It Was Fifty Years Ago Today...(More or Less)
How the Nation Recognizes the Start and End Dates of the Vietnam War

BY Marc Leepson

As Vietnam Veterans of America gets ready to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of Vietnam War in April, here’s a reminder of how the nation recognizes the start and end dates of the conflict. The dates are not set in stone, however, since there was no official Declaration of War before the fighting began, and the fighting continued for two years after the warring parties signed the Paris Peace Accords—officially known as the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet Nam—in January 1973.

August 5, 1964—three days after North Vietnamese PT boats fired on the U.S.S. Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin, and two days before Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which is generally regarded as tantamount to a Declaration of War—is generally considered the starting date of the war, but the fact is that the U.S. government recognizes four other starting dates.

Determining the end of the war is a bit less complicated, although the government uses three different dates: April 30, 1975, when the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong took over South Vietnam; May 7, 1975, the day that President Gerald Ford officially announced the “end of the Vietnam era” for veterans benefits purposes; and May 15, 1975, the day U.S. Marines, with support from U.S. Air Force personnel, rescued the U.S.S. Mayaguez container ship after it had been seized three days earlier in international waters off the coast of Cambodia, by communist Khmer Rouge forces.

Associated Press

Here is the array of the government's Vietnam War beginning and endings dates:

January 1, 1960, to April 30, 1975: the Department of Defense’s Vietnam Service Medal eligibility dates.

February 28, 1961, to May 7, 1975: the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974’s dates that define Vietnam War in-country veterans’ eligibility for veterans preference. Those dates are also part of the 1996 Veterans’ Benefits Improvement Act and Title 38 of the U.S. Code, the section on veterans benefits in the official compilation of American laws.

January 9, 1962, to May 7, 1975: the Department of Veterans Affairs’ dates that determine in-country veterans eligible to be compensated for exposure to Agent Orange.

August 5, 1964, to May 7, 1975: the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974 and 1996 Veterans’ Benefits Improvement Act dates that define “Vietnam-era” veterans (those who served outside Vietnam).

November 1, 1955, to May 15, 1975: the dates recognized by the U.S. Vietnam War Commemoration for Vietnam War veterans—those who served at any duty station around the world.

None of these dates for the war’s beginning reflect the fact that uniformed U.S. military personnel were on the ground in Vietnam starting in September 1945 when World War II (and Japan’s occupation of Vietnam) ended. American troops remained in Vietnam up to the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident. So, the United States—as the noted Vietnam War historian George Herring put it—was “deeply involved” in military matters in Vietnam from early September 1945 until the communist takeover of all of Vietnam on April 30, 1975.

Charles "Chick" Harrity/AP

First came a huge U.S. commitment of financial and logistical support for the French in their war against the communist Viet Minh from 1945-54, known as the First Indochina War. The U.S. did not take part directly in the war, but underwrote the French effort with funds and materiel—and a handful of American service personnel on the ground.

After the French defeat in 1954, increasing numbers of U.S. military advisers began working with the fledging noncommunist government of South Vietnam. That started with thirty-five military advisers who arrived in Vietnam in 1950 under the newly created Military Assistance Advisory Group-Indochina, which was formed on August 3, 1950.

That early involvement brought with it the usual consequences of war: service members killed and wounded in action and in accidents. The first American to lose his life in Vietnam was Lt. Col. A. Peter Dewey, who was shot in the head in a Viet Minh ambush while riding in a Jeep in Saigon on September 26, 1945. Dewey, an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officer, was returning from a hospital after visiting another American, Capt. Joseph Coolidge, who had been wounded while en route to Saigon from Dalat. Dewey’s name is not engraved on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

A handful of other Americans were wounded and killed following the end of the First Indochina War in 1954. They served with the Military Assistance Advisory Group-Vietnam, which took over from the Military Assistance Advisory Group-Indochina on November 1, 1955. MAAG-V was followed by the Military Assistance Command (MACV), which began operations on February 8, 1962, under Gen. Paul Harkins. When Harkins landed at Tan Son Nhut that day, MACV already had five thousand American military personnel in country.

Most of the MACV troops were advising the Armed Forces of the Republic of (South) Vietnam. “Others, in increasing numbers, served in Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine units providing direct combat and logistical support to the Vietnamese or, in the case of the Navy, patrolling Indochinese coastal waters,” a U.S. Army historian wrote. “These Americans, especially advisers and helicopter crews, were beginning to come under, and return, Viet Cong fire.”

American military personnel were in harm’s way in Vietnam right up until the final troops left Saigon on April 30, 1975. President Ford declared the “Vietnam era” over on May 7, 1975, the reason that two federal government eligibility laws use that date as the end of the “Vietnam era,” and that’s the date in the U.S. Code.

However, on May 15, 1975, thirty-eight Marines, Airmen, and Navy Corpsmen lost their lives in the Mayaguez operation and three men were missing in action. That includes twenty-three USAF personnel who died in a helicopter crash en route to the staging area in Thailand. Their names are the last ones engraved on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. May 15, 1975, also is the date that the Commemoration uses as the end of the Vietnam War.

A version of this article appeared in the November/December 2016 issue of the magazine.

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