Operation New Life and the First Refugee Wave
More than 130,000 Vietnamese tied to the fallen government are airlifted out in the war's final days.
Quick facts
- Evacuated
- more than 130,000 Vietnamese
- Operation New Life
- 23 April-1 November 1975, Guam
- Task force created by
- President Gerald Ford, 18 April 1975
What happened
In the weeks before and after Saigon's fall, the United States evacuated more than 130,000 Vietnamese closely associated with the defeated South Vietnamese government, resettling nearly all of them in the United States. More than 111,000 were flown to Guam under Operation New Life, running from 23 April to 1 November 1975, and housed temporarily in tent cities while processed for resettlement by an Interagency Task Force President Gerald Ford created that April. This first wave came overwhelmingly from South Vietnam's urban middle class; more than a quarter of household heads had a university education. Aided by a dozen private, mostly religious resettlement organizations, they adapted relatively quickly, and by 1982 their employment rate exceeded that of the general US population despite arriving during a recession.
Why it matters
This first, relatively orderly evacuation stood in sharp contrast to the far larger and more desperate boat exodus that followed within a few years, and it seeded Vietnamese American communities in California, Texas, and elsewhere that would later help resettle later refugee waves.
How we know
The Air Mobility Command Museum's institutional history and the UNHCR's own official history of the Indochina refugee crisis document the scale and demographics of this first evacuation.
Sources
- Air Mobility Command Museum. Operation Babylift & New Life · General sourceamcmuseum.org · Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- The State of the World's Refugees, UNHCR. Flight from Indochina · General sourceunhcr.org · Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match).
- Andersen Air Force Base. Remembering Operation New Life: 100K+ Refugees housed on Guam · General sourceandersen.af.mil · Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match).
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