Operation Passage to Freedom: The United States Navy in Vietnam, 1954-1955 (review)

Ronald Frankum, a professor at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, a former associate director of Texas Tech's Vietnam Center and Archive, and the author of three previous books relating to the Vietnam War, turns his attention in this volume to the U.S. Navy's role in transporting more than 300,000 North Vietnamese refugees to South Vietnam. This operation, known as the Passage to Freedom, was authorized by the Geneva Accords of 1954 ending the First Indochina War. That agreement allowed the two Vietnamese regimes a period of 300 days to resettle civilians who wished to leave their native regions.

The senior officer primarily responsible for the Passage to Freedom was Rear Admiral Lorenzo S. Sabin, USN. Sabin, the commander of American amphibious forces in the Western Pacific, deployed in this operation more than a hundred naval ships as well as civilian-manned vessels assigned to the Military Sea Transportation Service (MSTS). In carrying out his duties, Admiral Sabin worked closely with naval, military, and civilian officials of France, the departing colonial power in Indochina. Using sea, air, and ground resources, the French also were relocating Vietnamese refugees to South Vietnam.

Frankum concludes that the Passage to Freedom was a resounding success.

Between August 1954 and May 1955 naval and MSTS ships evacuated approximately 310,000 individuals. When added to the half million Vietnamese transported by the French a very significant support group was created in the south for the new Republic of Vietnam led by Ngo Dinh Diem. In comparison a far smaller group of South Vietnamese, estimated to number about 14,000, elected to move to the North.

Frankum also claims that Passage to Freedom was significant for creating an American moral commitment to defend South Vietnam from Hanoi. It is not clear to this reviewer that this was the case. Memories of the Passage to Freedom do not seem to have been a factor explaining the key U.S. decisions regarding the Southeast Asian conflict, including the Kennedy Administration's dramatic increase of aid to South Vietnam in the early 1960s and the fateful decision to deploy U.S. combat forces to the region in 1965. No sense of moral obligation, whatever its origins, can be discerned in the Congressional mandates of the 1970s banning virtually all military assistance to the embattled Saigon government.

Despite this criticism, Frankum's book is admirable. In addition to offering a detailed operational and administrative account of the maritime evacuation, he gives full coverage of the nation-building steps taken ashore by U.S. and Vietnamese aid organizations (and to some extent by the U.S. Navy) in receiving, housing, feeding, and finding employment for the newcomers from the North. Frankum also should be commended for the very broad range of his research. Oral histories with a number of participants were one aspect of his investigations. Those interviews were particularly useful in depicting the social history of Passage to Freedom, including accounts of the personal aid and sympathy extended by American sailors to the uprooted and often forlorn refugees from the North.

This volume is the most comprehensive account of its subject that has appeared to date. The writing is unadorned, but clear. Further, there is do doubt that the subject matter is significant. For all of these reasons, Frankum's monograph will be of interest and value to students of modern military and diplomatic affairs.