deemed useful by the resident superior of Tonkin – an exemption to the discriminatory laws could be made. The anti-Jewish laws were repealed in January 1945. Democratic Republic of Vietnam In 1954, with the dissolution of French Indochina, Vietnam achieved independence as a divided state, with a communist north and a capitalist south. The French Premier who negotiated France's pullout from the Indochina region thus granting Vietnam its independence was Pierre Mendès France, who happened to be Jewish. Prior to the French evacuation, the Jewish population in Indochina (which encompassed Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) was reportedly 1,500, and most of those Jews were said to have left with the French, leaving behind no organized Jewish communal structure. On 25 May 1954 Robert Capa, a photo journalist made famous for providing the first photographs of the Allied landing on Omaha Beach, was killed while on assignment covering the French-Indochina War. The 1956 American Jewish Yearbook listed the Jewish population of French Indochina at 1,500, as noted above, but in its 1957 printing, there is no mention of a Jewish population in the region. Ho Chi Minh reportedly suggested in 1946 that North Vietnam could serve as a home base for a Jewish government-in-exile before the establishment of the State of Israel. David Ben-Gurion, then the new executive head of the World Zionist Organization, first spoke of this encounter to the press in 1966. Republic of Vietnam In 1971, about 12 French Jews still remained in South Vietnam, all in Saigon. During the Vietnam War, temporary Jewish communities were organized throughout South Vietnam, consisting largely of United States military personnel. Approximately 30,000 Jewish-Americans served in the U.S. Armed Forces in Vietnam; amongst them, Colonel Jack H. Jacobs won the Medal of Honor for heroism for his service. Socialist Republic of Vietnam Gradually, as the communist government began accepting economic reforms, the number of Jewish visitors to the country increased. The discovery of the wild saola species in Vietnam in 1993 made note in the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society's Fall 1999 issue. Although the "odd, elusive creature... possibly on the verge of extinction" was not being considered for consumption, it was noted as an example of an animal that exhibited both kosher indicia but lacking a "mesorah" – an oral tradition required by many halachic decisors to declare the animal kosher. In 2005, the U.S. State Department's