The study of migration or immigration, whether it is forced or voluntary, is challenging as one is often left without the written record of the individuals involved or a fragmented oral history from some of the participants. This is especially true for the over 800,000 evacuees who left the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) between 1954–1955 and the several hundred thousand who left the Republic of Vietnam (RVN or South Vietnam) in the months and years following the collapse of the Saigon government in 1975. Cultural anthropologists have developed several theories to explain this type of movement phenomenon. The idea that individuals are either pushed from their current location to another physical place or pulled by factors that offer alternatives for a better life serves as the foundation for the movement of individuals.[1] The history of Vietnamese who relocated between the two Vietnamese nations during the First Indochina War (1946–1954), then in 1954–1955, and finally after 1975 is best understood within this context.
H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum
Review Essay 125
Nguyễn Phi Vân. A Displaced Nation: The 1954 Evacuation and Its Political Impact on the Vietnam Wars. Cornell University Press, 2024. ISBN: 9781501778612.
Review by Ronald B. Frankum, Jr., Millersville University
21 May 2025 | PDF: http://issforum.org/to/RE125 | Website: rjissf.org | X: @HDiplo
Editor: Diane Labrosse
Commissioning Editor: Daniel R. Hart
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The study of migration or immigration, whether it is forced or voluntary, is challenging as one is often left without the written record of the individuals involved or a fragmented oral history from some of the participants. This is especially true for the over 800,000 evacuees who left the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) between 1954–1955 and the several hundred thousand who left the Republic of Vietnam (RVN or South Vietnam) in the months and years following the collapse of the Saigon government in 1975. Cultural anthropologists have developed several theories to explain this type of movement phenomenon. The idea that individuals are either pushed from their current location to another physical place or pulled by factors that offer alternatives for a better life serves as the foundation for the movement of individuals.[1] The history of Vietnamese who relocated between the two Vietnamese nations during the First Indochina War (1946–1954), then in 1954–1955, and finally after 1975 is best understood within this context.
Nguyễn Phi Vân explores three overarching questions in A Displaced Nation: The 1954 Evacuation and Its Political Impact on the Vietnam Wars. First, she asserts that the Vietnamese evacuations during the First and Second Indochina wars were manipulated by the two Vietnams to either justify their policies or undermine the legitimacy of the other side, which then affected how those states moved forward. Each side used the evacuations to legitimize its position as it related to the people. Second, she argues that the way in which the evacuees were represented often influenced how other nations viewed and supported their actions. Finally, she notes that the way in which the movement of people was presented to them significantly altered their self-awareness. A Displaced Nation is not, however, limited to these three objectives. Nguyễn also charts the long history of those who either self-identified as evacuees or were given that label during the years of war in Vietnam. While the study examines all the evacuees, the main focus is on the Catholic population, who were forced to make a decision on whether to relocate during the First Indochina War.
Nguyễn explores how members of this group viewed themselves but also how others used their religious identity to frame a narrative about them that was not always accurate. For years it was understood that during the movement of Vietnamese from North to South, a million Catholic individuals chose to leave the Communist North for a better life in the South. Most of the major works on the Vietnam War until the early 2000s repeated this claim if they mentioned the mass evacuation at all.[2] This generalization has been debunked in recent years and Nguyễn’s book certainly reaffirms this shift in the scholarship.[3] A significant portion of the 810,000 Vietnamese who chose to leave the North and travel to the South were Catholic. While the actual percentage remains unknown, Nguyễn accepts the 60-80% range. While there is no reason to dispute this assertion, it would have been illuminating to read a discussion of what it meant to be a Catholic in Vietnam during this time and an estimation of the levels of Catholicism among the population. There are degrees of Catholicism, from the most devoted to those who were only nominally associated with their religion. While the United States viewed the northern Catholic population as a monolith to enable a Cold War propaganda advantage, it is debatable that all Vietnamese viewed their religion and its role in influencing their decisions in the same way.[4]
Nguyễn argues that the secular Catholics in the areas east of Hanoi left en masse and that the “Catholics did not leave because of propaganda. They had been deeply involved in the war and, like civil servants or families of soldiers, had good reasons for moving to the South” (42). Left undiscussed is the extent to which the propaganda efforts influenced the decision to leave. Likewise, the influence of local priests on their parishes ought to be considered within the context of the degree to which the adherents practiced their religion. This is not to suggest that the assertion is flawed; Nguyễn is likely correct. It does highlight the real problem in examining how mass movements function when the participants do not leave a written record of their motives. Regardless, Nguyễn provides a detailed account of the perspective of Catholics in the pre-evacuation period and their break with the Việt Minh that has been missing from historical accounts of the First Indochina War.
Once the evacuation population had been established in the South, Nguyễn argues that it was discouraged by the actions of Ngô Đình Diệm, the leader of the State of Vietnam, which was soon to be Republic of Vietnam President. In the closing years of the 1950s, the dream of reunifying the North and South was displaced with Diệm’s efforts to consolidate his position and ally with the United States in its Cold War struggle against Communism. In one instance, Nguyễn notes Diệm’s failure to interact with a group of approximately 2,000 evacuees who marched to his residence in May 1955 in a Procession of the Sacred Land in which they attempted to deliver of a box of northern soil to the President along with the message that they hoped that the North would be liberated soon and—the soil could be returned to its origins (56). The episode is not placed in the larger context. Diệm had just successfully orchestrated an attack on the Bình Xuyên, a powerful criminal syndicate with its own militia, which earned him their ire as well as that of the French, who were working to replace him and influence the United States to abandon him. The sources are unclear on the reasons for Diệm’s failure to interact with the evacuees, which may well have resulted from his disinterest in their cause but equally may have been a product of the intense and stressful time in Saigon. Diệm was contending with hostile French inhabitants in Saigon and the indignation of General J. Lawton Collins, who had been sent by President Dwight Eisenhower to assess the situation and had moved against Diệm.
Nguyễn argues that the 26 April 1960 Caravelle Manifesto, which called for reforms within the Diem government, as an example of an evacuee expression of discontent with Diệm. While it is true that some of the signatories were from the North, the list also included former members of Emperor Bảo Đại’s cabinets and prominent members of the three socio-religious Sects that were defeated in 1955 (72). It is difficult to connect the evacuee disillusionment with Diệm with the proclamation issued by the eighteen members of The Bloc for Liberty and Progress.[5] Likewise, the failure of the Caravelle Manifesto to garner the support from the Vietnamese people, evacuees or not, does call into question the connection between the evacuees’ voices and the actions of The Bloc for Liberty and Progress. Nguyễn also points to the three attempted coup d’états that occurred between 1960 and 1963. The November 1960 event was less an expression of evacuee concerns and more a reflection of the anger of a group of Vietnamese officers who resented being passed over for promotion.[6] The final coup d’état in November 1963 did not include evacuees. Nguyễn refers to Ellen Hammer’s 1963 book, A Death in November, that argued there were at least six other plots going on at the same time (75-76).[7] In both Hammer’s book and the one under review, there is no discussion of who the individuals were or whether they were connected to the evacuee population. All of this does not suggest that there were evacuees who keenly wanted to reclaim their homes in the North or believed that Diệm had accomplished little to make it possible. In most migration or immigration movements, whether forced or not, there is some degree of desire to connect with the past and a yearning to return to the previous lives. To what degree this was evident in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Vietnam is hard to determine though. Nguyễn’s narrative offers some intriguing possibilities.
After the assassination of Diệm and his brother Ngô Đình Nhu, the southern Catholic population continued to exist under significant strain and anxiety. Nguyễn examines how Catholics worried about retribution after the November 1963 coup d’état and the significance of the public trials of Counsellor Ngô Đình Cẩn and Major Đặng Sỹ. Cẩn, who was the only remaining brother of Diệm who had not have escaped from Vietnam in 1963, and who possessed a questionable reputation for his governance in Central Vietnam. He was caught trying to flee the country after being granted asylum in the United States. Despite attempts by some Vietnamese Catholics to secure his release, he was sentence to death and executed. Đặng Sỹ, who played a central role in suppressing the 1963 Buddhist demonstrations, was also sentenced to death and executed. Both men were Catholic (82-84). These cases, as well as the fact that the government in Saigon seemed less concerned about the evacuees and the southern Catholic populations, caused many to worry about their current status as well as their future. Even so, Southern Catholics continued to call for more vigorous action against the North. Nguyễn argues that the evacuees were the only ones who called for a direct war against Communism (96). Even after ten years in exile, they had not given up on their hope of returning home. The evacuees had lost the most and had the most to gain with the defeat of the Hanoi government. That said, they were not the only Vietnamese who called for continuing the war. It is also difficult to determine how many of the over 800,000 evacuees wanted to return to the North or were content with their new lives in the South.
Nguyễn contends that as the war progressed through the later part of the 1960s, the evacuees failed to offer a unified voice in the war effort against the Communist North (115). To make matters worse, anti-war Vietnamese Christians came to believe that these same evacuees were the main obstacle to peace. The evacuees, who had left the North between 1954 and 1955, now found themselves in opposition to the Americanization of the war, disillusioned with the presidency of Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, and weary of the attempts of the Hanoi government to lure them back. In turning against Thiệu, the anti-Communist evacuees believed that they were no longer, “engaged in a global Cold War against communism, nor did they want Saigon to head the reunified nation-state” (116-117). As one priest concluded, the evacuees were stuck between Communism and the corruption of the Thiệu presidency.
When Saigon fell in 1975, many Southern Vietnamese were forced to decide whether to stay in an occupied country or flee. Some of these people were making this significant decision for a second time in their life. Nguyễn argues that for those who fled, the idea of returning to reclaim Vietnam was a strong and shared conviction. Groups like National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam, which organized with the objective of returning to Vietnam to reclaim their nation, continued the struggle against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in the 1980s. However, the lack of coordination between its diplomatic strategy and the failed armed resistance ended what proved to be nothing more than a forlorn hope. Other attempts to keep the Vietnamese community together, such as the publication of Thức Tỉnh, which was created to mobilize the overseas Vietnamese into action to reclaim Vietnam, had limited effect. By the 1980s, the overseas Vietnamese communities had in some ways ceased to be evacuees even if many of them continued to hold on to that identity. As Nguyễn contends, the evacuee community spread out geographically and was divided by a cultural, political, and economic heritage that made it difficult, if not impossible, to unite (157). The waning of the Cold War also contributed to the growing realization that the Vietnamese Communists could no longer be overthrown. It forced many of the evacuees to leave the war behind and make peace with a troubled past.
Changes within the international community, from the introduction of the Đổi Mới economic reforms in 1986 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, also helped to transform the overseas Vietnamese.[8] Nguyễn argues that Vietnamese saw themselves as a diverse community existing across political borders rather than as a united population under one nation-state (171).[9] Likewise, the overseas Vietnamese ideas of anti-Communism that had once united segments of the evacuee populations, changed in influence and meaning with the end of the Cold War (177).
Though they do not interfere with the overall narrative of A Displaced Nation, there are minor issues worth exploring. Nguyễn argues that the United States’ Seventh Fleet was sent to Vietnam to participate in the evacuation of 1954–1955. In fact, Task Force 90 under the command of Admiral Lorenzo Sabin was organized to deal with the challenge of conducting Operation Passage to Freedom, which was the United States name for its participation in moving evacuees to the South.[10] Nguyễn claims that, “two northern Vietnamese missiles had been fired on the US Navy in the South China Sea” which precipitated the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, though this does not agree with the historical record.[11] Likewise, one can disagree with the statement that “the US armed forces used a poorly trained conscription army, for which it compensated with superior firepower, technology, and mobility through air transport” (99).[12] Only one out of every four US military personnel was conscripted into the Armed Forces, though it is possible that a percentage of soldiers volunteered rather than be drafted.[13] While the US Armed Forces were well trained, the conditions in Vietnam posed challenges that often tested that training. Nguyễn does not define the meaning of “poorly trained.” In President Lyndon Johnson’s March 31, 1968 announcement that he would not seek or accept his party’s nomination for the presidency, Johnson did not end all bombing over North Vietnam, as Nguyễn asserts (106). Operation Rolling Thunder continued until October 31, 1968. It concentrated on the area between the 17th and 19th parallel and refocused its attention on reducing or denying North Vietnam supplies from external sources, disrupting or destroying resources that contributed to the support of the North Vietnamese effort, and impeding the movement of personnel and materials from Laos into South Vietnam.[14] These issues do not distract from Nguyễn’s overall argument or the force of the three arguments in the book.
With the publication of A Displaced Nation, Nguyễn seeks to redress earlier works in Vietnam War historiography that grouped all the evacuees together as Catholics and anti-Communist. She explores the long path of the evacuees who migrated within Vietnam and then emigrated to other countries and the waning of their needs and desires to return to the lands they left to reclaim their past. While some of the assertions a bit too universal, Nguyễn’s narrative does provide a degree of agency to this large and diverse community that has been under discussed in the literature. This alone makes this book valuable to the ever-growing literature on the war and how it affected all of those nations involved.
Ronald B. Frankum, Jr. is a Professor of History at Millersville University where he teaches United States Military and Diplomatic History. He has published nine books on the Vietnam War, including Ambassador Frederick Reinhardt and America’s Relationship with Vietnam, 1955–1957 (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2024), Elbridge Durbrow’s War in Vietnam: The Ambassador’s Influence on American involvement, 1957–1961 (McFarland, 2019), and Operation Passage to Freedom: The United States in Vietnam, 1954–1955 (Texas Tech University Press, 2007). His current research is on US ambassadors to Vietnam and their role in influencing United States policy during the tenure of Republic of Vietnam President Ngô Đình Diệm.
[1] Some recent examples of this model to explain migrant and immigrant movement include Roderick Parkes, “Migration: New ‘Push’ and ‘Pull’ Dynamics,” European Union Institute for Security Studies (November 2015): 1-4, http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep06863; Rob Cole, Grace Wong, and Maria Brockhaus, “Theoretical Foundations,” in Cole, Wong, and Brockhaus, Reworking the Land: A Review of Literature on the Role of Migration and Remittances in the Rural Livelihoods of Southeast Asia (Center for International Forestry Research, 2015), 6-8, http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep02385.7; and Lori M. Hunter, Jessie K. Luna, and Rachel M. Norton., “Environmental Dimensions of Migration,” Annual Review of Sociology 41 (April 2015): 377-397, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24807604.
[2] For Example, see George Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975 (Temple University Press, 1986), 52, and David Anderson, Trapped by Success: The Eisenhower Administration and Vietnam, 1953-61 (Columbia University Press, 1991).
[3] Ronald B. Frankum, Jr., Operation Passage to Freedom: The United States Navy in Vietnam, 1954–1955 (Texas Tech University Press, 2007); Peter Hansen, “Bắc Ði Cú: Catholic Refugees from the North of Vietnam, and Their Role in the Southern Republic, 1954–1959,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 4:3 (Fall 2009): 176-200; Jessica Elkind, “‘The Virgin Mary is Going South’: Refugee Resettlement in South Vietnam, 1954–1956,” Diplomatic History 38:5 (November 2014): 987-1016; and, Jason A. Picard, “‘They Eat the Flesh of Children’: Migration, Resettlement, and Sectionalism in South Vietnam, 1954–1957,” in Nu Anh Tran and Tuong Vu, eds., Building a Republican Nation in Vietnam, 1920–1963 (University of Hawaii Press, 2023), 143-163.
[4] Up until the 2000s, this interpretation was the dominant one. See Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (The Viking Press, 1983), 222.
[5] Frankum, Year of the Rat: Elbridge Durbrow, Ngô Đình Diệm and the Turn in US Relations, 1959–1961 (McFarland, 2014), 50-68.
[6] Frankum, Year of the Rat, 93-108.
[7] Ellen Hammer, A Death in November: America in Vietnam, 1963 (Dutton, 1988 [1963]).
[8] Đổi Mới (to “innovate” or “renovate”) refers to economic reforms implemented to create a socialist-oriented market economy.
[9] On the Vietnamese Catholic diaspora, see Tuan Hoang, “Pray the Rosary and Do Apostolic Work: The Modern Vietnamese Catholic Associational Culture,” in Trinh M. Luu and Tuong Vu, eds., Republican Vietnam, 1963–1975: War, Society, Diaspora (University of Hawaii Press, 2023), 189-202.
[10] Frankum, Operation Passage to Freedom.
[11] Edwin Moise, Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War (Naval Institute Press, 2019 [2000]).
[12] For example, Mark Moyar, Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965–1968 (Encounter Books, 2022).
[13] Induction Statistics, Selective Service System, https://www.sss.gov/history-and-records/induction-statistics/.
[14] Project Contemporary Historical Examination Current Operations (CHECO) Report, James B. Overton, “Rolling Thunder-January 1967-November 1968-Continuing Report,” 1 October 1969. See also Frankum, Like Rolling Thunder: The Air War in Vietnam, 1964–1975 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 59-60.