Embers of War (15 page)

III

IF ALL VIETNAMESE NATIONALISTS WERE IN ACCORD ON THIS POINT
, one group was particularly well situated to articulate it and present an alternative: the Indochinese Communist Party, led by Ho Chi Minh. For Ho and the ICP, the March coup represented a glorious opportunity, one they moved swiftly to seize. In 1941, the party had been in disarray, its members dead or incarcerated or living precariously in the jungles and swamps of the Vietnamese interior. Gradually, however, its fortunes revived, for several reasons. Most important, perhaps, the Vichy-Japan modus vivendi of 1940–45 over time grievously undermined those Vietnamese nationalist groups that had tied their fortunes to either the French or the Japanese; all were mortally wounded by the association. At the same time, the Vichy-Japan détente allowed the ICP-dominated Viet Minh to launch attacks on France’s colonial rule without being labeled as profascist or hostile to the Allied cause. Elsewhere in Southeast Asia where such agreements between Tokyo and the colonial power did not exist—notably in Malaya, Indonesia, and the Philippines—Communist parties were not so lucky.
²²

By early 1943, the Viet Minh had gained a considerable amount of control in northern Tonkin—specifically in the provinces of Cao Bang, Bac Kan, and Lang Son. This border region, peopled substantially by ethnic minorities (notably Tai, Nung, Dao, and Hmong) living in a clan-based social system, had never been brought fully under French control. The Viet Minh too encountered resistance but gradually gained the trust and participation of the population in several districts. On July 8, 1944, the French police discovered a Viet Minh base near Soc Giang in Cao Bang containing a sizable cache of arms, tracts, and clothing, and warned of the immediate need to “re-establish authority.” The following month two village chiefs were assassinated and several Viet Minh hideouts were discovered, confirming, the Sûreté reported, “some voluntary support” by the population. Louis Arnoux, the head of the Sûreté, had by then already identified the leader of the movement. In a letter to Decoux, he noted the effectiveness of “the guerrilla tactics advocated by the propaganda leaflets printed in China by the anti-French parties—whose leader now seems to be Ho Chi Minh, alias Nguyen Ai Quoc.”
²³

And indeed, Ho Chi Minh’s importance to the revolutionary cause in this period would be hard to exaggerate. He had been arrested in China in August 1942 by local authorities suspicious of his political activities; by his own estimate he then passed through eighteen prisons before winning his release in August 1943. During his incarceration, he kept in touch with his closest colleagues via letters written in disappearing ink, and upon his release, he stepped up his efforts to form a broad united front to drive the French and the Japanese from Indochina. In 1944, he helped put together a precarious coalition—known as the Vietnam Revolutionary League, or Viet Nam Cach Menh Dong Minh Hoi—with several non-Communist groups operating from exile in southern China. The ICP was from the start the central force in this coalition, and Ho the leading personality. He took care to downplay his background as an agent of the Comintern and talked up the need for nationalist unity. “I am a communist but what is important to me now is the independence and the freedom of my country, not communism,” he told a Chinese general at the close of the congress establishing the league. “I personally guarantee you that communism will not become a reality in Vietnam for another fifty years.”
²⁴

By late 1944, Ho Chi Minh, now back in Tonkin, could see the endgame. He predicted that Japan would lose the Pacific War, France would seek to regain Indochina, and before that Tokyo would overthrow the Decoux regime in order to protect its army. The result would be a power vacuum the Viet Minh could fill.
²⁵
But he cautioned his more militant comrades to move carefully and to avoid launching a premature insurrection. Japan’s defeat was inevitable, he told them; why not wait until the fruit was ripe to be picked? Even in Tonkin, Ho knew, the Viet Minh controlled only a small part of the territory, while in the rest of the country—especially in Cochin China in the south—its presence was spotty at best. (Some provinces remained devoid of Viet Minh organizing until well into 1945.) “The hour of peaceful revolution has passed,” Ho said, “but the hour of the more general insurrections has not yet sounded.”
²⁶

Then came March 9, the auspicious moment. The removal of the French secret police after the coup, together with Japan concentrating her presence in the urban areas of Vietnam in preparation for a possible Allied invasion, gave the Viet Minh considerable advantages in their underground work and propaganda efforts. The Japanese, having chased French troops out of Vietnam, did not think it vital to keep a troop presence in the northern provinces of Tonkin in light of more pressing concerns, and thus the Viet Minh had the region largely to themselves. Slowly, in the late spring and summer months, the Viet Minh began to spread southward toward the Red River Delta.
²⁷

For Ho and other members of the ICP Central Committee, the much-anticipated revolutionary conditions were now fast approaching. Shortly after the coup, the Central Committee convened under the direction of acting general secretary Truong Chinh to make preparations for a general uprising leading to a seizure of power at the end of the Pacific War. As reflected in the directive issued at the meeting’s end, the committee agreed on the danger of moving too fast: Though the Japanese action would not produce a truly independent Vietnam, it would take time for the public to come down from its postcoup euphoria. Hence the party should bide its time and work to expand its base of support and introduce the Viet Minh flag and doctrine to the people. Eventually these efforts would culminate in a general uprising, “for example, when the Japanese Army surrenders to the Allies or when the Allies are decisively engaged in Indochina.” The Viet Minh should be the main force working with the Allies, the directive said, and Viet Minh representatives should greet Allied units as they entered each village. These instructions would stay in place right up to the time of Japan’s surrender.
²⁸

One other factor assisted the Viet Minh cause: the terrible famine that ravaged parts of Vietnam, and especially Tonkin and northern Annam, in 1944–45. These areas, less agriculturally blessed than Cochin China, had long depended on rice shipped from the south to survive. In the 1920s and 1930s, output in Tonkin declined due to reductions in acreage, even as the population expanded by more than 30 percent. Starting in 1941, bad weather and the requisition policies of the French and Japanese caused supplies to decline, and drought and insects caused the spring 1944 rice crop to decline by 19 percent compared to the previous year. That autumn, major flooding destroyed a large part of the October crop in the north, but the colonial government nevertheless increased the quantity of rice the peasants had to deliver. At the same time, Allied bombing of roads and railways dramatically reduced shipments from the Mekong Delta, as did colonial policies that made it unprofitable to ship grain to the north.
²⁹

By February 1945, a catastrophe loomed. Still, the French and the Japanese continued to stockpile rice for their own future use, and after the March 9 takeover the Japanese seized control of the French stocks. Meanwhile poor villagers in the north were succumbing by the thousands. In many areas, streets were littered with dying peasants, and oxcarts filled with corpses were a common sight. Families roamed from village to village, hoping to find grain. Or they retreated to their homes, shared the few remaining morsels, and died quietly, one by one. Some people, having consumed everything that could be eaten—bark, roots, leaves, dogs, and rats—resorted to cannibalism, causing parents to fear that their children would be stolen and eaten. Some parents sold their children for a few cups of rice. Duong Thieu Chi, a provincial official in Nam Dinh, made sure to avoid eating in restaurants or stalls when he traveled during these months, for fear that the meat served might be rat or human flesh.
³⁰

A French observer, perhaps aware of his country’s failure over the previous decades to develop an effective system for the prevention and relief of famine, despite pleas for them after each crisis, had this to say: “From looking at these bodies, which are shriveled up on roadsides with only a handful of straw for clothes as well as for the burial garment, one feels ashamed of being human.”
³¹

It is impossible to know how many people perished in the famine, but the scale is clear enough. In May 1945, as the crisis eased, officials used statistics from various provinces in Tonkin to declare that to that point, precisely 380,969 people had died by starvation. A year later, using more complete figures, analysts estimated that one million people had died in Tonkin, and another 300,000 in Annam. In later years, the estimates would climb higher still, to two million deaths in a five-month period in 1945. Even if one adopts the lower figure of one million for Tonkin, the implications are appalling: 10 percent of the population in the affected region died of starvation in less than half a year. Particularly hard-hit were the provinces of Nam Dinh, Thai Binh, Hai Duong, and Kien An. In these provinces, and indeed throughout Tonkin and Annam, the perception became widespread that the Japanese and especially the French were to blame for the disaster with their inhumane policies, and that Bao Dai and his ministers had been feckless in responding to the crisis.
³²

VICTIMS OF THE MASS FAMINE IN NORTHERN VIETNAM IN 1944–45.
(photo credit 3.2)

The Viet Minh, however, benefited from the widespread popular perception that they alone had tried hard to reduce the suffering. As desperate peasants stormed granaries to take rice, Viet Minh operatives often assumed leadership of the revolt, directing “rice struggles” to break open warehouses and distribute food to the hungry. These efforts, though growing out of grassroots popular protest more than Viet Minh initiative per se, left a lasting impression on many peasants and undoubtedly aided the efforts of Viet Minh forces operating in the mountain regions around the Red River Delta to seize control over rural areas and recruit followers from villages under their control. The tiny elite forces under Vo Nguyen Giap were now combined with other units in the country into a new Vietnamese Liberation Army (Viet Nam Giai Phong Quan). By May, the VLA’s trained forces had reached five thousand, although many lacked weapons.
³³

The Kim government in Hue, meanwhile, was completely ineffectual. Widely perceived to be a vassal of the Japanese, its leading members were competent professionals—doctors, lawyers, professors—who faced near-impossible odds. Not only did they have to heed the wishes of the army of occupation; they also had to deal with the sorry state of the country’s infrastructure after years of war. Allied bombing had caused major damage to the railroads and halted most shipping. Even the basic task of getting governmental messages out from Hue to the provincial towns proved difficult and largely dependent on the goodwill of the Japanese, who controlled many of the roads. As for money, the government had no finances to speak of, and whatever revenues it managed to bring in, it had to turn over to the Japanese. As spring turned into summer and the certainty of Japan’s defeat in the war became more and more apparent, many members of Kim’s cabinet grasped the essential futility of their situation: The government was irrevocably linked to a hated occupier whose days were numbered.

IV

THE GROWING PRESENCE OF THE VIET MINH IN TONKIN WAS NOT
lost on American officials in the Pacific theater, who saw important implications for the war effort. The Japanese takeover had eradicated the French intelligence network in Indochina, these analysts knew, and also disrupted the activities of the Americans’ so-called GBT espionage unit (named after the last names of its three leaders), which during 1944 had produced a wealth of useful intelligence information.
³⁴
Hence the potential utility of using the Viet Minh to assist Allied actions. New directives from Washington gave these U.S. units more flexibility, allowing them to seek cooperation with any and all resistance groups provided that such actions did not interfere with planned operations.
³⁵

Thus it was that Captain Charles Fenn of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the principal U.S. wartime intelligence agency, sought out meetings with Ho Chi Minh in Kunming in southern China. Fenn, a London-born former Marine Corps officer who would go on to write plays and novels as well as a respected biography of Ho, headed OSS operations for Indochina from headquarters in Kunming. There he heard about Ho’s organization and about Ho’s role in helping locate downed American pilots and providing intelligence on Japanese troop movements. Moreover, Fenn knew, Ho sometimes dropped by the Office of War Information facility in the city to read the
Encyclopedia Americana
and
Time
magazine. A face-to-face encounter seemed in order, Fenn determined.