May 18, 1955 – First Indochina War: The end of Operation Passage to Freedom, where the U.S. Navy evacuates 310,000 Vietnamese civilians and soldiers, and non-Vietnamese personnel of the French Army from communist North Vietnam to South Vietnam

On May 18, 1955, the U.S. Navy completed Operation Passage to Freedom, evacuating some 300,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers, and non-Vietnamese personnel of the French Army from communist North Vietnam to South Vietnam. This action was part of the larger operation led by the French Air Force and hundreds of ships of the French Navy and U.S. Navy as well as other Western countries that moved some one million Vietnamese northerners, predominantly Catholics but also including members of the upper classes consisting of landowners, businessmen, academics, and anti-communist politicians, and the middle and lower classes, moved to the southern zone. This number included more than 200,000 French citizens and soldiers in the French army. The campaign to evacuate particularly targeted Vietnamese Catholics – some 60% of the north’s 1 million Catholics did so, and accounted for 85% of the evacuees to the south.

This mass movement was a result of a stipulation in the GenevaAccords (May 8, 1954) where representatives from the major powers: UnitedStates, Soviet Union, Britain, China, and France, and the Indochina states:Cambodia, Laos, and the two rival Vietnamese states, Democratic Republic ofVietnam (DRV) in the north, and State of Vietnam in the south, met at Geneva (theGeneva Conference) to negotiate a peace settlement for Indochina (as well asKorea).  The Conference was held followingthe decisive French defeat at Dien Bien Phu (March-May1954) in the First Indochina War (December 1946 – July 1954).

Present-day Southeast Asia

On the Indochina issue, onJuly 21, 1954, a ceasefire and a “final declaration” were agreed to by theparties.  The ceasefire was agreed to byFrance and the DRV, which divided Vietnam into two zones at the 17thparallel, with the northern zone to be governed by the DRV and the southernzone to be governed by the State of Vietnam. The 17th parallel was intended to serve merely as a provisional militarydemarcation line, and not as a political or territorial boundary. The partitionwas intended to be temporary, pending elections in 1956 to reunify the countryunder a national government.

The French and their allies in the northern zone departedand moved to the southern zone, while the Viet Minh in the southern zonedeparted and moved to the northern zone (although some southern Viet Minhremained in the south on instructions from the DRV).  The 17th parallel was also a demilitarizedzone (DMZ) of 6 miles, 3 miles on each side of the line.

The ceasefire agreement provided for a period of 300 dayswhere Vietnamese civilians were free to move across the 17th parallel on eitherside of the line. 

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and State ofVietnam in a massive propaganda campaign to encourage the northerners to movesouth, including spreading rumors that Red China would invade the north, thatthe northern government would confiscate people’s possessions, and distributingpamphlets with slogans such as “Christ has gone south” and “theVirgin Mary has departed from the North”, alleging anti-Catholicpersecution under Ho Chi Minh.

While one million moved from north to south, some 100,000southerners, mostly Viet Minh cadres and their families and supporters, movedto the northern zone.