End of Operation Passage to Freedom

Date: May 18, 1955 • Location: Hanoi, Viet Nam

Operation Passage to Freedom, the evacuation of 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist North Vietnam to South Vietnam following the end of the First Indochina War, ended. Operation Passage to Freedom was a term used by the United States Navy to describe the propaganda effort and the assistance in transporting 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist North Vietnam to non-communist South Vietnam between the years 1954 and 1955. The French and other countries may have transported a further 500,000. In the wake of the French defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the Geneva Accords of 1954 decided the fate of French Indochina after eight years of war between the French Union forces and the Viet Minh, which fought for Vietnamese independence under communist rule. The accords resulted in the partition of Vietnam at the 17th parallel north, with Ho Chi Minh's communist Viet Minh in control of the north and the French-backed State of Vietnam in the south.