Evacuation Orders
From: Pierre Asselin
Date: Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 1:34 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear All:
While conducting research in the archives in Ottawa this past summer I came across an interesting doc from the Canadian ICSC rep in Hanoi who claimed that evacuation orders for Hanoi issued in 1965 (following onset of US bombing) by DRVN authorities may have been an "excuse to implement long-standing plan to reduce population of capital and to settle much of surplus in [northern] highlands."
Is there any legitimacy to that claim?
Best,
Pierre
Pierre Asselin
Associate Professor of History
Hawai'i Pacific University
1188 Fort St., Suite MP 405
Honolulu, HI 96813
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam
Date: Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 1:45 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I'd be very interested in the responses to Pierre's query.
I've met a number of Hanoi residents who said they were evacuated, but they went to "que ngoai" or "que noi." None to my knowledge went to the highlands to escape air raids.
Hue Tam Ho Tai
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From: Le Dong Phuong
Date: Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 5:19 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Piere,
As a Hanoian myself, been evacuated many times I have not heard about this before. I do not know what ICSC is and in what context this piece of information was produced, but there are something to be corrected:
- the evacuation did not start before 1966 ( I was first evacuated in early summer 1966 along with other children) after the first bombings in the outskirts of Hanoi. It was no 'long-standing plan' as you have mentioned.
- Hanoians were evacuated to mid-land areas around Hanoi since there is no highlands in the North (except Moc Chau or Dong Van which were too far!)
- the evacuation was meant to reduce the civilian death by possible air strikes to Hanoi, not for reducing the number of its residents (proof was that evacuated Hanoians still got their Hanoi's rations, not the provinces' ones, and they kept Hanoi's household registration which mean they could be back to Hanoi when they wish).
- there has been plans with evacuation. Children, civilians were moved first, workers of important industries were last (or even not in case of power and utility plants). Schools and universities have been encouraged to move to areas where their operations could be maintained (some higher education institutions did not come back to Hanoi till after Paris agreement came into effect)
what you have mentioned about 'plan to reduce population of capital' might better used in the context of 'kinh tê m?i' movement in which farmers from crowded areas in Red River delta were encouraged to move 'permanently' into less populated areas in mid-land and mountainous areas in the north before 1975 and in the central part after 1975.
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Le Dong Phuong, PhD.
Director
Center for Higher and Vocational Education Studies
Vietnam Institute of Education Science
101 Tran Hung Dao
Hanoi - VIETNAM
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From: John Kleinen
Date: Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 4:43 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Pierre,
In my book Facing the Future, Reviving the Past (1999), I recorded the memory of local vilagers who lived with many evacuees from Ha Noi and Ha Dong, especially during the Linebacker I and II air operations in the period 1965 - 1968, and in 1972. Among those who sought shelter were cadres from the provincial Department of Culture, who set up a temporary office in the dinh, workers from a factory and officials from various provincial institutions. On (lunar) 17 May 1972, the village came under attack from an American F-4 Phantom. The fighter plane's missiles missed the local SAM-station (Army Unit 62), but hit a house at the edge of the village. 8 people died out of whom three originated from the village. People even remembered that the wife of the Ha Noi Hat Cheo theatre was one of the victims. I never heard stories about a hidden agenda behind the evacuations, except the transfer of some Catholic villagers to areas near the Chinese border. They were seen as a kind of 5th column, but returned in 1973.
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John Kleinen Ph.D
Associate Professor
University of Amsterdam
Department of Anthropology and Sociology
O.Z.Achterburgwal 185
1012 DK Amsterdam
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 12:19 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Pierre & All,
hereby I send you what I found about this issue. This is a summary of a Hungarian diplomatic report about North Vietnamese minority policies, dated 5 July 1968. The report notes, among others, that wartime conditions greatly hindered the leadership in accomplishing its original aim, announced as it was at the 1960 party congress, according to which the minority-inhabited mountainous areas should economically and culturally "catch up" with the Delta region. Industrialization was halted during the war, only small local industries were created whose employees were mostly the workers of the relocated factories. On the other hand, the report stresses that the importance of these regions can be gauged from the fact the most valuable equipment of the relocated factories as well as substantial quantities of reserve weapons, ammunition, and fuel were stored in these areas. By mid-1968 (NB, at that time the VWP leadership expected the war to end in the near future) the leadership paid renewed attention to the industrialization of the minority-inhabited regions, taking advantage of the relocated equipment.
Thus my conclusion is that the Canadian report simplifies the situation a bit by combining three different factors into one: (1) In the early 1960s, there was indeed a surplus population in Hanoi (mostly due to the enforced collectivization) which created serious socio-economic problems. (2) During the bombing, there were indeed massive evacuations to the highlands. (3) The report quoted above also alludes that the VWP leadership increasingly distrusted its minorities, for it pays much attention to American efforts to recruit ethnic minorities for intelligence and sabotage purposes in the aforesaid strategically important areas. As early as 1959, it was a practice in the DRV to send kinh settlers to minority areas (e.g., around Dien Bien Phu) where the Thai, etc. minorities were regarded as disloyal.
The weak point is the Canadian report's conclusion is that the evacuation of the surplus population must have targeted the least needed and least desirable elements of the urban society, whereas the Hungarian report makes clear that in many cases, it was precisely the most valuable equipment and its trained operators (i.e., "desirable" elements) who were evacuated to the highlands to enable them to survive the war. I think the authorities sought to remove both groups, but for completely different reasons.
Cheers,
Balazs