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Estimates of casualties in the Vietnam War vary widely. Estimates include both civilian and military deaths in North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The Second Indochina War (aka. the Vietnam War or the American War) began in 1955 and ended in 1975 when North Vietnamese forces captured Saigon. During this period, the war escalated from an insurgency in South Vietnam assisted by the North Vietnamese government to direct military intervention in the south by North Vietnam to assist the insurgents and the intervention of military forces of the United States and other countries to assist South Vietnam. The war also spilled over into the neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos. An exhaustive reckoning of the total casualties must include statistical information available for each theater of the war. Most of the fighting took place in South Vietnam; accordingly it suffered the most casualties. Civilian deaths caused by both sides amounted to a significant percentage of total deaths, perhaps from 30 to nearly 50 percent. Civilian deaths caused by communist forces, which included the Viet Cong, North Vietnamese Army, Pathet Lao and Khmer Rouge, mostly resulted from assassinations and terror tactics. Civilian deaths caused by the armed forces of the governments of South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, the United States, South Korea, and other allies were primarily the consequence of extensive aerial bombing and the use of massive firepower in military operations conducted in heavily populated areas. The nature of the war often made it difficult to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. A number of incidents occurred during the war in which civilians were deliberately targeted or killed. The best-known are the Massacre at Huế and the My Lai massacre. ==Total number of deaths== Estimates of the total number of deaths in the Vietnam War vary widely depending upon the time period and area covered by the data. Guenter Lewy in 1978 estimated 1,313,000 total deaths in North and South Vietnam during the period 1965–1974 in which the U.S. was most engaged in the war. Lewy reduced the number of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese battle deaths claimed by the U.S. by 30 percent (in accordance with the opinion of United States Department of Defense officials), and assumed that one third of the battle deaths of the VC/NVA were actually civilians. His estimate of total deaths is reflected in the table.〔Lewy, Guenter (1978), ''America in Vietnam'', New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 442–453〕 A detailed demographic study in 1995 calculated 791,000–1,141,000 war-related Vietnamese deaths, both soldiers and civilians, for all of Vietnam from 1965 to 1975. The study came up with a most likely Vietnamese death toll of 882,000, which included 655,000 adult males (above 15 years of age), 143,000 adult females, and 84,000 children. Those totals include only Vietnamese deaths, and do not include American and other allied military deaths which amounted to about 64,000.〔Charles Hirschman et al., (Vietnamese Casualties During the American War: A New Estimate ), Population and Development Review, December 1995.〕 The study has been criticized for its small sample size, the imbalance in the sample between rural and urban areas, and the possible overlooking of clusters of high mortality rates. Also in 1995, the Vietnamese government released its estimate of war deaths for the more lengthy period of 1955 to 1975. According to the Vietnamese, Communist battle deaths totaled 1.1 million and civilian deaths of Vietnamese totaled 2.0 million. These estimates probably include battle deaths of Vietnamese soldiers in Laos and Cambodia, but do not include deaths of South Vietnamese and allied soldiers which would add nearly 300,000 for a grand total of 3.4 million military and civilian dead.〔Shenon, Philip, "20 Years After Victory, Vietnamese Communists Ponder How to Celebrate'', ''The New York Times'', 23 April 1995〕 A 2008 study by the BMJ (formerly ''British Medical Journal'') came up with a higher toll of 3,812,000 dead in Vietnam between 1955 and 2002. For the period of the Vietnam War the totals are 1,310,000 between 1955 and 1964, 1,700,000 between 1965 and 1974 and 81,000 in 1975. (The estimates for 1955 to 1964 are much higher than other estimates). The sum of those totals is 3,091,000 war deaths between 1955 and 1975.〔 Uppsala University in Sweden maintains the Armed Conflict Database. Their estimates for conflict deaths in Vietnam are 164,923 from 1955 to 1964 and 1,458,050 from 1965 to 1975 for a total of 1,622,973. The database also estimates combat deaths in Cambodia for the years 1967 to 1975 to total 259,000. Data for deaths in Laos is incomplete.〔"UCDP/Prio Armed Conflict Database", Uppsala University, http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/datasets/ucdp_prio_armed_conflict_dataset/, accessed 24 Nov 2014〕 R. J. Rummel's mid-range estimate in 1997 was that the total deaths due to the Vietnam conflict totaled 2,450,000 from 1954 to 1975. Rummel calculated communist war deaths at 1,062,000 and South Vietnamese and allied war deaths of 741,000, both totals including civilians inadvertently killed. He estimated that victims of democide (deliberate killing of civilians) included 214,000 by the communists and 98,000 by South Vietnam and its allies. Deaths in Cambodia and Laos were estimated at 273,000 and 62,000 respectively.〔Rummel, R. J. "Statistics of Vietnamese Democide", Lines 777–785, http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.TAB6.1B.GIF, accessed 24 Nov 2014〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Vietnam War casualties」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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