Ho Chi Minh

September 2, 1945

Hours after Japan’s surrender in World War II, Vietnamese communist Ho Chi Minh declares the independence of Vietnam from France.

Vietnam War

Pictured is a Navy SEAL

Original caption:3/22/1958-

Saigon, Vietnam: President Ngo Dinh

Diem of South Vietnam seated at

desk in Independence Palace in Saigon. The 57-year-old bachelor,

a dedicated foe of Communism, has

vowed to lift the new nation from poverty and free it from U.S. assistance. (Photo made in February

1958.)

As a protest against the Ngo Dinh Diem government's anti-Buddhist policies, a young Buddhist monk performs a ritual suicide, by self immolation, in the central market square of Saigon

Gulf of Tonkin Incident

Gulf of Tonkin Incident

• On August 2, three North Vietnamese PT boats allegedly fire torpedoes at the USS Maddox, a destroyer located in the international waters of the Tonkin Gulf, some thirty miles off the coast of North Vietnam. The attack comes after six months of covert US and South Vietnamese naval operations.

The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Maddox, which was attacked by North Vietnamese torpedoes and gunfire off Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, August 1964

Debate on Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

• The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is approved by Congress on August 7 and authorizes President Lyndon Johnson to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression." The resolution passes unanimously in the House, and by a margin of 82-2 in the Senate. The Resolution allows Johnson to wage all out war against North Vietnam without ever securing a formal Declaration of War from Congress.

Heavy Fighting at Ia Drang ValleyMovie: We Were Soldiers

The first conventional battle of the Vietnam war takes place as American forces clash with North Vietnamese units in the Ia Drang Valley. The US 1st Air Cavalry Division employs its newly enhanced technique of aerial reconnaissance to finally defeat the NVA, although heavy casualties are reported on both sides.

National Geographic Video of Ia Drang

Hal Moore

• Helicopter pilot, flew 22 missions during Ia Drang battle (delivered troops, delivered supplies, removed casualties)

• Interview

Original caption:A North Korean Naval force seized the American intelligence ship, USS Pueblo (shown in a file photo) on the high seas early 1/23/1968. As MIG fighters circled overhead, the

Pueblo, with 83 men aboard, was forced by Communist patrol boats to put into the North Korean port of Wonsan. Some members of Congress characterized the seizure as "an act of war

• James Rowe Graduate of West Point• Lieutenant Rowe was captured during a 1963

firefight while serving as an advisor in Southeast Asia.

• Rowe spent the next five years in small jungle camps in South Vietnam. "We had every disease vector in the world there," Rowe said in a 1987 interview. "We were on two quart cans of rice per day. We caught snakes and rats every chance we got."

• Rowe was kept in a cage made of slender saplings, measuring 3 feet by 4 feet by 6 feet.

• He tried to escape three times but was recaptured and punished each time.

• In 1968, Rowe's captors sentenced him to die. As the Viet Cong escorted Rowe to his execution on New Year's Eve, a flight of American helicopters seemed to appear out of nowhere. Rowe knocked down one of his guards and ran into a clearing, waving his arms. A soldier in a chopper at first thought that Rowe, clad in black pajamas, was an enemy guerrilla and nearly killed him. But Rowe's beard identified him as an American. The chopper scooped him up and whisked him away.

• U.S. Navy Lt. (j.g.) Dieter Dengler• Only American ever to break out of a POW camp in the Laotian jungle and live to tell the

tale

Booby Traps

• 1962: The number of US military advisors increased from 700 to 12,000

• 1963: 15,000 US military advisors were in South Vietnam • 1965: First US combat troops were sent to Vietnam in

March; by the end of the year there were 200,000 US troops there

• 1966: 400,000 US troops were in Vietnam • 1967: 490,000 US troops in Vietnam• 1968: 540,000 US troops in Vietnam• 1969: 480,000 US troops in Vietnam• 1970: 280,000 US troops in Vietnam• 1971: 140,000 US troops in Vietnam• 1973: last US troops left Vietnam; US POW’s

released

KIA Facts• Deaths Number Average Age • Total 58,148 23.11 years • Enlisted 50,274 22.37 years • Officers 6,598 28.43 years • Warrants 1,276 24.73 years • E1 525 20.34 years • USMC 0351 1,122 20.46 years • 11B MOS 18,465 22.55 years• One man killed in Vietnam was only 16 years old (RABER,

PAUL J.) • The oldest man killed was 62 years old (TAYLOR, KENNA

CLYDE). • 11,465 KIAs were less than 20 years old.