"What are you still waiting for?": 96 named ralliers on a 1967 Chieu Hoi sheet

Sheet SP-1805, a 1967 Chieu Hoi appeal printed by JUSPAO for South Vietnam's Chieu Hoi programme, prints 96 passport-style photographs of people who had left the Viet Cong. Each is captioned with a name, village, district, former role and rallying date, under a headline asking those still in the ranks what they are waiting for.

Ninety-six faces

Below a single headline the sheet is a grid of passport-style photographs, 96 of them by the archive's count. Each carries a caption in small print. The archive's record transcribes the headline and the first caption as an example.

CHÚNG TÔI ĐÃ RỜI BỎ HÀNG NGŨ V.C TRỞ VỀ với CHÁNH NGHĨA QUỐC GIA TRONG CHIẾN DỊCH "XUÂN ĐOÀN TỤ". CÁC BẠN CÒN CHẦN CHỜ GÌ NỮA?

[...] first photo: "Tôn. V. A / Hậu-Mỹ, Cái-Bè / T/V Du kích ấp / Hồi Chánh 1/2/67"

SP-1805 [code, bottom right]

The archive gives a machine translation of the headline, marked as not verified by a fluent reader: "We have left the ranks of the V.C. to return to the national just cause in the 'Reunion Spring' campaign. What are you still waiting for?" It reports that each caption gives the person's village, district, former role and the date of rallying, that most were village guerrillas, and that most of the dates fall in January and February 1967.

The record

FRAME credits the "Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office (JUSPAO) printing section, for the South Vietnamese Chieu Hoi programme," dates it 1967, and lists the medium as a leaflet, though its description calls the sheet a poster. The audience is coded as enemy forces and the purpose as "Mobilize or secure compliance." The source category is "Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure." The archive retrieved the record from the National Archives on 27 September 2026, and the rights line records it as public domain.

Reading it

FRAME tags testimonial and bandwagon. Every face is a testimonial: a real person, named, from a real village, who made the choice. The grid is the bandwagon. One defector is a story; ninety-six in rows is a crowd, and the question at the top asks the reader why he is not in it yet.

The sheet offers a way out of the fighting, and it makes its case with people rather than with threats. The amnesty it advertises is the same one behind the seven-flag safe-conduct pass of the same year.

One question the sheet raises is about the people in it. It printed their names, home villages and former roles for circulation to the side they had left. The record does not say whether they agreed to that or what followed for them and their families.

The 25th Infantry Divisions' open letter makes the same offer through parents. The Vietnam War messaging hub covers the Chieu Hoi sheets in the series.