From the 19th century through World War II, Vietnam was under French colonial rule. During World War II, Japanese forces invaded Vietnam to attempt to take over as the colonial power in control of the county. This caused a political leader named Ho Chi Minh to start an uprising against both the French and the Japanese. Ho Chi Minh's movement was called the Viet Minh, and it supported Vietnam becoming a communist country.
Japanese forces withdrew from Vietnam in 1945 when World War II ended, and Ho Chi Mihn's forces overtook the emperor who was left in charge of Vietnam. However, the French still held power in Vietnam, and the French supported the emperor. In 1949, the French established Vietnam as a state; however, the Viet Minh still wanted independence as well as a communist political structure.
The Vietnam War officially began in 1954. Ho Chi Minh's followers had control of North Vietnam, while the emperor controlled the South. Ho Chi Minh also had supporters in the South, who were called the Viet Cong. In 1954, the United States intervened in support of the South; this was part of the United State's opposition to communism throughout the world. U.S. military forces and the C.I.A. trained South Vietnam's security forces, who arrested, tortured, and executed up to 100,000 suspected Viet Cong.
Fewer than 1,000 U.S. troops were on the ground in Vietnam in the 1950s, but by 1962, around 9,000 U.S. troops were deployed there. The U.S. continued to increase its military presence in the following years, including regular bombings by plane and hundreds of thousands of additional troops. By the end of 1967, there were 500,000 U.S. troops stationed in Vietnam.
On January 31, 1967, North Vietnam launched the Tet Offensive, a coordinated attack on over 100 cities in South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese and U.S. forces fought back and won after two days. Following this attack, the U.S. publicly declared that it would focus on helping North and South Vietnam achieve peace.
From the beginning of the Vietnam War onward, many U.S. citizens protested against the war. This included protests in the United States as well as soldiers stationed in Vietnam defecting. These anti-war protests grew after 1967 when the U.S. did not end its military involvement in Vietnam. In fact, it was revealed that U.S. soldiers killed more than 400 innocent civilians in 1968, in what came to be known as the My Lai Massacre.
The United States signed a peace agreement with North Vietnam in January 1973, ending that aspect of the Vietnam War. However, North Vietnam and South Vietnam continued to battle for control until 1975, when the North Vietnamese forces captured the capital, Saigon, and renamed it Ho Chi Minh City. In 1976, North and South Vietnam were unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
The Vietnam War was devastating for the Vietnamese population. As a result of the war, 2 million Vietnamese citizens died, 3 million were wounded, and 12 million became refugees. As Le depicts in his stories, many Vietnamese refugees died before reaching the foreign lands where they hoped to find a new home, and those who survived dealt with psychological trauma for the rest of their lives.
