Mayaguez Incident

Mayaguez Incident (1975).
On 12 May 1975, Cambodian gunboats seized the U.S. merchant ship Mayaguez near Cambodia's Koh Tang Island. Claiming the ship was spying, Cambodia's Khmer Rouge government imprisoned the forty‐member crew. President Gerald Ford labeled the action piracy. After the fall of Saigon that year and the unsuccessful end of the Vietnam War, Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger believed that only forceful response to the Mayaguez provocation could bolster damaged U.S. credibility. Also, memories of North Korea's 1968 capture of the USS Pueblo, an intelligence‐gathering ship, and the year‐long incarceration of its crew, prompted quick action. Lacking diplomatic relations with Phnom Penh, Washington attempted to communicate demands for release of the crew through Beijing and the [The entire page is 390 words long]

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