Official Records

Unless otherwise indicated, all documents cited in this work are located in the Operational Archives of the Naval History Division. The Archives's collections of operation plans, operation orders, action reports, and files of histories and miscellaneous documents arranged by command were particularly valuable. These records provided information on such topics as naval ship visits, the withdrawal of Chinese troops from Indochina in 1945 and 1946, Fleet operations during the crisis of 1954, the evacuation of refugees from North Vietnam in 1954 and 1955, and Fleet exercises in the South China Sea during the years after Geneva. Several groups of records from the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, also contained in the Operational Archives, provided insights into naval policy regarding Indochina. Among aspects covered in these sources were the Navy's participation in the program of aid to the French and Vietnamese and in the Melby-Erskine Mission of 1950.

Series of naval attache reports from Saigon, held in the Washington National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland, proved useful in tracing events after the establishment of that office in 1950. For the earlier period, naval attache reports from Paris (also located in Suitland) provided some coverage on Indochina subjects.

The files of the Military Assistance Advisory Group are in the Washington National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland. These records primarily relate to matters of Army concern. However, several items, particularly the Annual Country Statements and the Monthly MAAG Reports, were of some help in tracing the development of the Vietnamese Navy.

Two other groups consulted were the records of Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet and Commander Seventh Fleet. These originally were held in the Federal Records Center, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, but later were transferred to the Washington National Records Center in Suitland, Maryland. For the period of this volume, the records contained surprisingly little information on Vietnam. However, they did provide some insight into high-level naval thinking.

Published Documents

The most important published documentary source was the U.S. Defense Department Study, United States-Vietnam Relations: 1945-1967 (Washington: GPO, 1971). Known popularly as the Pentagon Papers, this twelve-book series was used extensively for background on American naval policy. The narrative section of this pub

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lication was of very little use in comparison to the sections providing published texts of official documents relating to Indochina.

The background documents in the Pentagon Papers were augmented by published State Department sources. For diplomatic background, the volumes of the Foreign Relations of the United States were indispensible. Many of the key documents on Indochina relating to the 1945-1949 period, which appear in the Foreign Relations series, also were reproduced by the compilers of the Pentagon Papers. The periodic Department of State Bulletins contain most of the major public policy statements of Secretaries of State Dean Acheson and John Foster Dulles. Also published by the State Department was American Foreign Policy 1950-1955: Basic Documents (Washington: GPO, 1957), which contains a number of key papers for the period of the French-Viet Minh War.

Two additional collections were particularly useful. The first, edited by Allan B. Cole, Conflict In Indochina and International Repercussion: A Documentary History 1945-1955 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1956), published a number of basic documents on events in the turbulent post-World War II years that do not appear elsewhere. Alan W. Cameron's Viet-Nam Crisis: A Documentary History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971) started as an attempt to update Cole's work but evolved into a complete revision, focusing almost entirely on Vietnam. These two collections contain many of the basic materials covering the French and Vietnamese negotiations for independence, including the Geneva Conference.

Executive and Congressional Documents

The annual reports of the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Chief of Naval Operations summarized the major activities and problems of these leaders. The first Secretary of Defense report was published in 1948. The next year the Secretary of the Navy's report ceased to be published separately and became a part of the former document. Not only did these reports give highlights of naval involvement in Indochina; they also set the Indochina question in an international context alongside naval operations in other parts of the world.

Congressional hearings throw light on the naval aid program to the French and later to the South Vietnamese. Extensive background information on the organizational evolution of the American military establishment also appears in these sources. For example, the key defense reorganization acts of 1947, 1949, and 1958 were preceded by lengthy hearings by the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, which included witnesses from the Navy.

Papers of Individual Officers

Among the collections consulted for this history were those of Brigadier General Philip E. Gallagher, who advised the Chinese troops accepting the Japanese surrender

in North Vietnam. A small collection of his papers, held by the Army's Center for Military History, helped to explain events at the end of World War II. The Navy Operational Archives's collection of Vice Admiral Lorenzo Sabin's papers added information to the official reports of the Passage to Freedom.

Oral Histories

Several participants in the early years of U.S. involvement in Vietnam were interviewed by Dr. Oscar Fitzgerald of the Naval History Division to fill gaps in the record. Captain James D. Collett described his experiences as the Chief of the Navy Section of the Military Assistance Advisory Group from March 1954 to May 1955. Captain Ray Kotrla discussed his role as the first naval attache in Saigon in 1950. Captain Kotrla also served with Commodore Milton E. Miles in China during World War II and was involved with mining operations in Indochina. The oral histories done by Dr. John Mason of the U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland, with Admiral Felix B. Stump and Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, also were consulted.

Aside from standard reference sources, the following additional works are cited in this volume:

Memoirs and Autobiographies

Acheson, Dean, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department. New York: W.W. Norton, 1969.

Barbey, Daniel E., MacArthur's Amphibious Navy: Seventh Amphibious Force Operations: 1943-1945. Annapolis, Md.: U.S. Naval Institute, 1969.

Chennault, Claire L., Way of a Fighter: The Memoirs of Claire Lee Chennault. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1949.

Dooley, Thomas A., Deliver Us From Evil: The Story of Viet Nam's Flight to Freedom. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Cudahy, 1956.

Eisenhower, Dwight D., Mandate for Change, 1953-1954. Garden City, NY.: Harper and Brothers, 1956.

Ély, Paul, Indo-China in Turmoil, trans. ACOS (Intelligence), Department of the Army. Paris: Plon, 1964.

de Gaulle, Charles, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959.

Ho Chi Minh, On Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920–66, ed. Bernard B. Fall. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967.

Hull, Cordell, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1948. Joy, C. Turner, How Communists Negotiate. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1955. Khrushchev, Nikita S., Khrushchev Remembers, ed. Strobe Talbot. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1970.

King, Ernest J. and Walter M. Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1952.

Laniel, Joseph, Le Drame Indochinois de Dien-Bien-Phu au pari de Geneve. Paris: Plon, 1957.

Leahy, William D., I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman Based on His Notes and Diaries Made at the Time. New York: Whittlesey House, 1950.

Lenin, Vladimir I., Selected Works. New York: International Publishers, 1943.

Miles, Milton E., A Different Kind of War: The Little-Known Story of the Combined Guerrilla Forces Created in China by the US. Navy and the Chinese During World War II. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1967.

Millis, Walter, ed., The Forrestal Diaries. New York: Viking Press, 1951.

Navarre, Henri, Agony of Indochina. Paris: Plon, 1957, trans. Naval Intelligence Command.

O'Daniel, John W., The Nation that Refused to Starve: The Challenge of the New Vietnam. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1960.

Pham Van Dong, 25 Years of National Struggle and Construction. Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1970.

Roosevelt, Elliott, As He Saw It. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946.

Truman, Harry S., Year of Decisions, Vol. I of Memoirs. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1955.

Years of Trial and Hope, Vol. II of Memoirs. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1956.

Vo Nguyen Giap, Banner of People's War, The Party's Military Line. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970.

The Military Art of People's War: Selected Writings of General Vo Nguyen Giap. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970.

People's War, People's Army: The Viet Cong Insurrection Manual for Underdeveloped Countries. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962.

Wedemeyer, Albert C., Wedemeyer Reports! New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1958.

Secondary Works

Allan, Richard, A Short Introduction to the History and Politics of Southeast Asia. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.

Auphan, Paul and Jacques Mordal, The French Navy in World War II. Annapolis, Md.: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1959.

Barjot, Pierre, Histoire de la Guerre Aeronavale. Paris: Flammarion, 1961.

Bator, Victor, Vietnam, A Diplomatic Tragedy: The Origins of United States Involvement. Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana Publishers, 1965.

Braisted, William R., The United States Navy in the Pacific, 1897-1909. Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1958.

The United States Navy in the Pacific, 1909-1922. Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1971.

Brodie, Bernard, The Atomic Bomb and American Security. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Institute of International Studies, 1945.

ed., The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order.

New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1946.

Buttinger, Joseph, The Smaller Dragon: A Political History of Vietnam. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1958.

From Colonialism to the Vietminh, Vol. I of Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967.

Vietnam at War, Vol. II of Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled. New

York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967.

1968.

Vietnam: A Political History. New York: Frederick A. Praeger,

Carter, Worrall R., Beans, Bullets, and Black Oil: The Story of Fleet Logistics Afloat in the Pacific During World War II. Washington: Navy Department, GPO, 1952. Chen, King C., Vietnam and China, 1938-1954. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969.

von Clausewitz, Karl, On War. London: Kegan Paul, French, Trubner and Co., 1908. Clemens, Diane S., Yalta. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. Commander in Chief, United States Fleet, "Commander in Chief, United States Fleet, Headquarters." Unpublished history in Naval History Division, 1946.

Commander Naval Forces, Europe, "Administrative History of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe, August 1945 to March 1947." Unpublished history in Naval History Division,