Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [340]
Throughout the 1930s Vietnam was plagued with strikes and labour unrest, of which the most important was the Nghe Tinh uprising in the summer of 1930. French planes bombed a crowd of twenty thousand demonstrators marching on Vinh; within days, villagers had seized control of much of the surrounding countryside, some setting up revolutionary councils to evict wealthy landlords and redistribute land to the peasants. The uprising demonstrated the power of socialist organization, but proved disastrous in the short term – thousands of peasants were killed or imprisoned, the leaders were executed and the Communist Party structure was badly mauled. Most of the ringleaders ended up in the notorious penal colony of Poulo Condore (Con Dao Island; see "Con Son Island"), which came to be known as the “University of the Revolution”. It’s estimated that the French held some ten thousand activists in prison by the late 1930s.
History |
World War II
The German occupation of France in 1940 suddenly changed the whole political landscape. Not only did it demonstrate to the Vietnamese the vulnerability of their colonial masters, but it also overturned the established order in Vietnam and ultimately provided Ho Chi Minh with the opportunity he had been waiting for. The immediate repercussion was the Japanese occupation of Indochina after Vichy France signed a treaty allowing Japan to station troops in the colony, while leaving the French administration in place. By mid-1941 the region’s coalmines, rice fields and military installations were all under Japanese control. Some Vietnamese nationalist groups welcomed this turn of events as the Japanese made encouraging noises about autonomy and “Asia for the Asians”. Others, mostly Communist groups, declared their opposition to all foreign intervention and continued to operate from secret bases in the mountainous region that flanks the border between China and Vietnam.
By this time, Ho Chi Minh had reappeared in southern China, from where he walked over the border into Vietnam, carrying his rattan trunk and trusty Hermes typewriter. The date was February 1941; Ho had been in exile for thirty years. In Pac Bo Cave, near Cao Bang, Ho met up with other resistance leaders, including Vo Nguyen Giap, to start the next phase in the fight for national liberation; the League for the Independence of Vietnam (Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh), better known as the Viet Minh, was founded in May 1941.
Over the next few years Viet Minh recruits received military training in southern China; the first regular armed units formed the nucleus of the Vietnamese Liberation Army in 1945. Gradually the Viet Minh established liberated zones in the northern mountains to provide bases for future guerrilla operations. With Japanese defeat looking ever more likely, Ho Chi Minh set off once again into China to seek military and financial support from the Chinese and from the Allied forces operating out of Kunming. Ho also made contact with the American Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA), which promised him limited arms, much to the anger of the Free French who were already planning their return to Indochina. In return for American aid the Viet Minh provided information about Japanese forces and rescued Allied pilots shot down over Vietnam. Later, in 1945, an American team arrived in Ho’s Cao Bang base where they found him suffering from malaria, dysentery and dengue fever; it’s said they saved his life.
Meanwhile, suspecting a belated French counter-attack, Japanese forces seized full control of the country in March 1945. They declared a nominally independent state under the leadership of Bao Dai, the last Nguyen emperor, and imprisoned most of the French army. The Viet Minh quickly moved onto the offensive, helped to some extent by a massive famine that ravaged northern Vietnam that summer. Then, in early August, US forces dropped the first atom bomb on Hiroshima, precipitating the Japanese surrender on August 14.
History