1956 in the Vietnam War

North Vietnam still held out that a referendum on unification as per the Geneva Accords would go ahead. As such they forbid the thousands of Viet Minh cadres they had left behind in the south from anything but low level insurgency actions instead focusing on political agitation in preparation for the upcoming elections.

1956 also saw the term Viet Cong come in being. The government controlled Saigon press first starting using the term this year referring to communist as Viet Cong a shorting of Viet Nam Cong-San which means "Vietnamese Communist."

June
Richard B. Fitzgibbon, Jr. became the first American to be killed in the Vietnam War. Fitzgibbon was serving as part of the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) (DET 1, 1173RD FOR MSN SQD ), which was involved in training military personnel in South Vietnam. Fitzgibbon was not killed in action, but rather was murdered by another United States airman on June 8, 1956.
 * June 8

July
Lê Quang Vinh popularly known as Ba Cụt was a military commander of the Hòa Hảo religious sect, which operated from the Mekong Delta and controlled various parts of southern Vietnam during the 1940s and early 1950s. He was captured on April 13 and after a short trial Ba Cụt was publicly guillotined on July 13, 1956, in Cần Thơ. Some followers, led by a hardcore deputy named Bay Dom, retreated to a small area beside the Cambodian border, where they vowed not to rest until Ba Cụt was avenged. Many of his followers later joined the Vietcong—the movement that succeeded the Việt Minh their leader had fought—and took up arms against Diệm.
 * July 13

November
In the fall of 1956, Ngo Dinh Diem dealt strongly with another group not considered of his circle: the approximately 1,000,000 Chinese-identified people of Vietnam, who dominated much of the economy. Diem issues an executive order which barred "foreigners", including Chinese, from 11 kinds of businesses, and demanded the half-million Vietnamese-born men, known as "uncles", "Vietnamize", including changing their names to a Vietnamese form. His vice-president, Nguyen Ngoc Tho, was put in charge of the program.