When WWII ended, the Allies occupied Vietnam and assigned Great Britain and China to disarm the Japanese. The country was divided at the 16th parallel with China in command of the North and Great Britain in command of the South. In the South, the British helped the French regain power, a power they had held in Indo-China for a century.
The Viet Minh, under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh claimed North Vietnam. The French and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) entered into negotiations for a planned free election for national unity. The election never happened. The French and Viet Minh fought a bloody war with a terrible French defeat in the valley fortress of Dien Bien Phu. At a peace conference in 1954 the French and the DRV agreed to a temporary division of the country at the 17th parallel. The French in the South and the DRV communists in the North.
At this time, the soon to be famous DMZ or de-militarized zone was created at the dividing line of North and South, the 17th parallel. Once again, an election was planned to vote on national unity, and the election never happened. By the 1960's Americans had totally replaced the French in South Vietnam. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency established one government and then assasinated the president they established. In 1964, acting on disinformation about an attack upon U.S. warships in the Tonkin Gulf, the U.S. formally attacked North Vietnam and America's longest war was underway.
The war incited riots in the streets of almost every large American city and near disintigaration of the U.S. military.
President Lyndon Johnson called for an international show of many flags to stop the communists threat that both he and previous President John F. Kennedy had seen in Southeast Asia. In the end, seven countries joined America's "Free World Forces ": Australia, Korea, Thailand, New Zealand, The Phillipines, Taiwan and Spain. Many Canadians also fought with U.S. armed forces.
There were 10 million Americans under arms during the war. Three million Americans saw combat. The average age was 19, America's youngest combatants.
Note: The text above was written by Country Joe McDonald in 1991 for the Community Memory Alameda County War Memorial Project which set the groundwork for the 1995 commemorative plaque approved by the Berkeley City Council to honor Berkeley Vietnam veterans. Community Memory was one of the first community computer bulletin boards, founded on the ideas of the grass-roots "Switchboard" community networks of the 60's. Community Memory had ceased operating as a public BBS system by 1995. An interesting historical profile of Community Memory was published in an early 1995 BMUG newsletter.