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Operation Passage to Freedom: The United States Navy in Vietnam, 1954-1955. By Ronald B. Frankum, Jr. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-089672-608-6. Maps. Photographs. Tables. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xxiii, 251. $40.00.
Ronald Frankum, a professor at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, a former associate director of Texas Tech's Vietnam Center and Archive, and the author of three previous books relating to the Vietnam War, turns his attention in this volume to the U.S. Navy's role in transporting more than 300,000 North Vietnamese refugees to South Vietnam. This operation, known as the Passage to Freedom, was authorized by the Geneva Accords of 1954 ending the First Indochina War. That agreement allowed the two Vietnamese regimes a period of 300 days to resettle civilians who wished to leave their native regions.
The senior officer primarily responsible for the Passage to Freedom was Rear Admiral Lorenzo S....