Jim Stockdale remembered later, after Ho's death there was "a lot
less brutality -- and larger bowls of rice."
1971
The New York Times publishes a secret Department of Defense account of the
American involvement in Vietnam, known as the Pentagon Papers. Daniel
Ellsberg, a defense analyst, is responsible for leaking the papers, which reveal
some of the fabrications and faulty assumptions that have guided America's
involvement.
1972
December: To convince the North Vietnamese to return to the negotiating table
and achieve Nixon's goal of "peace with honor," the Nixon administration
conducts the most intensive bombing campaign of the entire war, targeting
North Vietnamese factories and ports.
Christmas: Nixon again orders a massive
bombing of North Vietnam, including Hanoi, and
also orders the mining of Hanoi Harbor.
American prisoners of war watch from the Hoa
Lo prison as anti-aircraft missiles light up the
sky.
1973
January 27: A cease-fire is
between North and South
Americans have lost 58,000
with far more wounded.
the war, the United States
has spent over $150 billion.
February 12: The first POWs to be released under the
cease-fire go home.
March 29: Only 24 hours behind schedule, the last of the
known 591 American POWs leave Hanoi. The men are
flown to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, where
signed in Paris
Vietnam.
men in the war,
Over the span of
they are greeted with cheers. They receive medical examinations, new
uniforms, and for the first time since their captivity, all the servings of food they
want. For many Americans, the POWs' return home marks the final chapter of
the country's involvement in the Vietnam War.
1975
South Vietnam falls to the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. After thirty years of
revolutionary civil wars and repeated conflicts against colonial powers, peace
comes to Vietnam.