Embers of War (119 page)

  
6
This is a main theme in Marr,
Vietnam 1945
.

  
7
Joseph Buttinger,
Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled
, vol. 1:
From Colonialism to the Vietminh
(New York: Praeger, 1967), 210; Duiker,
Sacred War
, 48; Stanley Karnow,
Vietnam: A History
, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin, 1997), 162.

  
8
Xuan Phuong and Danièle Mazingarbe,
Ao Dai: My War, My Country, My Vietnam
(Great Neck, N.Y.: EMQUAD, 2004), 53–54.

  
9
Gilbert Pilleul, ed.,
De Gaulle et l’Indochine, 1940–1946
(Paris: Plon, 1982), 193.

10
François Guillemot, “Viêt Nam 1945–1946: L’élimination de l’opposition nationaliste et anticolonialiste dans la Nord: Au coeur de la fracture vietnamienne,” in Christopher E. Goscha and Benoît de Tréglodé, eds.,
Le Viêt Nam depuis 1945: États, contestations et constructions du passé
(Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2004), 1–9; Duiker,
Ho Chi Minh
, 316–17.

11
Marr,
Vietnam 1945
, 529–31.

12
Ibid., 532.

13
Bernard B. Fall, ed.,
Ho Chi Minh on Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920–1966
(New York: Praeger, 1967), 53–56.

14
Marr,
Vietnam 1945
, 536.

15
Vietnam: A Television History
, episode 1: “Roots of a War,” PBS, transcript.

16
Duiker,
Ho Chi Minh
, 330; Marr,
Vietnam 1945
, 365.

17
Marr,
Vietnam 1945
, 368.

18
Bui Diem,
In the Jaws of History
, 38.

19
Archimedes L. A. Patti,
Why Viet Nam? Prelude to America’s Albatross
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 198; Duiker,
Ho Chi Minh
, 318; Françoise Martin,
Heures tragiques au Tonkin
(Paris: Éditions Berger, 1948), 152; Jean Sainteny,
Histoire d’une paix manquée, Indochine 1945–1947
(Paris: Amiot-Dumont, 1953), 71–77.

20
Michael Maclear,
The Ten Thousand Day War
(New York: Avon, 1982), 12; Patti,
Why Viet Nam?
, 223–24. For the recollection of another American who was in the city then, see René J. Défourneaux,
The Winking Fox: Twenty-two Years in Military Intelligence
(Indianapolis: ICA, 2000), 197–202.

21
Marr,
Vietnam 1945
, 500.

22
Patti to Indiv, September 2, 1945, Record Group 226, Box 199, NARA; Mark Philip Bradley,
Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919–1950
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 134–35; Ronald H. Spector,
Advice and Support: The Early Years of the U.S. Army in Vietnam, 1941–1960
(Washington, D.C.: Center for Military History, 1985), 57.

23
September 19, 1945, FO 371/49088, TNA.

24
August 16, 1945, FO 371/49088, TNA. See also Antony Beevor,
Paris: After the Liberation, 1944–1949
, rev. ed. (London: Penguin, 2004), 206–7.

25
Jean Lacouture,
De Gaulle: The Ruler, 1945–1970
(New York: W.W. Norton, 1992), 64; Charles de Gaulle,
The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle
, trans. Jonathan Griffin and Richard Howard (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998), 910.

26
Lisle Rose,
Roots of Tragedy: The United States and the Struggle for Asia, 1945–1953
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1976), 51–52; Lacouture,
De Gaulle
, 64; De Gaulle,
War Memoirs
, 910–11.

27
Harold R. Isaacs,
No Peace for Asia
(New York: Macmillan, 1947), 232–34. On the extraordinary esteem in which Americans were held in Vietnam at the end of the war, see the 1981 interview with Herbert Bluechel, who served in Saigon at the time, WGBH Vietnam Collection,
openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/org.wgbh.mla:Vietnam
(last accessed on November 12, 2010). And see Bui Diem,
In the Jaws of History
, 34, 38.

28
Isaacs,
No Peace for Asia
, 233–34.

29
See the analysis in Paul Kattenburg,
The Vietnam Trauma in American Foreign Policy, 1945–75
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1980), 14.

30
Quoted in Ronald H. Spector,
In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia
(New York: Random House, 2007), 114.

31
Maclear,
Ten Thousand Day War
, 11.

32
Marr,
Vietnam 1945
, 488–89.

33
Ibid., 491, 492.

34
Bui Diem,
In the Jaws of History
, 39; Patti,
Why Viet Nam?
, 284; Phuong and Mazingarbe,
Ao Dai
, 54–55.

35
Duong Van Mai Elliott,
The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 131.

36
Duiker,
Ho Chi Minh
, 327–28; Jacques Dalloz,
The War in Indo-China, 1945–1954
(New York: Barnes & Noble, 1990), 56.

37
David G. Marr, “Creating Defense Capacity in Vietnam, 1945–1947,” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds.,
The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 88.

38
Duiker,
Ho Chi Minh
, 329; Ellen J. Hammer,
The Struggle for Indochina, 1940–1955
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1955), 133.

39
David W. P. Elliott,
The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 1930–1975
(Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2007), chap. 4; Hammer,
Struggle for Indochina
, 106; Frances FitzGerald,
Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), 71–74.

40
Norman Sherry,
The Life of Graham Greene
, vol. 2:
1939–1955
(New York: Viking, 1995), 365.

41
Quoted in Andrew Forbes, “Graham Greene’s Saigon Revisited,”
CPAmedia.com
,
www.cpamedia.com/articles/20051020_01/
(last accessed on July 20, 2010).

42
Buttinger,
Dragon Embattled
, 218; Robert Shaplen,
The Lost Revolution: The U.S. in Vietnam, 1946–1966
(New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 6; Huynh Van Thieng interview, 1981, WGBH Vietnam Collection,
openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/org.wgbh.mla:Vietnam
(last accessed on November 24, 2010).

43
Peter Dennis,
Troubled Days of Peace: Mountbatten and South East Asia Command, 1945–1946
(New York: St. Martin’s, 1987), 40.

44
M. E. Dening to FO, September 10, 1945, WO203, TNA; M. E. Dening to FO, September 25, 1945, FO 371/46308, TNA. British thinking in this period is examined in Mark Atwood Lawrence, “Forging the Great Combination: Britain and the Indochina Problem, 1945–1950,” in Lawrence and Logevall, eds.,
First Vietnam War
, 111–17; and in Peter Neville,
Britain in Vietnam: Prelude to Disaster
,
1945–1946
(London: Routledge, 2007).

45
John Saville,
The Politics of Continuity: British Foreign Policy and the Labour Government, 1945–46
(London: Verso, 1993), 177–78; John Springhall, “Kicking Out the Viet Minh: How Britain Allowed France to Reoccupy South Indochina, 1945–46,”
Journal of Contemporary History
40 (2005), 128. A sympathetic assessment of the thinking of Gracey and his officers is in Peter M. Dunn,
The First Vietnam War
(New York: St. Martin’s, 1985), esp. 169–72, 186–88.

46
J. F. Cairns,
The Eagle and the Lotus: Western Intervention in Vietnam, 1847–1968
(Melbourne, Australia: Lansdowne Press, 1969), 29. See also the thoughtful examination of Gracey’s mission in Neville,
Britain in Vietnam
.

47
John Keay,
Empire’s End: A History of the Far East from High Colonialism to Hong Kong
(New York: Scribner, 1997), 278; Saigon Control Commission, “Political Report, 13th September, 1945, to 9th October, 1945,” Gracey 4/8, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College London, UK.

48
Germaine Krull, “Diary of Saigon, following the Allied occupation in September 1945,” WOS Special File, Record Group 59, Lot File 59 D 190, Box 9, NARA.

49
Marr,
Vietnam 1945
, 541; Springhall, “Kicking Out the Viet Minh,” 122.

50
On the importance of this period in terms of what comes later, see Vo Nguyen Giap,
Chien Dau trong vong vay
(Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Quan Doi Nhan Dan [People’s Army of Vietnam Publishing House], 1995), 22–23; and Vo Nguyen Giap,
Mémoires 1946–1954
, vol. 1:
La résistance encerclée
(Fontenay-sous-Bois: Anako, 2003–4), 27.

51
Harold Isaacs, “Indo-China: A Fight for Freedom,”
New Republic
, February 3, 1947.

52
One Viet Minh sympathizer, interviewed many years later, expressed great affection for Dewey. See Huynh Van Thieng interview.

53
George Wickes, “Saigon 1945,” unpublished ms. in author’s possession, p. 6; Bluechel interview; Karnow,
Vietnam
, 151; Rose,
Roots of Tragedy
, 61.

54
Dixee R. Bartholomew-Feis,
The OSS and Ho Chi Minh: Unexpected Allies in the War Against Japan
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 288–99. For speculation as to what may have occurred to Dewey’s body, see Spector,
In the Ruins of Empire
, 131.

55
NYT
, October 1, 1945; Mark Atwood Lawrence,
Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 149; Saigon Control Commission, “Political Report.”

56
Christopher E. Goscha, “Belated Asian Allies: The Technical and Military Contributions of Japanese Deserters (1945–50),” in Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buzzanco, eds.,
A Companion to the Vietnam War
(London: Blackwell, 2002), 37–64; John T. McAlister, Jr.,
Viet Nam: The Origins of Revolution
(Princeton, N.J.: Center for International Studies, Princeton University, 1969), 212; Lawrence,
Assuming the Burden
, 150.

57
Wickes, “Saigon 1945,” 11–12. I’m grateful to Mr. Wickes for sharing this memoir with me.

58
Anthony Clayton,
The Wars of French Decolonization
(London: Longman, 1994), 127; J. Davidson,
Indo-China: Signposts in the Storm
(Hong Kong: Longman, 1979), 42.

59
Marr,
Vietnam 1945
, 1.

CHAPTER 5:
The Warrior Monk

  
1
A superb, deeply researched study of the period covered in this chapter and the next is Stein Tønnesson,
Vietnam 1946: How the War Began
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).

  
2
D’Argenlieu’s devotion to de Gaulle is a theme in his posthumously published account,
Chronique d’Indochine 1945–1947
(Paris: Albin Michel, 1985). A trenchant biographical summary produced in the British Foreign Office can be found in FO 371/46307, TNA.

  
3
Ellen J. Hammer,
The Struggle for Indochina, 1940–1955
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1955), 122.

  
4
Bernard Fall,
The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis
(New York: Praeger, 1964), 72.

  
5
Philippe Devillers,
Histoire du Viêt-Nam de 1940 à 1952
(Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1952), 195; Joseph Buttinger,
Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled
, vol. 1:
From Colonialism to the Vietminh
(New York: Praeger, 1967), 233.

  
6
François Guillemot, “Viêt Nam 1945–1946: L’élimination de l’opposition nationaliste et anticolonialiste dans le Nord: À coeur de la fracture vietnamienne,” in Christopher E. Goscha and Benoît de Tréglodé, eds.,
Le Viêt Nam depuis 1945: États, contestations et constructions du passé
(Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2004); David G. Marr,
Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 550.

  
7
Marr,
Vietnam 1945
, 551; Cecil. B. Currey,
Victory at Any Cost: The Genius of Viet Nam’s Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap
(Dulles, Va.: Potomac, 2005), 106.