Gulf of Tonkin | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Chinese name | |||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 1. 東京灣 2. 北部灣 |
||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 1. 东京湾 2. 北部湾 |
||||||||||
Literal meaning | 1. Gulf of Tonkin 2. Gulf of the northern part |
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
Vietnamese name | |||||||||||
Quốc ngữ | 1. Vịnh Bắc Bộ 2. Vịnh Bắc Phần 3. Vịnh Bắc Việt |
||||||||||
Chữ nôm | 1. 泳北部 2. 泳北分 3. 泳北越 |
The Gulf of Tonkin (Vietnamese: Vịnh Bắc Bộ, simplified Chinese: 北部湾; traditional Chinese: 北部灣; pinyin: Běibù Wān, both meaning "Northern Bay") is an arm of the South China Sea, lying off the coast of northeastern Vietnam.
Contents[hide] |
The name Tonkin, written "東京" in Hán tự (the Chinese characters used in Vietnamese) and Đông Kinh in romanised Vietnamese, means "Eastern Capital", and is the former toponym for Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. Incidentally, the same Chinese characters – known as kanji when used in Japanese – are used to write "Tokyo"; "Gulf of Tonkin" is written identically to "Tokyo Bay" (東京灣/湾) in Japanese.
On 4 August 1964, United States President Lyndon B. Johnson claimed that North Vietnamese forces had twice attacked American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.[1] Known today as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, this event spawned the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 7 August 1964, ultimately leading to open war between North Vietnam and the United States. It furthermore foreshadowed the major escalation of the Vietnam War in South Vietnam, which began with the landing of US regular combat troops at Da Nang in 1965.