FOOTHILL COLLEGE Instructor: Joy Holland Fine Arts & Communication Division Email: hollandjoy@fhda.edu Office Location: 1710 Office Phone: 650-949-7477 WAR IN VIETNAM (1955-1975)
In the 1950's, Vietnamese nationalist forces overthrew the French colonial government. Vietnam then divided into Communist North and anti-Communist South. The U.S. military involvement in Vietnam was part of a global Cold War struggle. U.S. forces engaged in the conflict to support South Vietnam, in hopes of defeating North Vietnam and preventing the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia.
As the war intensified in the 1960's, the U.S. expanded its operations in the region, deploying more than 2 million American troops. As the conflict dragged on and the death toll rose, opposition to the war escalated. Disapproval of U.S. involvement in Vietnam arose during the Civil Rights Movement, in which African-Americans sought to overturn laws of segregation and racial discrimination. With the mandatory draft sending young men into U.S. military service, a disproportionately large number of black males were being killed in combat-related deaths in Vietnam. Martin Luther King Jr. lamented the toll of the war on African-American men, but he also condemned American military actions for destroying the Vietnamese people’s lives, families, villages and land.1
Furthermore, struggling U.S. forces were never able to stop the guerrilla warfare waged by North Vietnam and their sympathizers. The defeated U.S. army withdrew its troops in 1973. Two years later, the South surrendered in the Fall of Saigon, and Vietnam became unified under Communist control. By the war's end, 58,000 American soldiers were killed or missing in action. Millions of Vietnamese civilians were killed, uprooted from their homes, or exposed to deadly chemicals. Toxic chemical warfare destroyed millions of hectares of crops and forests in Vietnam, causing long-term damage to the health and natural environment of the Vietnamese people. The Vietnam War was the longest war in U.S. history and the most unpopular American war of the 20th century.
1 Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence. 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City.