# What happened to French colonialists living in Vietnam during/after the war? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 23, 2007, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-french-colonialists-living-in-vietnam-during-after-the-war/412867 "2007-07-23T18:10:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![teela\_brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d9b06d/32.png) [@teela\_brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teela_brown)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2007, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-french-colonialists-living-in-vietnam-during-after-the-war/412867/1 "2007-07-23T18:10:55Z")
I mean the Vietnam War in the '60s, but there wasn’t enough room in the title box. I assume there existed a population of French colonialists living in Vietnam at some point. I recently saw _Apocalypse Now Redux_ with the French plantation part restored, and this made me wonder what happened to them. Did they exit the country when they saw the inevitable outcome of the war? Did they hang on grimly, like the family in the movie, and get bayoneted in the end? Do they and their descendants still live in Vietnam? What happened to them? ---
**Author:** ![teela\_brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d9b06d/32.png) [@teela\_brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teela_brown)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2007, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-french-colonialists-living-in-vietnam-during-after-the-war/412867/2 "2007-07-24T12:19:32Z")
One bump before I give up. Wikipedia did not explore this issue, that I could see. ---
**Author:** ![Gymnopithys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/fbc32d/32.png) [@Gymnopithys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gymnopithys)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2007, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-french-colonialists-living-in-vietnam-during-after-the-war/412867/3 "2007-07-24T20:23:23Z")
[QUOTE=teela brown] I mean the Vietnam War in the '60s, but there wasn’t enough room in the title box. I assume there existed a population of French colonialists living in Vietnam at some point. I recently saw _Apocalypse Now Redux_ with the French plantation part restored, and this made me wonder what happened to them. Did they exit the country when they saw the inevitable outcome of the war? Did they hang on grimly, like the family in the movie, and get bayoneted in the end? Do they and their descendants still live in Vietnam? What happened to them? [/QUOTE] I guess they all left before the boat people did. I did a quick search in Google in French. All I found was a blog in which a Vietnamese tells about the departure of colonialists “who built everything in Vietnam”. Anecdote: by searching “colons” (French for colonists) in Google I hit a lot of anatomical colons! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Spavined\_Gelding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@Spavined\_Gelding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spavined_Gelding)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2007, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-french-colonialists-living-in-vietnam-during-after-the-war/412867/4 "2007-07-24T21:47:13Z")
All I can ad to this is that in the late 1960s and early 1970s there were a noticeable number of what appeared to be Vietnamese and part-Vietnamese in France. I can only think that those who could afford it and had French citizenship or some priority on immigration got out while the getting was good. ---
**Author:** ![ChicanoRojo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@ChicanoRojo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChicanoRojo)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2007, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-french-colonialists-living-in-vietnam-during-after-the-war/412867/5 "2007-07-24T22:17:46Z")
[QUOTE=teela brown] I mean the Vietnam War in the '60s, but there wasn’t enough room in the title box. [/QUOTE] According to Francis Ford Coppola…they became ghosts. 😃