As of 2020, there were approximately 6.3 million veterans of the United States military still alive who served during the period of the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1975. Around 8.75 million service personnel served during the war, with 40% of those stationed in Vietnam and the surrounding Southeast Asian countries. Veterans of this conflict reflect the largest cohort of American veterans still alive in terms of service era.

Vietnam War veterans may still suffer from long-term health effects of their service during the war. These range from mental health conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, to health conditions caused by exposure to toxic chemicals used to clear trees and plants in the Vietnamese jungle during the war. Since the signing of the Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act of 2017 by President Donald J. Trump, March 29th is designated in the U.S. as National Vietnam War Veterans Day.

This spreadsheet contains estimates and margins of error of Vietnam Veterans’ race/ethnicity by state.

U.S. military involvement in Vietnam accelerated after the passing of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution by congress in August 1964. The resolution gave President Lyndon B. Johnson the power to use conventional military force in Southeast Asia without a formal declaration of war. By 1968, the United States' military presence had reached its peak at over 500,000 troops deployed. Following the Tet Offensive by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong in early 1968, U.S. public opinion shifted dramatically against the war and President Johnson announced his intention to scale back U.S. military presence in the region. As U.S. troops left Southeast Asia, there was an attempt to manage a 'vietnamization' of the conflict, whereby the South Vietnamese military would receive aid and training from the U.S. in order to fill the gap left by the withdrawing U.S. forces. As the numbers of U.S. service personnel dwindled, so too did the number of battle deaths from the conflict, which had also peaked in 1968. The last U.S. military forces left the region in 1973, with the final U.S. personnel leaving with the Fall of Saigon to the communist forces in April 1975.

Graph and download economic data for Unemployment Rate - Veterans, Vietnam-Era and Earlier Wartime Periods, 18 Years and over (LNU04077884) from Sep 2008 to Jun 2025 about korean war, Vietnam Era, World War, 18 years +, veterans, household survey, unemployment, rate, and USA.

In 2023, about 4.86 million veterans in the United States served in the Vietnam Era only. A further 485,765 American veterans served during the Korean War as of that year.

Graph and download economic data for Population Level - Veterans, Vietnam-Era and Earlier Wartime Periods, 18 Years and over (LNU00077884) from Sep 2008 to Jun 2025 about korean war, Vietnam Era, World War, 18 years +, veterans, civilian, population, and USA.

The United States' war in Southeast Asia against the communist controlled North Vietnam was one of the key conflicts of the Cold War. At the onset of direct involvement by the U.S. military in the conflict in 1964, public opinion was strongly behind President Lyndon B. Johnson's decision to send troops to defend the U.S.-backed regime in South Vietnam.

As the war progressed and more U.S. military casualties were recorded, however, opinion began to swing against the war, with net opinion becoming negative for the first time in July 1967. The growing anti-war movement at home and media reporting on the activities of some U.S. service personnel and regiments, such as the My Lai Massacre, led to an increasingly negative outlook on the war overall. By the time of the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973, 31 percent more of Americans surveyed said they thought the war was a mistake, compared to those who thought it was the right course of action.

This report uses data from the 2014 American Community Survey and shows the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of Veterans who belong to the Vietnam Veteran cohort. The spreadsheet includes variables like: raw numbers, gender, education, median personal income, age groups, and other variables.

The Profile of Vietnam War Veterans uses the 2015 ACS to provide a view into the demographic characteristics and socioeconomic conditions of the Vietnam War Veteran cohort.

Financial overview and grant giving statistics of Coalition of Allied Vietnam War Veterans

Ramsey County Veterans who sacrificed their life for the country, war names, dates, and the locations they were engraved in the Memorial Hall

The United States military has a long history of ethnic minorities serving in its ranks, with black Americans having served as far back as the Revolutionary War. The Vietnam War took place during a period of changing race relations in the United States, with the Civil Rights Movement reaching its peak in the mid-1960s, and this too was reflected in the military. The Vietnam War was the first major conflict in which black and white troops were not formally segregated, however, discrimination did still occur with black soldiers reporting being subject to overt racism, being unjustly punished, and having fewer promotion opportunities than their white counterparts.

In the early phases of the war, black casualty rates were much higher than for other races and ethnicities, with some reports showing that black soldiers accounted for 25 percent of the casualties recorded in 1965. This declined substantially as the war progressed, however, the proportion of black service personnel among those fallen during the war was still disproportionately high, as black personnel comprised only 11 percent of the military during this era. A smaller number of other ethnic minorities were killed during the war, comprising two percent of the total.

Financial overview and grant giving statistics of Vietnam War Memorial Post 639 Inc

ViCoW is a dataset of 1,896 high-resolution image pairs extracted from four historically significant Vietnamese films set during the Vietnam War era. Each pair includes a color frame and its grayscale version (converted using the ITU-R BT.601 formula), supporting research in AI-based image restoration and colorization.

Many photos and film scenes from this period exist only in black and white, making them feel distant to modern audiences. ViCoW helps bridge this gap by enabling the development of models that bring historical visuals to life in color. Frames were extracted every 3 seconds from well-preserved footage and manually curated for diversity and cultural relevance.

ViCoW contributes to both technical research and cultural preservation, offering a valuable resource for training and evaluating deep learning models in digital heritage, education, and historical storytelling.

The United States military conscripted approximately 1.9 million service personnel into their ranks over the course of the Vietnam War. Commonly known as the draft, conscription had been conducted in the U.S. through the Selective Service System (SSS) since 1917. Initially, the draft was conducted using a random ballot by the SSS. When a person was called up by the draft, they had to report to their local draft board to evaluate their draft status. The various exemptions which draft-eligible men could use to avoid service, such as still being in university education or being medically unfit, were thought to allow better-connected and middle class men to evade the draft more easily than working class or minority men. The SSS responded to criticism of the draft system by conducting draft lotteries beginning in 1969. These draft lotteries were conducted based on birth dates, with the probability of conscription being higher for those men with birth dates which were selected earlier in the lottery. The lotteries were televised events, with millions of Americans tuning in. Opposition and the end of the draft
Conscription fueled anti-war attitudes among the public in the United States, particularly among young men eligible for service and student protesters on university campuses. Anti-war student groups began to organize events where students were encouraged to burn their draft cards in an act of defiance. Resistance to the draft grew throughout the conflict, with more people filing as conscientious objectors to the war in 1972 than actual inductees via the draft. Some of those who could not evade being drafted through the various exemptions available chose to flee the United States to countries such as Canada. Recent estimates suggest up to 100,000 men left the U.S. during this period for this reason. Due to the draft's role in driving anti-war sentiment, civil disobedience making its use untenable, and growing evidence that an all-volunteer military would be more effective, Richard Nixon campaigned in the 1968 presidential election to abolish the draft. The draft was finally ended in 1973, with the last conscripted men entering the U.S. military on June 30 of that year.

The goal of this project was to gain a better understanding of risk factors associated with male-perpetrated domestic violence, partner's mental distress, and child behavior problems. The researchers sought to demonstrate that two important social and health problems, domestic violence and trauma-related psychological distress, were connected. The project was organized into four studies, each of which addressed a specific objective: (1) Variables characterizing the perpetrator's family of procreation were used to determine the pattern of relationships among marital and family functioning, perpetrator-to-partner violence, partner's mental distress, and child behavior problems. (2) The perpetrator's early background and trauma history were studied to establish the degree to which the perpetrator's family of origin characteristics and experiences, childhood antisocial behavior, exposure to stressors in the Vietnam war zone, and subsequent post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology related to perpetrator-to-partner family violence. (3) The perpetrator's degree of mental distress was examined to ascertain the ways in which the current mental distress of the perpetrator was associated with marital and family functioning, violence, and current mental distress of the partner. (4) Developmental and intergenerational perspectives on violence were used to model a network of relationships explaining the potential transmission of violence across generations, commencing with the perpetrator's accounts of violence within the family of origin and terminating with reports of child behavior problems within the family of procreation. Data for this study came from the congressionally-mandated National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS) (Kulka et al., 1990), which sought to document the current and long-term psychological status of those who served one or more tours of duty in the Vietnam theater of operations sometime between August 5, 1964, and May 7, 1975, compared to their peers who served elsewhere in the military during that era and to a comparable group who never experienced military service. This study relied upon data from the National Survey and Family Interview components of the larger NVVRS. Data were collected through face-to-face structured interviews, with some supplementary self-report paper-and-pencil measures. The interview protocol was organized into 16 parts, including portions requesting information on childhood experiences and early delinquent behaviors, military service history, legal problems in the family of origin and postwar period, stressful life events, social support systems, marital and family discord and abusive behaviors, and physical and mental health. This study emphasized four categories of explanatory variables: (1) the perpetrator's accounts of family of origin characteristics and experiences, (2) the perpetrator's conduct and behavior problems prior to age 15, (3) the perpetrator's exposure to war-zone stressors, and (4) mental distress of the perpetrator, with attention to PTSD symptomatology and alcohol abuse. Additionally, the project incorporated four clusters of family of procreation criterion variables: (1) marital and family functioning, (2) perpetrator-to- partner violence, (3) partner mental distress, and (4) child behavior problems. Variables include child abuse, family histories of substance abuse, criminal activity, or mental health problems, relationship as a child with parents, misbehavior as a child, combat experience, fear for personal safety during combat, alcohol use and abuse, emotional well-being including stress, guilt, relationships with others, panic, and loneliness, acts of physical and verbal violence toward partner, children's emotional and behavioral problems, problem-solving, decision-making, and communication in family, and family support.

Metadata and data derived from Vietnam War (HIST 489) Oral Histories. Interviews conducted by students as part of Professor Amy Rutenberg's class HIST 489: The World at War, The Vietnam War, Fall 2019.

This data collection probes the attitudes and opinions of American Vietnam-era veterans ten years after the close of the war. Respondents evaluated the degree to which their overall military experience affected them personally, the types of social, economic, and emotional difficulties they experienced after discharge, and the degree to which their difficulties lessened over time. This survey also examined the degree to which veterans endorsed the war and the military goals they pursued. Veterans who served in Vietnam were also asked about the frequency and type of wounds and injuries they received, their attitudes toward organized opposition to the war, their experience in situations in which Americans and Vietnamese were killed, and the impact of GI college benefits on their post-service experience. The data contain information on Americans who served their active duty in the United States Armed Forces between August 1964 and June 1975, including 811 veterans of the war in Vietnam and 438 veterans of the Vietnam era who served their active duty elsewhere. Veterans of Vietnam were asked a longer, more detailed series of questions than were other Vietnam-era veterans. Demographic information collected on respondents includes age, sex, race, marital status, educational attainment, number of children, and employment status.

This study, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center, surveyed a cross-section of the adult population in the United States to elicit opinions about the involvement of the United States in Vietnam. Questions covered problems in the news, the respondents' vote in 1964, the number of years, if any, served in the Armed Forces, their knowledge of the Vietnam War, and their opinions on what the government should do in Vietnam. Demographic data include age, sex, race, number of children, education, occupation, family income, perceived social class, service in the military, and religious preference.

The Department of Veterans honors Veterans of the Vietnam War with this data story published for Memorial Day 2021.