Casualties Total dead: 1,250,000 (South Vietnam), 58,226 (US) Wounded: 153,303 (US) Total dead: Official Vietnamese estimate: 1,100,000 Wounded: 600,000 Civilian Casualties: c. 2-4 million Vietnam War Casualties Estimating the number killed in the conflict is extremely difficult. Official records are hard to find or nonexistent and many of those killed were literally blasted to pieces by bombing. For many years the North Vietnamese suppressed the true number of their casualties for propaganda purposes. It is also difficult to say exactly what counts as a Vietnam war casualty; people are still being killed today by unexploded ordinance, particularly cluster bomblets. Environmental effects from chemical agents and the colossal social problems caused by a devastated country with so many dead surely caused many more lives to be shortened. In addition, the Khmer Rouge would probably not have come into power and committed their slaughters without the destabilization of the war, particularly of the American bombing campaigns to clear out the sanctuaries in Cambodia. The lowest casualty estimates, based on the now-renounced North Vietnamese statements, are around 1.5 million Vietnamese killed. Vietnam released figures on April 3, 1995 that a total of one million Vietnamese combatants and four million civilians were killed in the war. The accuracy of these figures has generally not been challenged. 58,226 American soldiers also died in the war or are missing in action. Australia lost almost 500 of the 47,000 troops they had deployed to Vietnam and New Zealand lost 38 soldiers. In the aftermath of the war many Americans came to believe that some of the 2,300 American soldiers listed as Missing in Action had in fact been taken prisoner by the DRV and held indefinitely. Missing in Action is a term applied to missing soldiers whose status cannot be determined through eyewitness accounts of their death, or a body. While little credible evidence has been shown for this, images of tortured, emaciated prisoners of war (notably in the sequel to Rambo) continue to evoke anger among many Americans. The Vietnamese list over 200,000 of their own soldiers Missing in Action, and MIA soldiers from World War I and II continue to be unearthed in Europe. Both during and after the war, significant human rights violations occurred. Both North and South Vietnamese had large numbers of political prisoners, many of whom were killed or tortured. In 1970, two American congressmen visiting South Vietnam discovered the existence of tiger cages, which were small prison cells used for torturing South Vietnamese political prisoners. After the war, actions taken by the victors in Vietnam, including firing squads, torture, concentration camps and re-education, led to the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. Many of these refugees fled by boat and thus gave rise to the phrase boat people. They emigrated to Hong Kong, France, the United States, Canada, and other countries. Many effects of the animosity and ill will generated during the Vietnam War are still felt today among those who lived through this turbulent time in American and Indochinese history. American involvement in the war was a gradual process, as its military involvement increased over the years under successive U.S. presidents, both Democrat and Republican (including Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon), despite warnings by the American military leadership against a major ground war in Asia. There was never a formal declaration of war but there were a series of presidential decisions that increased the number of military advisers to the region. One of the first occurred on July 27, 1964 when 5,000 additional American military advisers were ordered sent to South Vietnam which brought the total number of US forces in Vietnam to 21,000. Then on August 4, 1964 American destroyers USS Maddox and USS C. Turner Joy were attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin. Air support from the carrier USS Ticonderoga sinks two, possibly three North Vietnamese gunboats. The event was labeled the Gulf of Tonkin incident by reporters and the next day Operation Pierce Arrow was launched in retaliation; aircraft from the USS Ticonderoga and USS Constellation bombed North Vietnam.
Where is Vietnam?
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Vietnam is located in Asia.
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Vietnam is a country in the southeast of Asia. Surrounded by land in the west and water to the east, Vietnam has easy access to the Gulf of Tonkin. Laos borders Vietnam in the northwest and Cambodia borders Vietnam in the southwest.
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The GPS coordinates are comprised of the latitude of 14.0583° N and a longitude of 108.2772° E. This places Vietnam in the eastern and northern hemispheres. The latitude reflects whether a country is located above or below the equator. With a latitudinal coordinate in the north, Vietnam is also north of the equatorial plane.
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The northernmost point of Vietnam is located in the town of Lung Cu. With a latitudinal coordinate of 23°22' N, Vietnam has the 95th most extreme point in the north in comparison to the rest of the world.
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When it comes to the southernmost point of Vietnam, there are two viable candidates for the most extreme point of the country. On the mainland, Vietnam stretches as south as Cape Cà Mau on the Cà Mau Peninsula. This point is at a latitude of 08°35' N. The other extreme point to the south is only a ten-minute distance from Cape Cà Mau. With a latitude of 08°25' N, this point is not on the mainland. Instead, it is on the Hon Sao Island.
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The easternmost point of Vietnam is situated at a longitude of 109°30' E. As the 24th most eastern point of countries in the world, Vietnam’s easternmost point is located on the Hon Gom Peninsula in the province of Khánh Hòa. In the west, Vietnam reaches as far as a longitudinal coordinate of 102°08' E. This eastern extremity is in the Điện Biên Province where it touches the shared border between Laos, China, and Vietnam.
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The total area of Vietnam is 127,880 square miles. About 119,718 of the total square mileage of Vietnam are made up of land. The remaining 8,162 square miles are attributable to water, in the form of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. Vietnam’s total area is the 65th largest total area in comparison to the other 196 countries in the world.
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Vietnam’s population as of 2018 is approximately 96,939,864 people, which is about 1.26% of the global population. The population density of Vietnam is about 758 people per square mile of the country’s total area.
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