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A. Peter Dewey is Killed by Viet Minh Troops

September 26, 1945

A. Peter Dewey is Killed by Viet Minh Troops
A. Peter Dewey is Killed by Viet Minh Troops
A. Peter Dewey is Killed by Viet Minh Troops

Major A. Peter Dewey is driving a jeep to the Saigon airport when Viet Minh troops mistake him for a French officer and shoot and kill him. Dewey is with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and has been involved in Operation EMBANKMENT, which focuses on the recovery of American World War II Prisoners of War (POWs) and securing American interests in French Indochina. Some later consider Dewey the first American casualty in Vietnam.1

1David G. Marr, Vietnam: State, War, and Revolution, 1945–1946 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013), 291–293. The Viet Minh Southern Executive Committee confirmed this mistake in an investigation, but feared repercussions and subsequently kept the results secret for decades thereafter; Ronald H. Spector, Advice and Support: The Early Years, 1941–1960, United States Army in Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 1985), 65–67.