Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars: Memoirs of a Victim Turned Soldier

Notes

575 Notes 1. A Morning of Horror 1. Việt Minh is the shortened form of Việt Nam Độc Lập Đồng Minh Hội (Việt Nam Independence League). This was a revolutionary front founded by Hồ Học Lãm in southern China in the late 1930s. Hồ Chí Minh was a member. After Hồ Học Lãm died in 1941, Hồ Chí Minh claimed the League as his own. It consisted of the Indochinese Communist Party and some noncommunist parties as its satellites, led by the communists but under a nationalist cover. Việt Minh seized power in August 1945 and established the government that launched a political cleansing campaign against the nationalists before the War of Resistance started in December 1946. To the French, anyone fighting against French forces in Việt Nam in 1946–54 was considered to be Việt Minh. To the Vietnamese, Việt Minh consisted of pre1954 Communist Party members. 2. My Early Years and Education 1. The VNQDĐ became an active anticolonialist and anticommunist revolutionary party in 1945 and was declared the communists’ archenemy by the Việt Nam Communist Party. In the nationalist regime after 1954, the VNQDĐ was in the opposition. 2. More than a decade later, several Koreans, Filipinos, and Taiwanese I met in Việt Nam and abroad seemed surprised to learn that the Vietnamese did not hate the Japanese as bitterly as they did. 3. In the colonial era, the French rulers divided Việt Nam into three parts. Each was an autonomous territory with different status as a state in the Federation of Indochina , which included Cambodia and Laos: Tonkin or North Việt Nam from the 19th parallel to the northern border with China; Annam or Central Việt Nam was from the 12th parallel ; and Cochinchina or South Việt Nam was from the 12th parallel to the southernmost Cape of Cà Mâu at the 10th parallel. Under French dominion, Tonkin and Annam were “protectorates” where the king’s government, down to villages, had some limited power, while Cochinchina was France’s colony where the king had no power. 4. Discrimination by class and political background in examinations and school admission was instituted in North Việt Nam by the communist regime in 1955. No similar discrimination existed in the South prior to April 1975. 5. In this book, my family, as commonly understood in Việt Nam, sometimes denotes my grandmother, my parents and their children, my father’s elder brother and his wife, and my father’s widowed elder sister. We all lived together as one unit with common possession of property and finances. 3. 1945 1. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was imperial Japan’s designation for an Asian block of nations that would share prosperity and peace, independent of Western control. The concept was used to justify Japanese expansion in East Asia and the creation of puppet governments to control local populations and send much needed resources to Japan. 2. Before 1945, the king’s banner and other national banners had been a long red stripe on yellow. As described above, in 1945 under Japanese occupation, the national flag was three short red stripes with the middle broken on yellow. The nationalist government banner after 1949 was just the pre-1945 king’s banner with the large red stripe divided into three smaller ones. The three red stripes on yellow represented the RVN after the declaration of the republic on October 23, 1955. 3. Đại Việt Quốc Dân Đảng, ĐVQDĐ, or Đai Việt was a revolutionary party advocating the struggle for Việt Nam’s independence, led by Trương Tử Anh, a brilliant leader who was assassinated by the Việt Minh in 1946. 4. My father’s account of the event was not far different from what I read later in books written by many honest nationalist leaders. Those books and reports alleged that the Việt Minh broke the promise given by Hồ Chí Minh to the Việt Cách for full cooperation with other nationalist parties whenever the joint command gave the order for a general uprising. One of the stories known to most nationalists concerned an important meeting between the nationalist parties on August 16, when there was reliable information indicating the Việt Minh was about to act alone. In the meeting, attended by two dozen nationalist leaders, the top representative for...