While at a The Wall That Heals stop, a local veteran asked me to find his friends name on The Wall. He further suggests that 222,000 civilians may have been counted as enemy military deaths by the U.S. in compiling its "body count" raising the total to 627,000 killed. Washington, DC 20374-5060, For records relating to U.S. national war policy, information may be found in, Vietnam War Casualty and POW/MIA Records Descriptions, Vietnam War Fatal Casualty Statistics (U. S. Armed Forces Personnel), State Lists of U. S. Fatal Casualties of the Vietnam War, Electronic Data Records Relating to Military Objectives and Activities During the Vietnam War, Search Selected Vietnam War Electronic Records, RG 472 United States Forces in Southeast Asia, 1950-1975, Office of Civil Operations and Rural Support (CORDS), Marine Corps Command Chronologies for the Vietnam War, Records Relating to American Prisoners of War and Missing in Action from the Vietnam War Era, 1960-1994, RG 335 Office of the Secretary of the Army, RG 341, Records of the U.S. Air Force Staff, RG 342, Records of U.S. Air Force Commands, Activities, and Organizations, RG 340, Records of the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, RG 27 Records of the Marine Corps - Command Chronologies (Entry UD-07D 1), RG 24 Records of the Bureau of Naval Personnel, RG 218 Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, RG 330 Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. [11], Author Mark Woodruff noted that when the Vietnamese Government finally revealed its estimated losses (in April 1995) as being 1.1 million dead or missing, U.S body count figures had actually underestimated enemy losses. Tensions escalated into armed conflict between the two sides, and in 1961 U.S. President John F. Kennedy chose to expand the military aid program. He would become instrumental in helping Doubek identify names and check spellings. Political turbulence there and two alleged North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. naval vessels spurred Johnson to demand the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964. The west wall is on the left when standing facing the vertex, and the east wall is to the right. The gun had been randomly lobbing in rounds for over a week and was hidden in an abandoned FSB nearby.Two of our six 105mm howitzer crews took direct hits during a night mortar attack. In 1975 South Vietnam fell to a full-scale invasion by the North. 1:50. The result: no comprehensive master list of Vietnam War casualties existed. Vietnam War, Awards and Decorations of Honor, 1965-1972. The United States entered Vietnam with the principal purpose of preventing a communist takeover of the region. To learn about us and how you can help maintain this site. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, between 200,000 and 400,000 boat people died at sea. . [73][74], Historian Christian Appy states "search and destroy was the principal tactic; and the enemy body count was the primary measure of progress" in the US strategy of attrition. I am grateful for each and every volunteer, each newspaper that agreed to do a story for a little lady from Hawaii. Not until 1995 did Vietnam release its official estimate of war dead: as many as 2 million civilians on both sides and some 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. Together, we can make sure our heroes will get the reverence they deserve and the stories and sacrifices of our heroes will never be forgotten. Including 28 civilians, originally there were 52 missing civilians. Genealogy of the descendants of John Walker of Wigton, Scotland, Genealogy of John Howe of Sudbury and Marlborough, Massachusetts, Ezekiel Cheever and some of his Descendants, Early Records and Notes of the Brown Family, Somerville High School Yearbooks 1892-2016. Locate the line on which the name is inscribed. According to statistics from the South Vietnamese Ministry of Health, 44.5% of civilians admitted to hospitals between 1967 and 1970 were wounded by mines or mortars, 21.2% by guns or grenades, and 34.3% by artillery or bombing. Once additions are approved by DoD, VVMF receives the list of approved names, coordinates the inscribing and absorbs the costs. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union and China poured weapons, supplies, and advisers into the North, which in turn provided support, political direction, and regular combat troops for the campaign in the South. [65], According to the Vietnamese government's official history, the PAVN suffered over 100,000 casualties during the 1972 Easter Offensive, including 40,000 killed. Between October 1966 and June 1969, 246,000 soldiers were recruited through Project 100,000, of whom 41% were black; black people only made up about 11% of the population of the US. A few years after the dedication, the issue of geographic criteria was expanded by DoD to include people who had been killed outside of the war zone while on or in support of direct combat missions. She is currently pursuing a masters degree in military history. The . I asked if he wanted to see his picture, Reckinger said. Vietnam War Casualties, MIA and POWs. To put a circle around the symbol beside their names would not provide the correct historical context related to their situation. American soldiers and Vietnamese refugees returning to the town of Hue, in Vietnam. [50][51] South Korean Marines reportedly perpetrated the H My massacre on 25 February 1968. [93][94] With the draft increasing due to the troop buildup in South Vietnam, the military significantly lowered its admission standards. Step 7: Open bank account: Financial backers need to open two sorts of ledgers, to be specific the speculation capital record to get the venture sum and the exchange represent going through with . The conflict. Naval History and Heritage Command "UCDP/Prio Armed Conflict Database", Uppsala University, sfn error: no target: CITEREFRummel1997 (. [77] Additionally, according to the U.S. military, they also lost up to 101,511 personnel as defectors due to the Chieu Hoi program,[78] but one analyst speculates that less than 25% of those were genuine. The 'shameful gamesmanship' practiced by 'certain reporting elements' under pressure to 'produce results' also shrouded the process. : 325 6 January. In some instances, names needed to be shuffled in order to fit on a line. [95][96], The number of US military personnel in Vietnam jumped from 23,300 in 1965 to 465,600 by the end of 1967. Congress authorized troop deployment in Vietnam, but, because it did not issue a declaration of war on North Vietnam or the Viet Cong, the Vietnam War is, technically speaking, not considered a war in the United States. Alfred M. Gray Research Center The names are listed in chronological order, according to the date of casualty. We were tickled to death," Raymond Klug told Milkovits. Researchers should also contact the Marine Corps Archives & Special Collections at, Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections The process of letter of credit import payment methods. The last 18 names listed on the bottom of Panel 1, West, also at the apex, are from May 15, 1975. [102] The Red Cross of Vietnam estimates that up to 1 million people are disabled or suffer health problems due to Agent Orange exposure. Rummel calculated PAVN/VC deaths at 1,062,000 and ARVN and allied war deaths of 741,000, with both totals including civilians inadvertently killed. During one review, Doubek found a glitch with the computer software: it did not recognize the spaces that appeared within a last name, such as van der Meide. Nor could it properly discern a compounded first name, such as Billy Bob, versus a traditional first and middle name. It would also enable veterans to find groups of friends who died during the same incident. Harper Perennial; September 1991. [42] This might partially explain the discrepancies between recovered weapons and body-count figures, along with exaggeration, although the NVA and VC also went to great lengths to recover weapons from the battlefield. W denotes the west wall, and E denotes the east wall. Rummel estimates 212,000 killed by Khmer Rouge (19671975), 60,000 killed by U.S. and 1,000 killed by South Vietnam (196773). Updates? The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History By Spencer C. Tucker ", Viet Cong and Peoples Army of Vietnam use of terror in the Vietnam War, Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Vietnamese Casualties During the American War: A New Estimate, "Fifty years of violent war deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia: analysis of data from the world health survey programme", "20 Years After Victory, Vietnamese Communists Ponder How to Celebrate", http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/datasets/ucdp_prio_armed_conflict_dataset/, http://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a032189.pdf, Countering Terrorism and Insurgency in the 21st Century, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century. As of 2017, there are 58,318 names inscribed on The Wall. Those designated by a plus sign were considered to be missing in action when the war ended. The Vietnam Conflict Extract Data File of the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) Extract Files contains records of 58,220 U.S. military fatal casualties of the Vietnam War. The overwhelming majority of the MIA are from northern Vietnam. among the more than 58,000 names on the Vietnam . Our 9 best-selling history titles feature in-depth storytelling and iconic imagery to engage and inform on the people, the wars, and the events that shaped America and the world. Their names, however, have been removed from the printed Directory of Names. Once a master list was compiled, the names were checked manually for errors. Compounding these difficulties was the issue that many casualties, particularly from the Air Force, were not always straightforward in terms of locale. 1972 FamilySearch Research Wiki Articles United States, National Archives, Military Records, 1885-2004 Unfortunately, the Department of Defense and the individual service branches maintained separate casualty lists with slightly differing criteria. Legacy of Hamburger . The Army instigated myriad reforms, addressed issues of discrimination and prejudice from the post exchanges to the lack of black officers, and introduced "Mandatory Watch And Action Committees" into each unit. [35], For official US military operations reports, there was no established distinctions between enemy KIA and civilian KIA. I am proud of my work with this project and will never forget this time in my life.. [19], Other casualties for the ARVN included up to 1,170,000 military wounded,[59] and 1,000,000 surrendered or captured. [55] Widespread reports of deliberate mass killings by Korean forces alleged that they were the result of systemic, deliberate policies to massacre civilians, with murders running into the hundreds. The killed in action figure comes from "Special Subject 4: The Work of Locating and Recovering the Remains of Martyrs From Now Until 2020 And Later Years," downloaded from the Vietnamese government website datafile on 1 December 2017. On that panel, above the names is this inscription: In honor of the men and women of the armed forces of the United States who served in the Vietnam War. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress sole authority to issue declarations of war. They also assert that the U.S. overall suffered fewer casualties than its opponents. These names are followed by the inscription: Our nation honors the courage, sacrifice and devotion to duty and country of its Vietnam veterans. Millions more come to experience this Memorial each year. 805 Kidder Breese Street, SE The chronological order allows veterans who were in a battle to see their friends forever united on the Wall, he explained. [2] "It was the epitome of immoralityOne of the times I counted bodies after an air strikewhich always ended with two napalm bombs which would just fry everything that was leftI counted sixty-two bodies. I was able to obtain a high school photo and then a military photo and provide it not only to the Wall of Faces but to the family as well.. [11][23]:106 R.J. Rummel estimated that ARVN suffered between 219,000 and 313,000 deaths during the war, including in 1975 and prior to 1960. "Making More Enemies than We Kill? Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, but his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, continued the work that Kennedy had started. Some common names appear on the Memorial more than once. [58] According to Guenter Lewy, the ARVN suffered between 171,331 and 220,357 deaths during the war. [98], Unexploded ordnance continue to detonate and kill people today. November 11, 1982. The National Archives has custody of a wide assortment of both textual documents and electronic records related to the Vietnam conflict. Thus, there were 211,455 killed and wounded, or one in every 10 Americans who served in Vietnam. The study's authors stated that methodological limitations of the study include imbalance between rural and urban areas and the potential exclusion of high mortality areas. A number of incidents occurred during the war in which civilians were deliberately targeted or killed the most prominent being the Hu Massacre and the M Lai Massacre. My most memorable story came from contacting a daughter-in-law of a fallen service member only to find out that her husband had never seen a photo of his father, Hine said. Seven massacres officially confirmed by the American side. My Lai (4) and My Khe (4) (collectively the My Lai Massacre) claimed the largest number of victims with 420 and 90 respectively, and in five other places a total of about 100 civilians were executed. [62] According to the Vice Minister Nguyn B Hoan, in 2022, nearly 200,000 PAVN/VC were still MIA (whose bodies were have not been found), and 300,000 whose bodies have been found, but buried anonymously and never identified. With the glitch discovered, Doubek and his team located and hand-corrected each error. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. [22], Thomas Thayer in 1985 estimated that during the 196572 period the VC killed 33,052 South Vietnamese village officials and civil servants.[23]. He did so after a chance encounter at a VVMF event that brings a smaller replica of The Wall to communities across America. Your donation to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund will help expand our mission to honor, educate and heal. Her book Bernard Montgomerys Art of War won a Silver Medal from the Military Writers Society of America. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). By nearly every metric, the Vietnam War was, in the common sense of the word, a war. State Lists of U. S. Fatal Casualties of the Vietnam War Electronic Data Records Relating to Military Objectives and Activities During the Vietnam War Search Selected Vietnam War Electronic Records, through the Access to Archival Databases (AAD) Textual Records Relating to the Vietnam War [55] These policies were also reported on by US commanders, with one US Marine General stating "whenever the Korean marines received fire "or think [they got] fired on from a village they'd divert from their march and go over and completely level the village it would be a lesson to (the Vietnamese). [26], RJ Rummel estimated that American forces killed around 5,500 people in democide between 1960 and 1972, from a range of between 4,000 and 10,000. Rummel does not give a medium or high estimate. "We had no qualms. OR To shorten the name list, enter 2 or more letters of any part of a name in the box below. Furthermore, domestic unrest and the financial cost of war made peaceand troop withdrawalsa necessity, not a choice. Ronald H. Spector is Professor of History and International Affairs in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Although the records may not be complete, the U.S. National Archives shows that 58,220 U.S. soldiers perished, and categorized the deaths as follows. Estimates of the total number of deaths in the Vietnam War vary widely. This change prompted the addition of 110 names in 1986. The Wall USA is a non-profit endeavor maintained by veterans of the 4th Battalion 9th Infantry Regiment for the benefit of all. [64] According to the Vietnamese government, from 1994 to 2012, 172,460 PAVN/VC bodies were found, including 15,989 in Cambodia, and 14,549 in Laos, and around 10,000 bodies were found from 2012 to 2015, reducing the number of MIA from 390,000 (1993) to 207,000 (2016). Another potential limitation is the relatively small sample size of the study. [28][4] Higher estimates place the number of civilian deaths caused by American bombing of North Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder at 182,000. If youre looking to see where better photos are needed, you can do a search online through the Wall of Faces. Nick Turse, in his 2013 book, Kill Anything that Moves, argues that a relentless drive toward higher body counts, a widespread use of free-fire zones, rules of engagement where civilians who ran from soldiers or helicopters could be viewed as VC, and a widespread disdain for Vietnamese civilians led to massive civilian casualties and endemic war crimes inflicted by U.S. Two people were killed and four others were wounded after gunfire erupted at Chickasaw Park in Louisville on Saturday night, authorities said. Please note: U.S. Navy muster rolls/personnel diaries after 1971 utilize social security numbers and are subject to privacy restrictions. The National Archives and Records Administration prepared theseVietnam War casualty lists by creating extracts from the military casualty data files in the Records of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Record Group 330). Proving a direct correlation to the injuries is a challenge, Pontes explained. [20] About 130 American and 16,000 South Vietnamese POWs died in captivity. If a service member were to return alive, a circlethe symbol of lifewould be inscribed around the plus sign. [71] The official US Department of Defense figure was 950,765 communist forces killed in Vietnam from 1965 to 1974. Under the cover of monsoon rains the Vietcong (VC) 409th Battalion attacked the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines at Firebase Ross with mortars and sappers . Unfortunately, he mistakenly added a small number of names of men who were still alive. Lt.Sharon Lane, Capt. Quantico, VA 22134. The USSR built more than 11,000 of these airplanes. The names of those who gave their lives and of those who remain missing are inscribed in the order they were taken from us. Operational Archives Branch The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall USA website is dedicated to honoring those who died in the Vietnam War. harvnb error: no target: CITEREFTurse2013 (. You can also visit the mobile exhibit. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., lists more than 58,300 names of members of the U.S. armed forces who were killed or went missing in action. The American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress sponsors the Veterans History Project, which includes detailed first-hand accounts of war experiences, including those of Vietnam veterans. Vietnam War, (1954-75), a protracted conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, against the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. As she wisely predicted, this would help bring the veterans back in timeand a cathartic healing would occur for many by facing this loss again.. Da Nang was the primary storage site of the chemical. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial provides a searchable database of names included on the Memorial, as well as lists of casualties. They seem honored to be putting the names on the Wall.. 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