Embers of War (16 page)

Ho was eager to oblige. He had indeed come to Kunming expressly for the purpose of making contact with American officials. No Allied power loomed larger in his mind than the United States. Much as he had pinned his nationalist hopes at the end of the First World War on the Americans, pressing his case for Vietnamese independence on Woodrow Wilson at the Versailles Peace Conference, so he now looked to Washington for help as the Second World War drew to a close. He continued to believe that, by the circumstances of her birth, the United States was uniquely able among the great powers to grasp the nature of the “colonial problem.” The British might have cosigned the Atlantic Charter with its embrace of self-determination, but the document was wholly an American creation. Even the Soviet Union’s leadership did not possess this understanding. With everything in the Pacific War going the Americans’ way, and with Washington certain to dominate world politics in the years to come, Ho saw every reason to see what this Fenn fellow wanted.
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They met on March 17 at the Dragon’s Gate Café. Ho Chi Minh was accompanied by a close Viet Minh associate, Pham Van Dong. “His silvery wisp of beard suggests age,” Fenn wrote of Ho in his diary that day, “but his face is vigorous and his eyes bright and gleaming.” The three conversed in French. Fenn asked what Ho wanted from the United States. Only recognition for the Viet Minh, came the reply. But what about the rumors that it was a Communist organization? Fenn asked. The French label Communist all Annamites who want independence, Ho said, neatly evading a direct answer. When Fenn suggested the possibility of mutual assistance, Ho readily agreed.

“I already felt sure he was our man,” Fenn recalled, noting the “clear-cut talk [and] Buddha-like composure” of his correspondent. “Baudelaire felt the wings of insanity touch his mind; but that morning I felt the wings of genius touch mine.”
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Fenn, who had studied graphology, also provided an analysis of Ho’s handwriting, from which he concluded:

The essential features are simplicity, desire to make everything clear, remarkable self-control. Knows how to keep a secret. Neat, orderly, unassuming, no interest in dress or outward show. Self-confident and dignified. Gentle but firm. Loyal, sincere, and generous, would make a good friend. Outgoing, gets along with anyone. Keen analytical mind, difficult to deceive. Shows readiness to ask questions. Good judge of character. Full of enthusiasm, energy, initiative. Conscientious; painstaking attention to detail. Imaginative, interested in aesthetics, particularly literature. Good sense of humor.

Faults: diplomatic to the point of contriving. Could be moody and obstinate.
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At a second meeting three days later—this one at the Indochina Café, where they sipped strong coffee filtered in the French style—the two men made a deal whereby the OSS would provide radio equipment and a limited amount of arms and ammunition in exchange for Viet Minh assistance in intelligence gathering, sabotaging Japanese installations, and rescuing American pilots. But Ho Chi Minh also had something else on his mind that day: He asked if he could meet Claire Chennault, adviser to Chiang Kai-shek, founder of the famed “Flying Tigers,” and commander of the Fourteenth Air Force. Fenn said he’d do his best, and ten days later the two men presented themselves at Chennault’s outer office for a late-morning meeting, Fenn in a gabardine bush jacket and Ho in a simple cotton tunic and sandals. Chennault, for his part, cut an imposing figure in his perfectly pressed uniform. (He had that effect on people: Winston Churchill, upon seeing Chennault make his entrance at a conference earlier in the war and learning of his identity, whispered to an aide, “Well, thank God he’s on our side.”)
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Chennault thanked Ho for his efforts to save U.S. pilots, and Ho responded by expressing his admiration for Chennault and the Flying Tigers. Neither man spoke about the French, or about politics, but as the meeting ended, Ho asked for a favor: Could he have the general’s photograph? In an instant, a young female assistant appeared with a folder of eight-by-ten glossies. “Take your pick,” Chennault said. Ho selected one and asked the general to sign it. The assistant produced a Parker 51, and Chennault scrawled across the bottom: “Yours Sincerely, Claire L. Chennault.”
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Ho Chi Minh had his prized possession. In the weeks and months thereafter, he waved the photograph like a magic wand on his travels throughout the region, the better to prove that his movement had official recognition from the Allies and in particular from the United States. And he had some justification for making that claim. In April, the OSS provided Ho Chi Minh with air transportation to Jiangxi, not far from the Vietnam border, and later OSS personnel joined the Viet Minh at Ho’s headquarters at Pac Bo. One of them, radio operator Mac Shinn, an Asian-American, established radio contact with Kunming, and the OSS began to air-drop supplies, including medicine, a radio set, and a few weapons for training. In return, the Viet Minh provided the United States with intelligence reports and rescued several U.S. airmen.
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The OSS called its Vietnam operation the Deer Mission. On July 16, a Deer Team led by Colonel Allison Thomas parachuted into Ho’s new forward base, a tiny village in the jungle called Tan Trao, not far from the Thai Nguyen provincial capital. After disentangling himself from the banyan tree into which his parachute had slammed him, Thomas spoke a “few flowery sentences” to two hundred Viet Minh soldiers assembled near a banner proclaiming “Welcome to Our American Friends.” Ho Chi Minh, speaking in good idiomatic English, cordially greeted the OSS team and offered supper, but it was clear to the Americans that he was ill, “shaking like a leaf and obviously running a high fever.” The next day Ho denounced the French but remarked that “we welcome 10 million Americans.” Thomas was impressed by what he heard. “Forget the Communist Bogy,” he radioed OSS headquarters in Kunming. “Viet Minh League is not Communist. Stands for freedom and reforms against French harshness.”
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Thomas’s analysis was wrong, or at least incomplete. If the Viet Minh stood for independence and against French repression, their core leadership that summer also remained staunchly Communist. But Ho in particular among top strategists wore the ideology lightly, so much so that even Soviet officials questioned his Communist credentials. In Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party too, analysts wondered where the Viet Minh, should they win the right to rule a free Vietnam, would take the country.

Other OSS personnel soon parachuted into Pac Bo, including a medic who diagnosed Ho Chi Minh’s ailments as malaria and dysentery. Quinine and sulfa drugs restored his health, but Ho remained frail. To a remarkable degree, he made a winning impression on these Americans, who invariably described him as warm, intelligent, and keen to cooperate with the United States.
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As a sign of friendship, they named him “OSS Agent 19.” Everywhere the Americans went, impoverished villagers thanked them with gifts of food and clothing, no doubt especially welcome after the devastating famine of that spring. The villagers interpreted the foreigners’ presence as a sign of U.S. anticolonial and anti-Japanese sentiments.

HO CHI MINH WITH MEMBERS OF THE U.S. DEER TEAM IN PAC BO. ON HO’S IMMEDIATE RIGHT IS ALLISON THOMAS, AND THEN RENÉ DÉFOURNEAUX, ANOTHER MEMBER OF THE U.S. TEAM. NEXT TO DÉFOURNEAUX IS VO NGUYEN GIAP.
(photo credit 3.3)

In early August the Deer Team began to give Viet Minh soldiers weapons training. During many conversations with the OSS members, Ho said that he hoped young Vietnamese could study in the United States and that American technicians could help build an independent Vietnam. Citing history, Ho remarked that “your statesmen make eloquent speeches about … self-determination. We are self-determined. Why not help us? Am I any different from … your George Washington?”
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V

ONE CAN IMAGINE HOW MUCH HO RELISHED THESE CONTACTS WITH
the mighty Americans. His Viet Minh had endured years of isolation, receiving no aid from his ideological allies in the Soviet Union; now the world’s most powerful nation seemed to be throwing her support behind his nation’s long quest for liberation. Surely he understood that the road ahead would be a difficult one for him, even treacherous, but with the Japanese facing total defeat and the Americans making welcome noises, he had reason to feel a measure of confidence.

“You’ve got to judge someone on the basis of what he wants,” wrote one American who was with Ho at his jungle headquarters during this time. “Ho couldn’t be French, and he knew he could fight the French on his terms. He was afraid of the Chinese, and he couldn’t deal with them because they’d always demand their pound of flesh. Moscow, so far away, was good at blowing up bridges, but not much good at building them up again. If it weren’t for the war, of course, Ho wouldn’t have had a chance against the long background of French colonialism. But now he was in the saddle, although it wasn’t clear what horse he was riding. For the moment, surely, he was helping us, on the ground. We and the French were in a position to help him in the future. I think he was ready to remain pro-West.”
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Away from Tonkin, however, and away from the freewheeling atmosphere in Kunming, American policy was moving in a very different direction. Roosevelt’s death on April 12 had brought to power a new administration, one with a markedly different assessment of what ought to happen in Indochina and in the colonial world generally. Harry S. Truman, thrust into the presidency at a time of global war, had almost no international experience. An unsuccessful haberdasher and former U.S. senator from Missouri, Truman had been selected as FDR’s running mate in 1944 because he was the second choice of each faction of the Democratic Party, and the only candidate all of them could accept. Whereas Roosevelt seldom made a decision until forced to do so, Truman often acted on impulse; while FDR could be described by associates as “sphinxlike,” Truman tended to tell people precisely what he thought; whereas Roosevelt saw the world in various shades of gray, for his successor it was often black-and-white.

Truman had none of FDR’s personal interest in French Indochina’s future, and his administration from the start focused its energies on the pressing tasks of securing the victory over the reeling Germans and delivering a knockout blow to Japan. Precisely for those reasons, however, astute observers quickly saw a change in Washington’s position on what ought to happen in postwar Indochina. Truman probably knew little or nothing of Roosevelt’s trusteeship scheme, and neither he nor his top foreign policy aide, James F. Byrnes, the former Supreme Court justice and director of war mobilization, gave much thought to the broader issue of colonial nationalism. Sensing an opening, pro-French voices in the State Department immediately pushed for a reevaluation of policy toward Indochina. On the day following Roosevelt’s death, the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee, the interagency forerunner to the National Security Council, took up the matter with the aim of making a recommendation to the new president.

Thus came to the fore sharp internal differences among U.S. analysts, differences that had been kept muted so long as Roosevelt was alive. Support for FDR’s anticolonialist agitation came, as before, chiefly from some Asia specialists, such as John Carter Vincent, head of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs, and Abbot Low Moffat, chief of the newly established Southwest Pacific Affairs Division (later the Southeast Asian Affairs Division), who felt certain that the United States had to come down on the side of the anticolonial movement sweeping through Southeast Asia. General Albert Wedemeyer, the U.S. commander in Chungking, likewise clung to the Rooseveltian position and squabbled with SEAC’s Mountbatten over which commander held responsibility for military operations in Indochina, and over how much assistance should be given to French efforts to reclaim colonial control. When Mountbatten, whose superiors in London supported a French return, informed Wedemeyer that he intended to fly twenty-six sorties into Indochina to support French guerrilla actions, the American objected strongly, on the grounds that Indochina was properly part of Chiang Kai-shek’s theater rather than Mountbatten’s responsibility. Wedemeyer suspected that any SEAC missions would merely serve as a cover to enhance French power over postwar developments.
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But such voices were a minority. Most U.S. analysts had their primary attention on Europe, and on making sure that Franco-American relations remained stable. Cooperation from Paris, these observers argued, would be needed to check possible Soviet expansionism, a specter made more real by Moscow’s tightening grip in early 1945 over Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria. Moreover, the French Communists were destined to emerge out of the war as the most powerful political party in France and thus had to be handled carefully. Blocking French efforts to recover Indochina would probably enhance the Communists’ advantage by discouraging partnership with the West.
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