Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
whose protection and largess were extended preferentially to Catholics and northerners.68
- 7. Southerners Regrouped North
Whether or not at the time of Geneva the DRV leaders genuinely expected the plebescite of 1956, the Viet Minh of Annam and Cochinchina were apparently instructed through their Communist Party cadre that elections would be held. Thousands of Vietnamese left the South under the regroupment provisions of the Settlement. Upon cadre assurances of return, they staked family ties, ancestral lands, and fortunes.
Unfortunately, we know little still about the Southern regroupees in the North, and less about the Viet Minh who stayed behind when their comrades departed. The reports of the International Commission for Supervision and Control in Vietnam record the movement of only 4,269 civilians from the South to north of the 17th parallel.69 After April 1955, as reported by the ICC, refugees applied to the Saigon authorities, in such numbers that the GVN proved unable to meet demands for permits or transportation. Demonstrations occurred, and special arrangements by the ICC and the French were necessitated. Nonetheless, the total number thus formally involved in ICC reported moves was less than 5,000.70 The very sizable migration in 1954 of Viet Minh from the French controlled zone aboard Polish and Soviet ships to the North has not been reported authoritatively. An estimated 90,000 armed Viet Minh departed. An Indian member of the ICC published in 1964 the following figures, which correspond with the totals furnished by the French and the Poles, and which appear on present evidence to be as reliable as any:71
Viet Minh Departures for DRV
1954–1955
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Among the total, there If ere a significant number of Montagnards—Bernard Fall states 10,000—and children. A Viet Cong lieutenant colonel, captured in 1961, then one of the senior officers of the Viet Cong intelligence services, has confirmed that Highlanders and 10,000 children were among the regroupees, and that DRV was taking pains to educate both groups well.
