Liberation – The Outcasts

Libération et rapatriement

1. The civilian hostages

In December 1946 the Viet Minh, especially during uprisings and especially VINH HANOI seized civilian hostages, European, indigenous and mestizo. Their number was estimated in a study produced in 1952 to 288 men, 129 women and 25 children. The number of children may be underestimated. There were also 146 in 1952 disappeared in the same categories of people.

Their internment was painful. Places of detention were the majority in North ANNAM and around the delta tonkinoise.

The majority of the men disappeared. Women and children were released in the form of an authorization to go to the area held by the expeditionary corps, the latest release took place in 1953. Men who survived joined Freedom in 1953 for a Franco-Vietnamese and September 1954 for the few European survivors who had also joined the military prison camps after two or three years of isolation, as well as French civilians caught after 1952 (merchants, professionals, civil aviators, guard channels).

The main problem faced by the civilian hostages in their reintegration was physical, they had mostly lost their families and their property.