Gerald Ford.
The statement was issued to calm NATO fears that the US might back out of its commitments to Europe, the way it had in Vietnam.
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Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
Sunday, May 27, 1900. The Vietnamese Martyrs.
Pope Leo XIII beatified sixty-four Vietnamese Martyrs. The Vietnamese Martyrs, including 53 additional individuals later beatified, were canonized on June 19, 1988.
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Saturday, May 26, 1900. Battle of Palonegro.
Friday, May 23, 2025
Friday, May 23, 1975. Leaving Laos.
Most American employees of the U.S Embassy in Laos were ordered to evacuate.
The U.S. has an embassy in Laos presently. In fact, the countries never severed diplomatic relations and normalized them in 1992.
The Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975 was signed into law by President Ford. The act provided for resettlement of South Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees into the United States. In 1975 it would be amended to include include refugees from Laos.
A military government was appointed to govern Lebanon.
Former President of the Teamsters Union Dave Beck was pardoned by President Ford.
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Thursday, May 15, 1975. The Raid on Koh Tang.
Sunday, May 18, 2025
A Sunday Morning look at the Vietnamese Diaspora.
This is probably a coincidence. This particular church has an associate pastor who is from Vietnam. Indeed, he's the second Vietnamese priest to serve in the parish. But this particular Mass comes up just after the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.
Prior to the Vietnam War, very view Vietnamese lived anywhere other than Vietnam. Some lived in France, due to the French colonial association with the country. When the French Indochinese War ended, some Vietnamese in fact relocated to France, with a small number of actually being Vietnamese who were in the French armed forces. It wasn't a large number, however, like it would come to be with Algerians.
The end of the Vietnam War however was different.
Many Vietnamese fled because they legitimately feared Communism, putting the lie to the often stated proposition that the South Vietnamese didn't really care how the war ended. Thousands did, and of those who did, most didn't make it out of Vietnam.
Over 2,000,000 Vietnamese now live in the US, with 60% of those having been born in Vietnam. 37% of them report themselves as being Buddhist, 36% Christian and 23% aren’t affiliated with any religion. Vietnamese Americans are more than three times as likely as Asian Americans overall to identify as Buddhist (37% vs. 11%), but with Buddhism being the "native" religion of the country in American eyes, that numbers if surprisingly low.
Indeed, it gives some credibility to Dr. Geoffrey Shaw's assertion in his biography of murdered South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm that at the time of the his assassination Buddhism was in significant decline.
However it would also reflect that the American understanding isn't really all that correct. While some regard Christianity as "introduced", the fact is that Buddhism is as a well, with it being Indian in origin. Vietnam also has a folk religion which shares many common elements of other Asian "folk" religions, including devotion to ancestors.
Today in Vietnam Buddhists make a 13.3% of the total population, and Christians a declared 7.6% with 6.6% being Catholic. Hoahao Buddhists make up 1.4%, Caodaism followers 1% and followers of other religions including Hinduism, Islam, and the Baháʼí Faith, representing less than 0.2% of the population. Folk religion has experienced a revival since the 1980s, and it's widely believed that the official 7.6% of the population being Christian is in error, and actually over 10% of the population is Catholic. The Catholic faith in Vietnam is so vibrant that it now supplies Priests to the United States, as the nation has a surplus of Priests itself. Looked at this way, Buddhists and Christians are overrepresented in the United States in comparison to Vietnam, but it might actually present a more accurate make up of the Vietnamese religious makeup.
Or perhaps not. One of the groups that most feared a Communist takeover in Vietnam were Catholics, and for good reasons. Catholicism has always been antithetical to Communism and in many instances it was credited with being the only effective force on the Globe opposing it. Elsewhere in the same general region of the world, some credibly credit the CAtholic Church for preventing mid 20th Century Australia from falling into Communism, something the far left in that country still strongly resents. Catholics were well represented in the South Vietnamese government and military, and interestingly some of the leaders of its military converted to teh Faith during the war or even after it.
Buddhism was introduced to Vietnam in the 2nd or 3d centuries BC, so its presence there is very old. Christianity in Vietnam is mostly the story of Catholicism there, and was introduced by the Portuguese, not the French as is so commonly assumed. Vietnam was never part of the Portuguese Empire, but its influence was very long, and very significant. The Vietnamese alphabet was developed by the Portuguese.
The Communist Vietnamese government has always been hostile to religion in general and openly repressive against some. Catholic have notably been oppressed, and the native Cao Đài religion, which originated as late as 1926, was oppressed by both the Republic of Vietnam and Communist Vietnam.
France did of course have all sorts of influences on Vietnam due to its conquest of Indochina which commenced in 1858 and ran to 1885. The very first Vietnamese refugees I met in the US spoke French as well and their native language, reflecting that they had been educated during the French colonial period. Today that number has dropped way off, with their being no need for French in daily life. A much higher percentage of Vietnamese in Vietnam speak English today than French. One of the very first refugees I met, who had been an engineer in Vietnam, but who worked as a city mechanic in the US, struggled with English, but spoke French fluently.
At one time the Vietnamese Diaspora retained a close cultural connection with the defeated Republic of Vietnam and in some places, they still do. Republic of Vietnam flags were prominent in some locations this past month in areas with large Vietnamese populations and they were displayed during commemorations of the fall of Saigon. However, there are a not insignificant number of Vietnamese now who are post war immigrants, and whose association is not as strong or there at all. The Republic of Vietnam itself is officially detested in Vietnam, and often open views about the Republic reflect the same.
Vietnamese in the US often express the hope that someday the separated people can be united somehow, something that's common for diaspora people. But it won't come to be so. As time moves on, the Vietnamese in the US will become more and more American, like Italian Americans are and Irish Americans, and less Vietnamese. Part of that will occur through intermarriage, which is occuring in the US but which interestingly was not a common occurrence during the French occupation of Vietnam or the Vietnam War, with the cultural differences at the time simply being to vast for it to arise frequently.
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
Tuesday, May 6, 1975. Authoritarian victims.
Malaysian Foreign Minister Tan Sri Mohammad Ghazali Shafie delivered a scathing critique of the Domino Theory evcen as it was proving itself correct.
A convoy of French nationals and Khmer Muslims, who had sought refuge at the French Embassy in Phnom Penh, crossed the border into Thailand.
Operation Babylift concluded.
Hungarian Cardinal József Mindszenty, an unyielding opponent of fascism and communism, died in exile.
Last edition:
Sunday, May 4, 2025
Sunday, May 4, 1975. 1,000,000 runs.
The one millionth run in Major League Baseball history was scored by Bob Watson of the Houston Astros.
The Khmer Rouge seized control of South Vietnam's Phú Quốc Island.
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Saturday, May 3, 1975. End of the Cultural Revolution.
Saturday, May 3, 2025
Saturday, May 3, 1975. End of the Cultural Revolution.
Chinese Communist Party, Chairman Mao Zedong spoke out against the Cultural Revolution and the Gang of Four in his last speech to the Politburo.
All former South Vietnamese military personnel and government officials were ordered to register with the new government. This was the first step to sending them to reeducation camps.
The city of Jerusalem was hit by missiles for the first time, after two Czechoslovakian made Katyusha rockets struck 500 meters from the Knesset parliament building. They were fired by Arab guerillas.
New edition:
Friday, May 2, 1975. Hold outs.
Thursday, May 1, 2025
Thứ Năm, ngày 1 tháng 5 năm 1975. Chiến tranh Việt Nam kết thúc.* Thursday, May 1, 1975. The conclusion of the Vietnam War. Jeudi 1er mai 1975. Fin de la guerre du Vietnam.
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ARVN troops in Cần Thơ surrendered to the VC following the suicide of Gen. Nguyễn Khoa Nam, age 48, Major General of IV Corps in Cần Thơ. This effectively brought organized resistance to the VC and NVA almost to an end after twenty years of combat. The country remains, of course, under the regime that won the war.
Quân VNCH ở Cần Thơ đầu hàng VC sau cái chết của Tướng Nguyễn Khoa Nam, 48 tuổi, Thiếu tướng Quân đoàn IV ở Cần Thơ. Điều này đã khiến cho sự kháng cự có tổ chức chống lại VC và Bắc Việt gần như chấm dứt một cách hiệu quả sau hai mươi năm chiến đấu. Tất nhiên, đất nước vẫn nằm dưới chế độ đã thắng trong chiến tranh.
Les troupes de l'ARVN à Cần Thơ se sont rendues au VC suite au suicide du général Nguyễn Khoa Nam, 48 ans, major général du IVe Corps à Cần Thơ. Cela a effectivement mis fin à la résistance organisée au VC et à la NVA après vingt ans de combat. Le pays reste bien entendu sous le régime qui a gagné la guerre.
By this point, I'd quit tracking the war on my National Geographic map of Vietnam. There came to be no point.
Khmer Rouge forces landed on Phú Quốc which was claimed by Cambodia but controlled by South Vietnam. It was also the location of a large South Vietnamese POW camp.
Hank Aaron broke the career record for RBIs.
Thursday, May 1, 2025
The New York Stock Exchange dropped the requirement of a fixed commission for stock transactions following pressure to do so from the SEC.
Footnotes:
*Google Translate text. I don't speak Vietnamese.
Last edition:
Wednesday, April 30, 1975. The Fall of Saigon.
Friday, April 25, 2025
Friday April 25, 1975. White Christmas.
The U.S. Embassy in Saigon decided that to signal "Evacuation Day" for Americans, the Defense Attaché Office (DAO) radio station would broadcast the phrase "the temperature is 105 degrees and rising" followed by playing Bing Crosby's recording of the song "White Christmas".
The last Australians, including their ambassador, were evacuated by the RAAF.
91.7% of eligible Portuguese voters turned out for the first multiparty election in the country in nearly fifty years. The Socialist Party won 116 of the 250 seats, Social Democrats won 81 and the Portuguese Communist Party 30 seats.
There had been real fears the Communist Party would win.
The Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre raided a branch of the Banco de Comercio at Villa Coapa, Mexico City, killing six police who were guarding the bank. They killed two more policemen and two bystanders in their escape.
Last edition
Thursday, April 24, 1975. Wings of Freedom
Labels: 1970s, 1975, Aircraft, Colorado, homosexuality, law, Saigon Vietnam, South Vietnam, Sweden, Terrorism, The Fall of Saigon, Vietnam, Vietnam War, West Germany
Thursday, April 24, 2025
Thursday, April 24, 1975. Wings of Freedom
The last Pan Am flight out of South Vietnam occured.
Episode 4: Evacuation of Saigon, Wings of Freedom Mission
Six terrorists of the Baader-Meinhof Gang (the "Red Army Faction") seized the West German embassy in Sweden. They took eleven hostages and demanded the release of Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, which the German government refused. They after killed two of the hostages before a bomb they took in the embassy accidentally exploded, allowing the hostages to escape and fatally injuring two of the terrorists.
The Swedish army took the rest prisoner.
The change in policy on negotiations with terrorists marked the beginning of the decline of domestic terrorism directed at West Germany.
Colorado Attorney General Joyce Murdoch invalidated all six marriage licenses for same-sex marriages that had been issued by Boulder County Clerk Clela Rorex.
Last edition:
Wednesday, April 23, 1975. Ford addresses Vietnam at Tulane.
Saturday, April 19, 2025
Saturday, April 19, 1975. The ARVN withdraws from Xuân Lộc.
The ARVN withdrew from Xuân Lộc.
The Khmer Rouge declared that all former regime employees, including soldiers, needed to register with the new government.
A largescale military wedding took place involving members of the ROK SWC 9th Brigade. This is linked directly to Reddit:
More photos of it can be found here: Wedding.
Note the uniforms heavily impacted by the Vietnam War, which South Korea participated in.
Last edition:
Friday, April 18, 1975. Executing the radicals.
Friday, April 18, 2025
Friday, April 18, 1975. Executing the radicals.
Hang Thun Hak, 48 year old former radical Socialist Prime Minister of Cambodia was executed by the Khmer Rouge. He'd been in the far left himself and had contacts with the Khmer Rouge, none of which saved him, with execution of left wing radicals actually being common amongst Communist.
The NVA took Phan Thiết.
Van McCoy released The Hustle.
ZZ Top released Fandango!
Last edition:
Thursday, April 17, 1975. The fall of Phnom Penh.
Thursday, April 17, 2025
Thursday, April 17, 1975. The fall of Phnom Penh.
Khmer Rouge cadres marched into Phnom Penh, forced all residents out of their homes, marched them into the countryside, and began mass murders.
Around 2,000,000 Cambodians would die during the Cambodian genocide which only ended when the Vietnamese Army conquered Cambodia during the Cambodian Vietnamese War.
A CIA spy inside the North Vietnamese government inner circle informed the US Embassy in Saigon that the North would not negotiated, which was pretty obvious by this point anyway.
The last flight of the RAAF out of Vietnam took place, thereby taking a total of 270 Vietnamese civilians to Thailand.
Last edition:
Wednesday, April 16, 1975. Ford denounces Congress.
Tuesday, April 17, 1945. Flak Bait.
The B-26 Marauder Flak Bait, which completed 200 missions on this day.
Winston Churchill eulogized the late Franklin Roosevelt in Parliament.
I beg to move:
"That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty to convey to His Majesty the deep sorrow with which this House has learned of the death of the President of the United States of America and to pray His Majesty that in communicating his own sentiments of grief to the United States Government, he will also be graciously pleased to express on the part of this House their sense of the loss which the British Commonwealth and Empire and the cause of the Allied Nations have sustained, and their profound sympathy with Mrs. Roosevelt and the late President's family and with the Government and people of the United States of America."
My friendship with the great man to whose work and fame we pay our tribute to-day began and ripened during this war. I had met him, but only for a few minutes, after the close of the last war and as soon as I went to the Admiralty in September, 1939, he telegraphed, inviting me to correspond with him direct on naval or other matters if at any time I felt inclined. Having obtained the permission of the Prime Minister, I did so. Knowing President Roosevelt's keen interest in sea warfare, I furnished him with a stream of information about our naval affairs and about the various actions, including especially the action of the Plate River, which lighted the first gloomy winter of the war.
When I became Prime Minister, and the war broke out in all its hideous fury, when our own life and survival hung in the balance, I was already in a position to telegraph to the President on terms of an association which had become most intimate and, to me, most agreeable. This continued through all the ups and downs of the world struggle until Thursday last, when I received my last messages from him. These messages showed no falling off in his accustomed clear vision and vigour upon perplexing and complicated matters. I may mention that this correspondence which, of course, was greatly increased after the United States entry into the war, comprises, to and fro between us, over 1,700 messages. Many of these were lengthy messages and the majority dealt with those more difficult points which come to be discussed upon the level of heads of Governments only after official solutions had not been reached at other stages. To this correspondence there must be added our nine meetings at Argentia, three in Washington, at Casablanca, at Teheran, two at Quebec and, last of all, at Yalta, comprising in all about 120 days of close personal contact, during a great part of which I stayed with him at the White House or at his home at Hyde Park or in his retreat in the Blue Mountains, which he called Shangri-La.
I conceived an admiration for him as a statesman, a man of affairs, and a war leader. I felt the utmost confidence in his upright, inspiring character and outlook and a personal regard-affection I must say-for him beyond my power to express to-day. His love of his own country, his respect for its constitution, his power of gauging the tides and currents of its mobile public opinion, were always evident, but, added to these, were the beatings of that generous heart which was always stirred to anger and to action by spectacles of aggression and oppression by the strong against the weak. It is, indeed, a loss, a bitter loss to humanity that those heart-beats are stilled for ever. President Roosevelt's physical affliction lay heavily upon him. It was a marvel that he bore up against it through all the many years of tumult-and storm. Not one man in ten millions, stricken and crippled as he was, would have attempted to plunge into a life of physical and mental exertion and of hard, ceaseless political controversy. Not one in ten millions would have tried, not one in a generation would have succeeded, not only in entering this sphere, not only in acting vehemently in it, but in becoming indisputable master of the scene. In this extraordinary effort of the spirit over the flesh, the will-power over physical infirmity, he was inspired and sustained by that noble woman his devoted wife, whose high ideals marched with his own, and to whom the deep and respectful sympathy of the House of Commons flows out to-day in all fullness. There is no doubt that the President foresaw the great dangers closing in upon the pre-war world with far more prescience than most well-informed people on either side of the Atlantic, and that he urged forward with all his power such precautionary military preparations as peace-time opinion in the United States could be brought to accept. There never was a moment's doubt, as the quarrel opened, upon which side his sympathies lay.
The fall of France, and what seemed to most people outside this Island, the impending destruction of Great Britain, were to him an agony, although he never lost faith in us. They were an agony to him not only on account of Europe, but because of the serious perils to which the United States herself would have been exposed had we been overwhelmed or the survivors cast down under the German yoke. The bearing of the British nation at that time of stress, when we were all alone, filled him and vast numbers of his countrymen with the warmest sentiments towards our people. He and they felt the blitz of the stern winter of 1940~1, when Hitler set himself to rub out the cities of our country, as much as any of us did, and perhaps more indeed, for imagination is often more torturing than reality. There is no doubt that the bearing of the British and, above all, of the Londoners kindled fires in American bosoms far harder to quench than the conflagrations from which we were suffering. There was also at that time, in spite of General Wavell's victories-all the more, indeed, because of the reinforcements which were sent from this country to him-the apprehension widespread in the United States that we should be invaded by Germany after the fullest preparation in the spring of 1941. It was in February that the President sent to England the late Mr. Wendell Willkie, who, although a political rival and an opposing candidate, felt, as he did on many important points. Mr. Willkie brought a letter from Mr. Roosevelt, which the President had written in his own hand, and this letter contained the famous lines of Longfellow:
". . . Sail on, O ship of State!
Sail on O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!"
At about that same time he devised the extraordinary measure of assistance called Lend-Lease, which will stand forth as the most unselfish and unsordid financial act of any country in all history. The effect of this was greatly to increase British fighting power and for all the purposes of the war effort to make us, as it were, a much more numerous community. In that autumn I met the President for the first time during the war at Argentia in Newfoundland and together we drew up the Declaration which has since been called the Atlantic Charter and which will, I trust, long remain a guide for both our peoples and for other peoples of the world.
All this time, in deep and dark and deadly secrecy, the Japanese were preparing their act of treachery and greed. When next we met in Washington Japan, Germany and Italy had declared war upon the United States and both our countries were in arms, shoulder to shoulder. Since then we have advanced over the land and over the sea through many difficulties and disappointments, but always with a broadening measure of success. I need not dwell upon the series of great operations which have taken place in the Western Hemisphere, to say nothing of that other immense war proceeding at the other side of the world. Nor need I speak of the plans which we made with our great Ally, Russia, at Teheran, for these have now been carried out for all the world to see.
But at Yalta I noticed that the President was ailing. His captivating smile, his gay and charming manner, had not deserted him but his face had a transparency, an air of purification, and often there was a faraway look in his eyes. When I took my leave of him in Alexandria harbour I must confess that I had an indefinable sense of fear that his health and his strength were on the ebb. But nothing altered his inflexible sense of duty. To the end he faced his innumerable tasks unflinching. One of the tasks of the President is to sign maybe a hundred or two hundred State papers with his own hand every day, commissions and so forth. All this he continued to carry out with the utmost strictness. When death came suddenly upon him "he had finished his mail." That portion of his day's work was done. As the saying goes, he died in harness and we may well say in battle harness, like his soldiers, sailors and airmen, who side by side with ours, are carrying on their task to the end all over the world. What an enviable death was his. He had brought his country through the worst of its perils and the heaviest of its toils. Victory had cast its sure and steady beam upon him. He had broadened and stabilised in the days of peace the foundations of American life and union.
In war he had raised the strength, might and glory of the great Republic to a height never attained by any nation in history. With her left hand she was leading the advance of the conquering Allied Armies into the heart of Germany and with her right, on the other side of the globe, she was irresistibly and swiftly breaking up the power of Japan. And all the time ships, munitions, supplies, and food of every kind were aiding on a gigantic scale her Allies, great and small, in the course of the long struggle.
But all this was no more than worldly power and grandeur, had it not been that the causes of human freedom and of social justice to which so much of his life had been given, added a lustre to all this power and pomp and warlike might, a lustre which will long be discernible among men. He has left behind him a band of resolute and able men handling the numerous interrelated parts of the vast American war machine. He has left a successor who comes forward with firm step and sure conviction to carry on the task to its appointed end. For us. it remains only to say that in Franklin Roosevelt there died the greatest American friend we have ever known and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the new world to the old.
Question put, and agreed to, nemine contradicente.
Resolved:
"That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty to convey to His Majesty the deep sorrow with which this House has learned of the death of the President of the United States of America and to pray His Majesty that in communicating his own sentiments of grief to the United States Government, he will also be graciously pleased to express on the part of this House their sense of the loss which the British Commonwealth and Empire and the cause of the Allied Nations have sustained, and their profound sympathy with Mrs. Roosevelt and the late President's family and with the Government and people of the United States of America."
German troops flooded the Wieringermeerpolder to aid in their retreat. However, on the same day, German units in the Ruhr began mass surrenders.
US troops landed in the Moro Gulf at Cotabatu.
The Battle of the Hongorai River began in New Guinea.
Historian Tran Trong Kim was appointed the Prime Minister of the Empire of Vietnam, the short lived Japanese supported Vietnamese monarchy.
One armed baseball Peter Gray made his major league debut.
Berlin: Sprint To The Finish Line – Dawn Of The Truman Era – April 17, 1945
Last edition:
Monday, April 16, 1945. The final battle in the West.
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