page_title: Massacre at Huế
section_title: Discovery
hierarchical_section_title: Massacre at Huế / Discovery
caption_attribution_description: English: Label on the shrouded remains of a Tet Offensive victim describing teeth, color of hair, foot wear, and other possessions found with the body.
context_page_description: The Huế massacre was the summary executions and mass killings perpetrated by the Việt Cộng and People's Army of Vietnam during their capture, occupation and later withdrawal from the city of Huế during the Tết Offensive, considered one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War.
  The Battle of Huế began on 31 January 1968, and lasted a total of 26 days. During the months and years that followed, dozens of mass graves were discovered in and around Huế. Victims included women, men, children, and infants. The estimated death toll was between 2,800 and 6,000 civilians and prisoners of war, or 5–10% of the total population of Huế. The Republic of Vietnam released a list of 4,062 victims identified as having been either murdered or abducted. Victims were found bound, tortured, and sometimes buried alive. Many victims were also clubbed to death.
  A number of U.S. and South Vietnamese authorities as well as a number of journalists who investigated the events took the discoveries, along with other evidence, as proof that a large-scale atrocity had been carried out in and around Huế during its four-week occupation.
context_section_description: A first summary was published for the U.S. Mission in Vietnam by Douglas Pike, then working as a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. Information Agency in 1970. Pike identified three distinct phases for the executions in Huế. In a report published in 1970, The Viet Cong Strategy of Terror, the U.S. Information Agency analyst Douglas Pike wrote that at least half of the bodies unearthed in Huế revealed clear evidence of "atrocity killings: to include hands wired behind backs, rags stuffed in mouths, bodies contorted but without wounds (indicating burial alive)." Pike concluded that the killings were done by local Vietcong cadres and were the result of "a decision rational and justifiable in the Communist mind." The three phases are as follows:
  Phase one was a series of kangaroo court trials of local ARVN officials. The highly publicized trials lasted anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes and the accused were always found guilty of "crimes against the people."
  Phase two was implemented when the communists thought that they could hold the city long-term and was a campaign of "social reconstruction" along Maoist dogmatic lines. Those who the communists believed to be counter-revolutionaries were singled out. Catholics, intellectuals, prominent businessmen, and other "imperialist lackeys" were targeted in order to "build a new social order."
  The last phase began when it became evident that the communists could not hold the city, and it was designed to "leave no witnesses." Anyone who could identify individual Vietcong members who participated in the occupation was to be killed and their bodies hidden.
  After the Battle of Huế, between 1968 and 1969 a total of almost 2,800 bodies were recovered from mass graves, with 4 major mass grave finds.
  A few months after the battle, about 1,200 civilian bodies were found in 18 hastily-concealed mass graves.
  A second major group of graves were discovered in the first 7 months of 1969. In February 1968, a list of 428 names of people identified from the recovered bones was released by local authorities.
  In September 1969, three communist defectors confessed to the 101st Airborne Division intelligence officers that they had witnessed several hundred people being killed in a 100-yard area at Da Mai Creek bed (about 10 miles south of Huế).
  In November 1969, another major mass grave were fount at Phu Thu Salt Flats, near the fishing village of Lương Viện, Vinh Hưng commune, Phú Lộc provincial district, 10 miles east of Huế and halfway between the cities of Huế and Đà Nẵng.
caption: Label on the shrouded remains of a Tet Offensive victim describing teeth, color of hair, footwear, and other possessions found with the body.
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