1958 Vietnamese Diplomatic passport - Our Passports
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March 13, 2024
in Cold War, General, Passports
by Neil
0 Comments

1958 Vietnamese Diplomatic passport

 

Senior member travelling to the US.

 

Much has been written about the Vietnam War.

 

The war that lasted close to 20 years, erupting on November 1st, 1955, with the involvement of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia on the one side and with the United States on the other, and that ended with the Fall of Saigon on April 30th, 1975.

 

Each side was supported by its allies: the North Vietnamese by the Soviet Union, Communist China, and others in the Communist sphere of influence and South Vietnam by the US with its western allies, such as the Philippines and others.

 

At the beginning the area was then called Indochina, which is also why some call it the war as the Second Indochina War (the first war erupted on December 19th, 1946, in French Indochina and lasted until August 1st, 1954, a war that saw the local uprising and fight against years of French occupation and oppression).

 

When I collect or research passports, the ones issued during the initial stages of the war interest me the most, so the item in this article can fall under that category: One of the earliest post-1954 official passports issued on October 6th, 1958, to department head in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of South Vietnam (1955-75).

 

This rarity was issued to Nguyen-Huu-Tan aged forty-two who was the director of economic & finance at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Vietnam, a secretary at the above-mentioned ministry and was issued this passport for the purpose of travelling to Seattle, the US, to attend the “10th Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic and Social Development in Asia”. He was a member of the Vietnamese delegation.

 

This amazing document was issued by Vietnamese Foreign Minister Vũ Văn Mẫu who was also the last Prime Minister of South Vietnam. Additionally, we can locate inside another official’s signature, that of Nguyễn Văn Lộc who as we can see from the passport here was the Director of Consular Affairs at the FM.

 

We can find numerous diplomatic visas inside the document, such British, French, Dutch, Cambodian, Indonesian and many more.

 

Nguyen-Huu-Tan was able to flee the republic before its collapse and ended living abroad in exile.

 

 

Have added sampled images of the document.

 

 

 

Thank you for reading “Our Passports”.

 

 

Neil Kaplan
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