how many died in vietnam war
Vietnam War casualties from Michigan Click or Tap on name to find a personal memorial page of a casualty from this state. Their estimates for conflict deaths in Vietnam are 164,923 from 1955–64 and 1,458,050 from 1965–75 for a total of 1,622,973. Casualty Category Number of Records, Killed in action 40,934, Died of wounds 5,299, Accident 9,107, Declared dead 1,201, Illness 938, Self-inflicted 382, Homicide 236, Presumed Dead (Body remains not recovered) 91, Presumed Dead (Body was recovered) 32. This resulted in a dramatic decrease in the proportion of black casualties, and by late 1967, black casualties had fallen to 13%, and were below 10% in 1970 to 1972. There was a violent confrontation with demonstrators and U.S. MLK also led a march in Chicago on March 25, calling the war “a blasphemy against all that America stands for.”. The government of Vietnam says that 4 million of its citizens were exposed to Agent Orange, and as many as 3 million have suffered illnesses because of it; these figures include the children of people who were exposed. Because 153,303 soldiers also got very badly wounded. [49][50] A separate study by a RAND Corporation employee Terry Rambo conducted interviews in 1970 in ARVN/civilian areas on reported Korean atrocities. This persuaded many to join the anti-war cause. A total of 58,209 Americans died in the Vietnam War. It was difficult to distinguish between civilians and military personnel in many instances as many individuals were part-time guerrillas or impressed laborer… Civilian deaths were partly caused by assassinations, massacres and terror tactics. Some 365,000 Vietnamese civilians are estimated by one source to have died as a result of the war during the period of American involvement.[1]. Korean War: 36,574. Communism developed in Vietnam, splitting the country into its South and North. [55] It is unclear how the Vietnamese Government figures correlate to other reports of 300–330,000 PAVN/VC missing-in-action from the Vietnam War. These records were transferred into the custody of the National Archives and Records Administration in 2008. The pressure to produce confirmed kills resulted in massive fraud. The last week of December 1968 marked the end of the bloodiest year in the Vietnam War. [19][3] Higher estimates place the number of civilian deaths caused by American bombing of North Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder at 182,000. [56] Per the official history, one of the deadliest years was 1972, in which the PAVN suffered over 100,000 deaths. [39], Thomas Thayer in 1985 estimated that during the 1965–72 period the VC killed 33,052 South Vietnamese village officials and civil servants.[40]. Furthermore there was little distinction made between armed combatants, neutral civilians and unarmed individuals for "enemy KIA". [42], The ROK Capital Division purportedly conducted the Bình An/Tây Vinh massacre in February/March 1966. Which occurred after US troops withdrew from South Vietnam? His estimate of total deaths is reflected in the table. As of June 8, 2020, the CDC shows this latter number at 92,922. [17] Benjamin Valentino attributes possibly 110,000–310,000 "counterguerrilla mass killings" to U.S. and South Vietnamese forces during the war. 1st Class Gary Hall and Marine Lance Cpl. U.S. Army and marine officers knew that promotions were largely based on confirmed kills. [38] During the peak war years, another scholar Guenter Lewy attributed almost a third of civilian deaths to the VC. Vietnam War: 58,220. [44] In December 1966, the Blue Dragon Brigade purportedly conducted the Bình Hòa massacre. Lewy reduced the number of Viet Cong (VC) and People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) battle deaths claimed by the U.S. by 30 percent (in accordance with the opinion of United States Department of Defense officials), and assumed that one third of the battle deaths of the PAVN/VC were actually civilians. Per war: 191,605 deaths/missing in the First Indochina War, 849,018 deaths/missing in the Second Indochina War (Vietnam War), and 105,627 deaths/missing in the Third Indochina War. [34] One example cited by Turse is Operation Speedy Express, an operation by the 9th Infantry Division, which was described by John Paul Vann as, in effect, "many My Lais". Rummel estimates 212,000 killed by Khmer Rouge (1967–1975), 60,000 killed by U.S. and 1,000 killed by South Vietnam (1967–73). "Statistics of Vietnamese Democide", Lines 777–785, harvnb error: no target: CITEREFTurse2013 (, sfn error: no target: CITEREFRummel1997 (, Marilyn Young. It was also called the “American War in Vietnam,” and marked the clash between Communism the Democratic Western World. In South Vietnam there was the suppression of various sects and their independent armies (line 219), rebellions of minorities (lines 222 to 223), the pre-Vietnam War communist inspired guerrilla war directed by North Vietnam from 1954 through 1959 (lines 227 and 228), and the … When he later read the official tally of dead, he found that it listed them as 130 VC killed. [58], There has been considerable controversy about the exact numbers of deaths inflicted on the Communist side by U.S. and allied South Vietnamese forces. Two other cleanup sites being reviewed by the United States and Vietnam are Biên Hòa Air Base, in the southern province of Đồng Nai—a 'hotspot' for dioxin—and Phù Cát Air Base in Bình Định Province, according to U.S. About 58,209 U.S. military service people died in the Vietnam War. Military historian John Shy subsequently estimated the total killed in action at 8,000, and argued that the number of wounded was probably far higher, about 25,000. [7], Lewy estimates that 40,000 South Vietnamese civilians were assassinated by the PAVN/VC; 250,000 were killed as a result of combat in South Vietnam, and 65,000 were killed in North Vietnam. By Spencer C. Tucker ", Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, Viet Cong and People’s Army of Vietnam use of terror in the Vietnam War, 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://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.TAB6.1B.GIF, https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.TAB9.1.GIF, http://www.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 for the different branches, 38,224 were in the Army, 14,844 were in the Marine Corps, 2,586 in the Air Force, 2,559 in the Navy, and seven from the Coast Guard. In 1965 alone they comprised 14.1% of total combat deaths, when they only comprised approximately 11% of the total U.S. population in the same year. Joseph Hargrove. [72], The total number of American personnel who were KIA or died non-hostile deaths, were enlisted personnel with a casualty number of 50,441. Terrorist attacks on 9/11, nearly 3,000 dead. 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. [77][78] With the draft increasing due to the troop buildup in South Vietnam, the military significantly lowered its admission standards. [60] The official US Department of Defense figure was 950,765 communist forces killed in Vietnam from 1965 to 1974. [3] The U.S. National Archives shows that 58,220 U.S. soldiers perished. These numbers are not official statistics and are for informational purposes only. [37] About 130 American and 16,000 South Vietnamese POWs died in captivity. However the official start date for the conflict was 1 November 1955. [85], Agent Orange and similar chemical defoliants have also caused a considerable number of deaths and injuries over the years, including among the US Air Force crew that handled them. Estimates include both civilian and military deaths in North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. [30] This might partially explain the discrepancies between recovered weapons and body-count figures, alongside exaggeration, although the NVA and VC also went to great lengths to recover weapons from the battlefield. Da Nang was the primary storage site of the chemical. There were 1.4 million casualties during the Vietnam War. The two governments were pitted against each other in a war that was part of the larger Indochina Wars. Civilian deaths caused by both sides amounted to a significant percentage of total deaths. Between October 1957 and May 1975, there were 3,147 deaths from the state of Pennsylvania in the Vietnam War. The slabs meet at a vertex of 125 degrees, 10 feet above ground level to form the Wall. [35], R. J. Rummel estimated that PAVN/VC forces killed around 164,000 civilians in democide between 1954 and 1975 in South Vietnam, from a range of between 106,000 and 227,000, plus another 50,000 killed in North Vietnam. This totals, from a range of between 16,000 and 167,000 deaths caused by South Vietnam during the (Diệm-era), and 42,000 and 118,000 deaths caused by South Vietnam in the post Diệm-era), excluding PAVN forces killed by the ARVN in combat. [14][15][16], RJ Rummel estimated that American forces committed around 5,500 intentional democidal mass-killings between 1960 and 1972, from a range of between 4,000 and 10,000 killed in democide. Search and destroy was a term to describe operations aimed at flushing the Viet Cong out of hiding, while body count was the measuring stick for operation success. 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. But hey wait, this was not enough. "It was the epitome of immorality...One of the times I counted bodies after an air strike—which always ended with two napalm bombs which would just fry everything that was left—I counted sixty-two bodies. Estimates of the total number of deaths in the Vietnam War vary widely. The Vietnam War ranks fourth among U.S. wars in most Americans killed. In 1954, North Vietnam defeated French colonial rule and tried to unify the whole country under one communist regime. For the period of the Vietnam War the totals are 1,310,000 between 1955 and 1964, 1,700,000 between 1965–74 and 810,000 between 1975 and 1984. The 'shameful gamesmanship' practiced by 'certain reporting elements' under pressure to 'produce results' also shrouded the process. Three of the massacres reported on the American side were not mentioned on the PRG list. Two major war memorials commemorating the dead soldiers in the Second Indochina War (a.k.a. [31] There are further claims made that when air-strikes or artillery were called in on villages, usually civilian casualties were reported as "enemies killed". Some have pointed out that the number of lives lost in the Vietnam War has been surpassed by fatalities from COVID-19. After China became a communist nation, fears of communism spreading to other countries became very real. [6], R. J. Rummel's mid-range estimate in 1997 was that the total deaths due to the Vietnam War totaled 2,450,000 from 1954–75. Those totals include only Vietnamese deaths, and do not include American and other allied military deaths which amounted to about 64,000. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in the war. An estimated 47,434 American soldiers were killed in battle during the Vietnam War, which spanned from 1964 to 1975. No estimate given for deaths caused by Viet Cong/North Vietnam (1954–75). [55] Across all three wars including the First Indochina War and the Third Indochina War there was a total of 1,146,250 PAVN/VC military deaths or missing, included 939,460 deaths (their bodies were found) and 207,000 missing (their bodies were not found). Sept. 11, 2001. [53], The ARVN suffered 254,256 recorded combat deaths between 1960 and 1974, with the highest number of recorded deaths being in 1972, with 39,587 combat deaths. Tap this upper portion to remove the keypad. You can scroll down to see the names of casualties listed under their official city. In addition, at least 36,000 Southern civilians were executed for various reasons in the period 1967–1972. [51] Widespread reports of deliberate mass-killings were reported to have occurred, alleging that these were systemic, deliberate policies to massacre civilians with murders running into the hundreds. "[52] Investigations by Korean civic groups have alleged there were at-least 9000 civilians massacred by ROK forces. Shelby L. Stanton, 'The Rise and Fall of an American Army,' Spa Books, 1989, xvi. The Vietnam War was a long, deadly struggle that took place from 1954 to 1975 between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. Many black men who had previously been ineligible could now be drafted, along with many poor and racially intolerant white men from the southern states. The New York Times estimated that, of the 8.4 million Vietnam veterans who were still alive in 2000, 1.1 million had died. In 1945 and 1946, France sought to reestablish Vietnam as a French colony, as it had been before World War II. [McCaffrey] MEDEVAC helicopters flew nearly 500,000 missions. Out of the 58,220 soldiers, just eight were women. [26] The pressure to produce body counts as a measure of operational success often caused US "operations reports" to list civilians killed as enemy KIA[27] with one prominent example being the My Lai Massacre written off as an operational success. This group was made up almost entirely of either working-class or rural youth. The South Vietnamese government fought to preserve democratic values. The World Trade Center towers burned … Shelby Stanton, writing in The Rise and Fall of an American Army, declined to include casualty statistics because of their 'general unreliability.' Competitions were held between units for the highest number of Vietnamese killed. These estimates probably include deaths of Vietnamese soldiers in Laos and Cambodia, but do not include deaths of South Vietnamese and allied soldiers which would add nearly 300,000 for a grand total of 3.4 million military and civilian dead. On January 27, 1973, the Paris Peace Agreement was signed. Danny Marshall, Marine Pvt. [79] Of the 27 million draft-age men between 1964 and 1973, 40% were drafted into military service, and only 10% were actually sent to Vietnam. Lewy estimates that 40,000 South Vietnamese civilians were assassinated by the PAVN/VC; 250,000 were killed as a result of combat in South Vietnam, and 65,000 were killed in North Vietnam. South Vietnam had surrendered, and North Vietnam came in to occupy Saigon and institute their military government. World War I: 53,402. (The estimates for 1955–64 are much higher than other estimates). C. the late 1960s. The Deadliest Earthquakes Of The 21st Century, New Caledonia, French Territory In The Pacific, The Story Of World War II's Nazi Youth Indoctrination Camps, Reasons Why The British Were Successful In Expanding Their Empire, The Vietnam War was a long, deadly struggle that took place from 1954 to 1975 between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. [23] The United States government has challenged these figures as being unreliable. His estimated total of civilian deaths is 587,000. As of June 8, 2020, the CDC shows this latter number at 92,922. Deaths caused by the South Korean military, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong military deaths, Disproportion of African American casualties. [88], Civilian and military deaths during the Second Indochina War. [51] These policies are also reported 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). Data for deaths in Laos is incomplete. American casualties included over 58,200 killed, almost 1,690 missing in action, and over 303,630 injured. [18][21], 18.2 million gallons of Agent Orange, some of which was contaminated with Dioxin, was sprayed by the U.S. military over more than 10% of Southern Vietnam,[22] as part of the U.S. herbicidal warfare program, Operation Ranch Hand, during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1971. He suggests that another 222,000 civilians were counted as military deaths by the U.S. in compiling its "body count." The 2nd Marine Brigade purportedly conducted the Binh Tai Massacre on 9 October 1966. The Vietnamese newspaper Nhân Dân reported in 2012 that the U.S. government was providing $41 million to the project, which aimed to reduce the contamination level in 73,000 m³ of soil by late 2016. McNamara claimed this program would provide valuable training, skills and opportunity to America's poor—a promise that was never carried out. Visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., it’s easy to overlook the names of eight women inscribed on the wall’s haunting slabs of black granite. That same year, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. publicly opposed the war on moral grounds. The wide disparity among the estimates cited below is partially explained by the different time periods of the Vietnam War covered by the studies and whether casualties in Cambodia and Laos were included in the estimates. How Many People Are Killed In Road Accidents In The US? "UCDP/Prio Armed Conflict Database", Uppsala University. Marshals; hundreds were arrested as they tried to storm the building. [28][29] It was assumed by US forces that, where an area was declared a free-fire zone that all individuals killed regardless of whether they were combatants or not, were considered enemy killed in action. The home front in the U.S. was shocked, and the strongest period of anti-war protests began. North Vietnamese troops launched the Tet Offensive in January 1968, which was successful against South Vietnam and the U.S. [83][84] In 2012 alone, unexploded bombs and other ordnance claimed 500 casualties in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, according to activists and Vietnamese government databases. During the last battle of the Vietnam War, three U.S. Marines went missing: Marine Pvt. Chapter 14: "The “cease-fire war” claimed 26,500 ARVN dead in 1973, and almost 30,000 in 1974. [76], African Americans suffered disproportionately high casualty rates in Vietnam. [31][29][32], German historian Bernd Greiner mentions the following war crimes reported, and/or investigated by the Peers Commission and the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group, among other sources:[33]. North Vietnamese troops launched the Tet Offensive in January 1968, which was successful against South Vietnam and the U.S. Like all wars, this long conflict led to a tragic loss of life. How many American soldiers died during the Vietnam War? The study came up with a most likely Vietnamese death toll of 882,000, which included 655,000 adult males (above 15 years of age), 143,000 adult females, and 84,000 children. The United States has spent over $65 million since 1998 in an attempt to make Vietnam safe. In addition, 2,489 Americans are listed as missing. OR To shorten the name list, enter 2 or more letters of any part of a name in the box below. They included about two million civilians on both sides of the conflict, along with 1.1 million Viet Cong and North Vietnamese fighters. ... 36,574 American soldiers died in the Korean conflict from 1950 to 1953 and 53,402 Americans died in World War I from 1917 to 1918. [59], RJ Rummel estimates 1,011,000 PAVN/VC combatant deaths. Pentagon statistics listed 39,000 and 61,000 PRG/DRV dead for the same time period.". For this figure, Guenter Lewy assumes that one-third of the reported enemy killed may have been civilians, concluding that the actual number of deaths of the VC and PAVN military forces was probably closer to 444,000. Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History. This led to increased racial tension in the military. The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History During this nearly fifteen year period, approximately 57,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War. [25] Official operations reports rarely made a distinction between civilians killed and actual combatants, drastically inflating the numbers of "enemies killed" as it was directly tied to promotions and commendation. Overall, the death rate of Vietnam veterans seems to be rather consistent if not better than other people their same age, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Guenter Lewy in 1978 estimated 1,353,000 total deaths in North and South Vietnam during the period 1965–1974 in which the U.S. was most engaged in the war. 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. The country was renamed as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, with the new capital in Hanoi. According to RJ Rummel, from 1964 to 1975, an estimated 1,500 people died during the forced relocations of 1,200,000 civilians, another 5,000 prisoners died from ill-treatment and about 30,000 suspected communists and fighters were executed. At the same time, China and the Soviet Union were gathering leaders, combat troops, supplies, and weapons in the north. More casualties were reported in Vietnam every day, even as U.S. commanders demanded more troops. White 49,830, Black or African American 7,243, American Indian/Alaskan Native 226, Hispanic One Race 349, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Island 229, Non-Hispanic/More than One Race 204, Asian 139. Civilian deaths were also caused by mortar and artillery, extensive aerial bombing and the use of firepower in military operations conducted in heavily populated areas. [11], Author Mark Woodruff noted that when the Vietnamese Government finally revealed its losses (in April 1995) as being 1.1 million dead, US body count figures had actually underestimated enemy losses. In 1995, Vietnam released its official estimate of fatalities. The first peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam during the Vietnam War began in. [87], On 9 August 2012, the United States and Vietnam began a cooperative cleaning up of the toxic chemical from part of Da Nang International Airport, marking the first time Washington has been involved in cleaning up Agent Orange in Vietnam. [42] The program resulted in an estimated 26,000 to 41,000 killed, with an unknown number possibly being innocent civilians. In Quảng Nam Province 4,700 civilians were killed in 1969. Although the percent that died is similar to other wars, amputations or crippling wounds were 300 percent higher than in World War II. troops. [46][47] South Korean Marines purportedly conducted the Hà My massacre on 25 February 1968. About a third of them marched on the Pentagon that night. These numbers do not include civilian and ARVN military deaths result from the communist mass-internment, the refugee crisis and subsequent exodus of Vietnamese people after the Fall of Saigon. Two further massacres were reported by soldiers who had taken part in them, one north of Đức Pho in, 426 killed in action, 74 died of other causes, 6 missing in action (all accounted for and repatriated), This page was last edited on 15 January 2021, at 00:20. the Vietnam War). About 645,000 Americans died during the Civil War fought in the U.S. On October 21, 1967, one of the best-know anti-war protests took place at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, with about 100,000 in attendance. The 58,152 names of those who died in Vietnam are etched onto the two rising black marble slabs of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. By this time next week, it seems very possible that more people will have died in the US of Covid-19 than the the 58,000 who died in nearly of decade of fighting in Vietnam. Perhaps they should. Rummel does not give a medium or high estimate. Military: U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Annie Ruth Graham, Chief Nurse at 91st Evacuation Hospital, Tuy Hoa. PAVN and VC deaths were reported as 1.1 million and civilian deaths of Vietnamese on both sides totaled 2.0 million. [79][80], The number of US military personnel in Vietnam jumped from 23,300 in 1965 to 465,600 by the end of 1967. [73], The total number of casualties, both KIA and non-hostile deaths, for drafted and volunteer service personnel (figures are approximated):[74], During the Vietnam War, 30% of wounded service members died of their wounds.
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