Full Disclosure: Toward an Honest Commemoration of the American War in Vietnam

April 30, 1975: Reunification of Vietnam: ended  20 years of  United States military troops in Vietnam. Following the Gulf of Tonkin resolution of 1964,  in 1965 3,500 US marines landed at DaNang air force base, adding to the 16,000  US “advisors”.  During the 1950’s the US  created  the  Military Assistance and Advisory Group, screening French requests for assistance against the Vietminh. From 1955-1961 the US had 3200 military advisors in Vietnam. By 1963 it was 16,000.  In 1961 President  Kennedy authorized  use of  the chemical herbicide Agent Orange. In 1965 President Johnson escalated  troops, launched Rolling Thunder, the sustained bombing campaign against north Vietnam, and signed  executive order for  use of napalm. In March, 1968 500 Vietnamese women and children were tortured and massacred in a village in south Vietnam called My Lai. Several years later in January, 1973 the Paris Peace Accords were signed, ending US troop involvement. By then,  5 million acres of forest land and 14% of agricultural land had been destroyed by the Agent Orange spraying which caused the death and illness of  civilians and soldiers,  harmed future generations, and   reduced sustainability of the ecosystems in Vietnam.  The US had dropped 7.8 million tons of munitions, more  than used in World War II on Germany and Japan. An estimated 800,000 tons failed to detonate, contaminating 20% of the land, killing 100,000 Vietnamese since 1975. By the end of the conflict 3.4 million US troops had served, 58,200 died, 304,000 were wounded. 4.9 million Vietnamese were killed.