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BY RONALD SPECTOR
Adapted from In The Ruins of Empire
By Ronald Spector Copyright ©2007
by Ronald Spector
Published by arrangement with Random House,
An imprint of
Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House,
Inc.
On September 2, 1945, ten days after Gen. MacArthur received
the Japanese surrender aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, thereby
ending World War II, a squadron of Royal Air Force transport
planes landed at Tan Son Nhut airport outside Saigon carrying
the first of the British occupation forces: a battalion of
the 20th Indian Division under Maj. Gen. Douglas Gracey.
Crowds of French and Vietnamese cheered the arrival of each
plane. Still others lined the road waving Union Jacks as
the troops were driven into the city in Japanese trucks.
Meanwhile,
another occupation army moved into Hanoi: Chinese troops
from Yunnan under the command of Lt. Gen. Lu Han. “All
day and all night the troops kept pouring into the city,” one
Vietnamese recalled. “They shocked everyone, including
the local Chinese community which had organized a formal
welcoming ceremony.... The troops wore shoes of woven straw,
cloth, or rubber cut out from tires or even went barefoot.
They had tattered uniforms and looked tired and thin. Each
unit was accompanied by cooks laden with pots and pans, making
a racket.”
Striking as they were, the differences between
the two armies paled beside the far-reaching results of their
very different occupations.
In the first months of the Pacific War, the Japanese
armies had rolled easily over the British and Dutch colonies.
The Europeans had suffered humiliating defeats, and many
of their subjects had welcomed the Japanese. As for the French
colonies in Indochina, the Japanese took them without a fight.
Militarily vulnerable and encouraged by the weak French government
at Vichy to co-operate, the French colonial leaders in Indochina
had made progressively greater concessions to the Japanese,
allowing them to station troops in Vietnam and to use the
ports, airfields, and railroads.
In return, the government
headed by Adm. Jean Decoux was permitted to continue to carry
out most of its governmental functions. The French flag still
flew over Hanoi, Hue, and Saigon, and French colonials could
pursue their usual business. But 50,000 Japanese troops garrisoned
the country.
Americans
had always disliked colonies. President Franklin Roosevelt
was an especially vocal critic of imperialism. He sometimes
talked about ending French rule in Indochina and replacing
it with an international trusteeship. But with Roosevelt’s
death in April 1945, Washington ceased its opposition to
the return of the French. American soldiers and diplomats
in East Asia, however, were never clearly told that these
goals had been abandoned.
During the war against
Japan, the United States had agreed to the establishment
of a new Allied Southeast Asia Command (SEAC) in 1943 under
British Adm. Lord Louis Mountbatten to direct operations
in Burma, Sumatra, and Malaya. After 1943, there were thus
two Allied commands fighting the Japanese in Southeast Asia:
SEAC and the China Theater under the direction of Generalissimo
Chiang Kai Shek, who was supported by American military aid
and advisers.
At the Potsdam Conference held
a few weeks after the defeat of Germany in 1945, the Allies
agreed that after Japan’s
surrender SEAC should be responsible for occupying the southern
half of Indochina and the Chinese the north. The United States
would not be directly involved.
Although a military backwater,
Indochina intrigued both SEAC and China Theater. Both required
reliable intelligence on weather, air defenses, targets,
and Japanese troop movements there.
Information on troop movements was of special importance
because the transfer of Japanese forces in or out of northern
Indochina could affect military operations in south China.
SEAC and China Theater had conducted clandestine intelligence
operations in Indochina with the help of friendly officers
and officials in the French colonial regime.
The Japanese
in Indochina, expecting an Allied invasion assisted by the
local French, simply took over direct control of the colony.
On March 9, 1945, Japanese forces quickly moved against French
garrisons and forts all over Indochina. Most were quickly
disarmed, and many French soldiers, colonial officials, and
functionaries were locked in their own jails. The Japanese
summoned the hereditary Emperor of Vietnam, Bao Dai, and
told him the country was now independent. “Thus the
French imperialist wolf was finally devoured by the Japanese
fascist hyena.” observed Ho Chi Minh.
With the wolf
in jail, someone needed to keep an eye on the hyena. The
Office of Strategic Services, the American intelligence and
special operations organization operating from southern China,
soon formed a working relationship with the Viet Minh, a
coalition of nationalist and anti-French groups dominated
by the Indochinese Communist Party. Its leader, Ho Chi Minh,
was a veteran revolutionary who had trained in Moscow and
been a founding member of the French Communist Party. Ho
combined tenacity of purpose with flexibility in action.
A man of great personal charm and magnetism, he left a positive
impression with almost everyone he encountered—including
those who strongly opposed his politics and purposes.
With
the Japanese takeover, the Viet Minh saw their opportunity.
Viet Minh propaganda teams, proclamations, and underground
newspapers told the people that the Japanese were now the
major enemy and would soon be vanquished like the French.
Vietnamese
troops of the former French colonial army and militia were
encouraged to desert to the Viet Minh or sell their arms
to them. Government officials, functionaries, educators,
and professionals in the north secretly began to align with
the Viet Minh. Many others joined newly established front
groups.
Yet it was neither political organizing nor
the Japanese coup that preoccupied most people in northern
Vietnam during the spring and summer of 1945, but a devastating
famine that wiped out families and depopulated villages.
By February 1945, thousands were dying of starvation. More
than one and a half million people probably died in the famine,
although accurate figures are impossible to come by.
Viet Minh leaders
saw the famine as an opportunity to organize the peasants
to seize the rice granaries of the colonial regime and to
direct popular resentment against the French and Japanese.
It was not a tough sell. Everyone knew that the forced requisition
of land, compulsory rice sales to the government, and unreasonable
taxes had contributed to the dire state of the food supply.
Even more than the downfall of the French, and more than
the impending defeat of the Japanese, it was the famine that
enabled the Viet Minh to transform their fugitive guerrilla
organization into a mass movement.
At the time of the Japanese takeover, the OSS was completing
an elaborate plan for expanding operations into Indochina.
The Viet Minh already had been involved in the rescue and
recovery of Allied aviators whose planes had been brought
down over Indochina. And they had co-operated with the American
Air Ground Aid Service, the organization responsible for
the recovery of lost air crews. The OSS Chief of Intelligence
for Indochina, Capt. Archimedes L. Patti, had met with Ho
Chi Minh near the China border and received assurances that
the Viet Minh were ready to cooperate with the Americans
in fighting the Japanese.
In mid-July, an OSS team under Maj.
Allison K. Thomas parachuted into Viet Minh-held territory
near the city of Thai Nguyen about fifty kilometers from
Hanoi. Thomas remained with the Viet Minh over two months,
arming and training select forces for operations against
Japanese lines of communication. The war ended before the
Viet Minh had fought more than a few skirmishes with the
Japanese, but their connection with the OSS bolstered Ho’s
prestige and helped to identify his movement with the victorious
Allies. That connection infuriated the French and deepened
their suspicion of American intentions.
From the Americans at his jungle headquarters,
Ho learned on August 12 that the Japanese government had
accepted the Potsdam Declaration and that the end of the
war was imminent. In two high-level meetings in mid-August,
Viet Minh leaders accepted Ho’s call for a rapid seizure
of power in order to confront the Allied occupation forces
with a fait accompli.
Throughout northern Vietnam, months of Viet Minh
organizing and propaganda and dissatisfaction with the ineffectual
Bao Dai government had laid the groundwork for a swift takeover.
Within a few days, most of Tonkin, northern Vietnam, and
a good portion of Annam, in the center, were in the hands
of the Viet Minh. The Japanese discreetly remained in the
background and, by the end of August, had handed over responsibility
for police and control of transportation and public utilities
to the Viet Minh.
On August 25, Ho Chi Minh arrived in Hanoi
from Thai Nguyen. A few days later, Emperor Bao Dai formally
abdicated and turned over the imperial seal to representatives
of the Viet Minh government.
On Sunday, September 2, a crowd of three
or four hundred thousand gathered in Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi.
In the center of the square, a tall platform was decked with
the new red and gold flags. Viet Minh soldiers with drawn
pistols encircled the platform. As an assistant held a parasol
over his head—the
traditional symbol of royalty—Ho read the brief declaration
announcing Vietnam’s independence. At one point in
the address, he paused and asked his listeners, “Countrymen,
can you hear me?” The crowd answered with a roar, “We
hear you!”
It was a moment that none present ever forgot.
An OSS officer who witnessed the ceremony reported by radio
to Kunming, “From
what I have seen, these people mean business, and I am afraid
the French will have to deal with them. For that matter,
we will all have to deal with them.”
The Viet Minh knew
their new regime was in a race against time. Chinese occupation
troops would arrive in a few days. The French were unwilling
to relinquish their colony. The attitude of the Allies was
uncertain. Widespread starvation still remained an immediate
threat. Rival nationalist groups had been thrown into momentary
disarray by the Viet Minh’s
superior boldness and organization, but they were far from
cowed and some had the support of the Chinese. These groups
had large followings, and they retained their own newspapers,
radio stations, and armed militias.
While they waited anxiously
for the Chinese, the Viet Minh attempted to learn what they
could about the attitudes of the Americans and the French
from the handful of Americans who had arrived in Hanoi on
August 22 as part of the OSS Air-Ground Aid Service Mercy
Mission operations. The chief of the OSS mission was Capt.
Patti. With Patti’s team
came five French officers led by the head of French intelligence
in Kunming, Maj. Jean Sainteny.
As he often emphasized during
the next few weeks, Patti’s
mission mainly concerned post-war house-keeping: finding
and aiding Allied POWs and internees, searching for war criminals,
and arranging the preliminary steps for the surrender of
Japanese forces. But Patti was aware that he was involved
in events of great moment and sometimes found it hard to
resist becoming involved. Like most Americans in China Theater,
Patti was unaware that Washington had, in effect, abandoned
Roosevelt’s Indochina policy.
Patti and his team landed
at Gia Lam airport on August 22 and were driven by the Japanese
through streets festooned with the red and gold flags of
the Viet Minh. Banners stretched above the streets proclaimed
in English, French, and Vietnamese: “Welcome
to the Allies,” “Long Live Vietnam’s Independence,” and “Death
to the French.”
Sainteny and his men observed these
scenes with dissatisfaction and annoyance. The French wanted
to be treated as one of the victorious Allies in Asia just
as they had been in Europe. Never mind that the French colonial
regime had collaborated with the Japanese for almost five
years. The DeGaulle government insisted that the brief, desperate,
and disorganized French response to the Japanese coup of
March 1945 constituted “resistance.” France
had a right to expect its allies to help her regain what
was rightfully hers.
Patti and Sainteny were taken to the
Metropole, a large colonial-style hotel. Patti’s men
were billeted at the hotel, but the Japanese insisted that
they could not be responsible for the safety of Sainteny’s
party and suggested that they move to the palace of the Governor-General.
Sainteny readily agreed, relishing the symbolic value of
the French once again occupying the palace.
Once ensconced there, however,
with the grounds patrolled by Japanese sentries, Sainteny
and his team found themselves unable to leave or to communicate
with the outside world except through Patti and the Americans.
They could do little to influence events or to aid their
countrymen in Hanoi.
With
Sainteny isolated, Patti’s team had become the
center of the attention, hopes, and apprehensions of the
French, Japanese, and Vietnamese. Although Patti continued
to insist that his work was circumscribed, he was seen as
the official representative of the victorious Allies. During
his first week in Hanoi, Patti met with the Japanese commanding
general, leaders of the Chinese community, prominent French
businessmen, consuls of various European nations, ministers
of the Viet Minh government, and he dined with Ho Chi Minh.
On August 25, he even held a press conference with representatives
of the Hanoi press.
Sainteny became increasingly frustrated
with his inability to influence the situation, and he found
it easy to blame his problems on Patti and the OSS. On August
28, he warned French Headquarters in Calcutta of “a
concerted Allied maneuver aimed at eliminating the French
from Indochina.” The
next day he talked of a “total loss of face for France
in Indochina.”
Such messages soon drew protests from
the French; Patti’s
OSS boss, Col. Richard P. Heppner, shot off a blistering
message to Patti: “You will not, repeat, not act as
mediator or go-between or arrange meetings between French,
Annamites or Chinese. Confine yourself to POW work and such
other special tasks as directed by Chinese Combat Command
or this headquarters.”
Patti flew to Kunming and Chungking
to defend his actions and try to receive clarification about
current American policy. Not surprisingly, he received little
guidance. As Patti’s plane returned to Hanoi, he could
see a long line of vehicles wending its way across the flooded
plains of the Red River Delta. It was Lt. Gen. Lu Han’s
Chinese occupation Army.
Lu Han, “the Dragon Cloud,” had
been a corps commander at the great Chinese victory at Taierzhuang
in 1938. Under Lu’s nominal command were three Chinese
armies, two of which were scheduled for redeployment by sea
to north China where Chiang Kai Shek was impatient to re-establish
control.
Accompanying Lu Han were American liaison teams of
the Chinese Combat Command, an American military advisory
organization that had been training Chinese units in south
China. All of the teams were under the command of Brig. Gen.
Philip E. Gallagher, Lu Han’s adviser.
Like Patti, Gen. Gallagher
was seen by many French and Vietnamese as some sort of American
pro-consul with vast powers to resolve all problems. In fact,
China Theater’s directive to
U.S. units with Chinese occupation forces limited their mission
to “advising and assisting the Central Government
military forces during their movement to their areas of occupation” and “acting
in an advisory capacity... in the provision of necessary
supplies and the administration of civil affairs.”
On
September 14, Lu Han arrived in Hanoi, unceremoniously evicted
Sainteny’s mission from the Governor-General’s
palace, and took up residence there himself. His troops were
quartered in public buildings, schools hospitals, and private
homes.
Ignoring French demands and protests, Lu Han quickly
came to a working agreement with Ho. The Viet Minh government
was permitted to remain in place. French soldiers remained
locked in the Citadel. Viet Minh forces were not disarmed.
Ho was pressured but not compelled to include members of
Chinese-supported nationalist parties in his government.
The
price paid by the Viet Minh for this arrangement was high.
The entire cost of feeding and maintaining the “Allied” occupation
forces in the north was to be borne by the Vietnamese, to
be compensated later at a “fair” rate of exchange.
Despite the famine conditions, OSS reported that the Chinese
were actually shipping rice out of the country or selling
it on the black market for ten times the Saigon price. According
to rumor, Ho Chi Minh also kept the Chinese well-supplied
with opium and at one point presented Lu Han with a gold
opium pipe.
The exchange rate between the almost worthless
Chinese dollar and the Indochinese piaster was arbitrarily
set by the Chinese generals at 14 to 1, thus making the dollar
worth more than three times as much as in south China. Chinese
officers in Viet Nam bought out every profitable enterprise
they could. With their bargain shopping and other financial
activities, the Chinese, according to one estimate, managed
to extract some 400 million piasters from the poorer half
of a country whose total gross national product in 1939 had
been around 1.1 billion piasters. In return for these concessions,
the Chinese dealt with the Viet Minh as the de facto government.
Having
been briefed by Patti, Gallagher began a series of informal
meetings with Ho. While recognizing that Ho was “an
old revolutionist” and “a product of Moscow,” Gallagher—like
Patti—concluded that Ho “and his party represent
the real aspirations of the Vietnamese people for independence....
He looks upon the United States as the savior of all small
nations and is basing all his actions on the statement in
the Atlantic Charter that the independence of the smaller
nations would be assured by the major powers.... I pointed
out frankly that my job was not as a representative of the
State Department nor was I interested in the political situation....
that I was merely working with Lu Han.”
As for Sainteny,
Lu Han had some old grudges against the French and was in
no hurry to meet his demands. The Chinese generals also were
genuinely concerned about the safety of the large Chinese
segment of Hanoi’s population should
serious fighting break out there.
For the time being, an uneasy
calm settled over Hanoi though it seemed to one American
observer that “the streets
of Hanoi throbbed with tension.” Contributing to the
edginess in the North was the continuing flow of news and
rumors about developments south of the 16th parallel.
In southern
Vietnam—as in the north—the Japanese
surrender had galvanized nationalists into action. The communists’ position
in the south, however, was far shakier than it was in the
north, and the Viet Minh were obliged to compete for leadership
of the independence movement with the Trotskyite Dai Viet
Party, the pro-Japanese Phuoc Quoc, and two indigenous religious
sects, the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hao, which effectively controlled
some Mekong Delta provinces. Indeed, the main reason that
the communists had been included at all in the nationalist
coalition that easily took control of Saigon and most of
Cochin China on August 25 was the widespread belief that
the Allies supported the Viet Minh.
In Saigon, Gracey was preoccupied with his
mission of controlling and disarming the 40,000 Japanese
troops in Southern Indochina, who vastly outnumbered his
own forces. Gracey’s other
tasks were to release and repatriate Allied prisoners of
war and internees, to maintain law and order, and to “liberate
Allied territory in so far as your resources permit.” In
this case, “Allied territory” meant French territory
to the British government. Unlike the Americans and Chinese,
the British had never challenged the right of the French
to reassert their rule in Indochina.
Gracey was unimpressed
with the nationalist government delegation that welcomed
him at the airport and claimed to be in charge in Saigon.
His chief of staff, after a quick tour of the city, concluded
that the Vietnamese claim that they controlled civil affairs “was
a laugh.” Gracey soon decided
that the “Annamite government constituted a direct
threat to law and order through its police and armed guards.”
There
had been few serious incidents but there were constant threats
to French lives and property, and Vietnamese radio stations
and newspapers carried on an incessant campaign of anti-French
propaganda. Gracey was not a fool or a racist, but he was
completely out of his depth. He knew nothing about Indochina,
lacked a political officer, and believed French assurances
that the nationalists were a minority of troublemakers and
former collaborators.
Gracey might have learned more about
the real situation in Indochina from the OSS. A small OSS
detachment with duties similar to Patti’s team in the
north had been in Indochina since September 1. Besides locating
and aiding prisoners of war, particularly Americans, the
OSS team, code name “Embankment,” was
to identify and apprehend war criminals and microfilm Japanese
documents and code books. Given the absence of any other
American presence in Saigon, the team was also to report
on political developments and watch for the emergence of
any anti-Allied groups or activities by the Japanese to subvert
the surrender.
The Embankment team was
under the command of Col. A. Peter Dewey, son of a congressman
and a relative of Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican Presidential
candidate in 1944. Dewey had no special knowledge of Indochina,
and only one member of his team spoke Vietnamese—a
few did not even speak French.
Nevertheless, Dewey was determined to carry out the
intelligence aspects of his mission and soon established
contacts with Vietnamese political leaders. Dewey was particularly
impressed with Dr. Pham Ngoc Thach, the sponser of the Viet
Minh front organization, Vanguard Youth.
Gracey could not
have been pleased with this brash young American and probably
regarded the OSS as an annoying nuisance. As for Dewey, he
was unlikely to find common ground with a general whom one
of his officers called “an old-fashioned
product of the British Empire.”
On September 19, Gracey
notified the Viet Minh government that he intended to issue
a proclamation banning all processions and demonstrations,
imposing a nightly curfew, and prohibiting the carrying of
arms by any forces not authorized by him. All newspapers
were to be closed and the provisional government was to supply
a list of the arms and location of all Vietnamese police
and military units. Beginning on September 21, Gracey’s
troops began evicting the Viet Minh government from public
buildings and police stations and disarming Viet Minh police
and paramilitary forces.
By this time, French officials had
convinced Gracey that former French POWs in the Saigon area
could be rearmed and easily take control of the city government
and services, and the Vietnamese would be overawed and offer
no resistance. During the night of September 22, the British
quietly turned over installations and police posts to the
French. The Treasury, the main Post Office, City Hall, and
other public buildings were taken from the surprised Vietnamese
by the French troops with little loss of life but considerable
brutality.
On the
morning of the 23rd, the French of Saigon celebrated their
victory by going on a rampage. Soldiers and armed civilians
fired into empty buildings. French gangs roamed the city
randomly assaulting Vietnamese, including women and children.
Any Vietnamese found on the streets was likely to be kicked,
beaten, and then trussed up and hauled off to a police station.
Gracey
was privately furious and ordered the French “soldiers” to
return to their barracks. Yet the damage was done. British
and foreign press representatives reported fully on the antics
of the French “assumption of control.” At a press
conference shortly after the French takeover, Gracey was “given
hell” by American and Australian reporters.
This was
far more than a public relations disaster, however. The clumsy
French coup had led to the very situation Gracey had intended
to prevent. Vietnamese of all political persuasions united
in a general rising directed at the British and French. The
food markets were burnt amid kidnappings, murder, and arson.
The bloodiest incident occurred on September 24 when members
of the Binh Xuyen, a large Vietnamese criminal syndicate,
raided the Cité Herault, a residential suburb populated
by well-to-do French and Eurasians, and massacred over 150
people, mostly women and children.
From that point, civil
war raged in the Saigon area. “For
a time Saigon was a city under siege,” recalled George
Wickes, communications man for the small OSS detachment in
Saigon.
“Mostly we heard, rather than saw, the action.
Things were generally calm during the day, but after nightfall
we began to hear the sound of gunfire, beginning with the
occasional stray shot by a jittery French soldier.... Every
night we could hear Vietnamese drums signaling across the
river and almost on the stroke of 12, there would be an outburst
of gunfire and new fires breaking out among the stocks of
tea, rubber, and tobacco in the dockyards.”
With limited
numbers of British troops and French forces few and unreliable,
Gracey called on the Japanese to help patrol the city and
clear Vietnamese road blocks. Rather than being concentrated
and disarmed, the Japanese were now warned that they would
be responsible for certain areas and for the security of
any Europeans needing their aid. How large a role the Japanese
played in repelling the Vietnamese attacks on Saigon and
breaking the blockade of the city has always been obscure.
The British and French had no interest in highlighting their
role.
While the British and French were
turning to the Japanese, so were the Viet Minh. Somewhere
between 1,000 to 3,000 Japanese soldiers deserted their units
and joined the nationalists during August and September 1945.
A few joined out of conviction, men who wished to continue
the fight for Greater East Asia; others suspected that they
would be prime candidates for war crimes trials; many saw
no future in Japan or had married Vietnamese women. Yet other
soldiers joined the Vietminh through force or blackmail or
the promise of relatively high pay.
Soldiers of the Viet Minh Army in the south were short
of weapons and largely untrained; many were armed only with
axes or bamboo staves. The addition of experienced Japanese
soldiers to their ranks provided an enormous boost in military
effectiveness.
Japanese officers and NCOs trained Vietnamese in the use
and maintenance of weapons, small unit tactics, and communications.
Specialists
provided training in field medicine, staff work, and administration.
Junior officers were trained in company and battalion exercises.
Japanese instructors introduced Vietnamese soldiers to the
guerrilla tactics they had intended to use against the superior
Allied invaders in the last months of the war.
The French coup and its aftermath completely soured
relations between the OSS and the British in Saigon. Dewey
went to Gracey’s office to protest French behavior,
but the general refused to see him. The next day Dewey reported: “Cochinchina
is burning. The French and British are finished here and
we ought to clear out of Southeast Asia.” Two days
later Dewey was shot and killed at a Viet Minh roadblock
by men who probably took him for a Frenchman. Ironically,
it was the day he was scheduled to leave the country.
Dewey’s
murder caused a minor sensation. Members of his team unanimously
blamed Gracey for refusing to let Dewey fly an American flag
from his jeep (although there was nothing to prevent him
painting it on). The British observed privately that Dewey
had been a reckless troublemaker. The inability to recover
his body added to the unease and embarrassment. Eventually,
Dewey came to be seen by some as the first American casualty
of the Vietnam Wars.
Informed of Dewey’s death
by Patti, Ho Chi Minh rushed to Gen. Gallagher’s headquarters
to express his regrets and to assure him that such an incident
would occur in the north only “over my dead body.” Although
Gallagher may have been concerned at news of Dewey’s
death, he had other things to worry about. The Chinese had
refused to allow the French to take part in the Japanese
surrender ceremony at the end of September and Lu Han’s
generals were presently holding hostage two high-ranking
officials of the Bank of Indochina after the French had refused
to honor large banknotes acquired by the Chinese. Gallagher
could do little about the surrender ceremony but was more
successful in encouraging the Chinese and French to settle
their financial disputes before he departed Hanoi with the
remaining elements of the Chinese Combat Command in December
1945.
Despite his success in fending off the Chinese and temporarily
neutralizing the opposition, Ho understood that his situation
remained precarious. It was clear that the Americans would
be of no real help, although Ho continued to address plaintive
letters to Truman and Secretary of State James Byrnes through
Patti and Gallagher. The Chinese had given the back of their
hand to the French in Hanoi but Ho knew that in Chungking
and Paris negotiations were on-going about trading an early
end to the occupation for French concessions to China. As
for the French, their actions in the south left little doubt
about their ultimate intentions.
Aware that they were working
against time, Ho and Sainteny began secret negotiations about
the return of French troops to northern Vietnam. Sainteny
wanted to ensure that the return would be peaceful with no
resistance by the Viet Minh. Ho held out for a guarantee
of complete independence for Vietnam in return.
The talks dragged on for weeks. Finally as French ships were
only a few miles from Haiphong, the two completed an agreement.
France
would recognize Ho’s Republic of Vietnam as “a
free state within the French Union” with final political
status to be determined in later negotiations, and Ho agreed
that the government of Vietnam would “amicably welcome” the
French troops when they arrived to “relieve the Chinese.” That
agreement preserved an uneasy peace for nine months.
While
Ho and Sainteny held their talks in the North, the first
French reinforcements arrived in the South. They were followed
by many more during the remainder of October and November,
along with tanks and aircraft. The Vietnamese could not help
but notice that some of the cargo ships bringing French troops
and supplies flew the American flag and that much of the
equipment and weaponry used by the French still bore U.S.
markings.
By the middle of November, the OSS was reporting that “both
British and French are of the opinion that organized Resistance
of the Viet Minh Revolution has been almost completely dispersed.” French
troops had taken control of Tay Ninh to the north of Saigon
and had moved into the Central Highlands by occupying Ban
Me Thuot. The war in the south, touched off by Gracey’s
anxiety to “restore law and order,” continued
until 1954.
Ronald Spector has been professor of history
and international relations at George Washington University
since 1990. He is the author of three other books, including
After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam. His book, At War
at Sea: Sailors and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century,
received the 2002 Distinguished Book Award of the Society
for Military History. Spector entered the U.S. Marine Corps
as an enlisted man in 1967 and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel
in the Marine Corps Reserve. He served in Vietnam during
1968-69 and in active-duty assignments during the Grenada/Lebanon
incidents in 1983-84.
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