Finding the Dragon Lady

Finding the Dragon Lady

Finding the

Dragon Lady

THE MYSTERY OF
VIETNAM'S

MADAME NHU

MONIQUE BRINSON DEMERY

P
UBLIC
A
FFAIRS

New York

Copyright © 2013 by Monique Brinson Demery.

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Book design by Cynthia Young

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Demery, Monique Brinson, 1976–

    
Finding the Dragon Lady : the mystery of Vietnam's Madame Nhu /

        
Monique Brinson Demery.

             
pages cm

        
Includes bibliographical references and index.

        
ISBN 978-1-61039-282-2 (e-book)

        
1. Tran, Le Xuan, 1924–2011.
    
2. Politicians' spouses—Vietnam (Republic)—Biography.
    
3. Vietnam (Republic)—Politics and government.
    
I. Title.

    
DS556.93.T676D46 2013

    
959.7'7043092—dc23

2013021155
         

First Edition

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Contents

Map of Vietnam

List of Illustrations

A Note on Vietnamese Names

Members of Madame Nhu's Family

  
1
    
Paris, 2005

  
2
    
Forgotten Graves

  
3
    
A Distinguished Family

  
4
    
Portrait of a Young Lady

  
5
    
Long-Distance Phone Call

  
6
    
The Crossing

  
7
    
A Mountain Retreat

  
8
    
The Miracle Man of Vietnam

  
9
    
A First Lady in Independence Palace

10
    
Tiger Skins

11
    
Young Turks and Old Hacks

12
    
Burning Monks

13
    
Too Beautiful to Ignore

14
    
Closed Doors

15
    
Coup d'État

16
    
In Exile

Acknowledgments

A Condensed History

Notes

Index

List of Illustrations

F
IGURE 1
.
Portrait of Tran Thi Le Xuan as a bride circa 1943 (Madame Nhu's personal collection).

F
IGURE 2
.
Portrait of Ngo Dinh Nhu circa 1963 (Madame Nhu's personal collection).

F
IGURE 3
.
Portrait of Tran Thi Le Chi, Madame Nhu's sister (Corbis).

F
IGURE 4
.
The South Vietnamese presidential family (Corbis).

F
IGURE 5
.
Ngo Dinh Nhu and wife, Tran Thi Le Xuan (Photo by Larry Burrows/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images).

F
IGURE 6
.
Madame Nhu playing with two-year-old daughter Le Quyen (Photo by Larry Burrows/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images).

F
IGURE 7
.
Portrait of daughter Le Thuy circa 1963 (Madame Nhu's personal collection).

F
IGURE 8
.
Malcolm Browne, Saigon correspondent, in front of his photo (Associated Press).

F
IGURE 9
.
Madame Nhu showing Lady Bird Johnson and Mrs. Jean Kennedy Smith her collection of tiger skins (Collections of the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and Museum).

F
IGURE 10
.
Madame Nhu talking to the press at the airport as she is leaving Vietnam in 1963 (Photo by Larry Burrows/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images).

F
IGURE 11
.
Barefooted Vietnamese youth about to come down on the head of the Trung sister statue (Associated Press).

A Note on Vietnamese Names

TO READERS ENCOUNTERING
them for the first time, Vietnamese names can seem confounding. The family name comes first, followed by the middle name—or names—and then the first, or given, name. Additionally, an overwhelming number of people share relatively few last names. Tran and Ngo are more common in Vietnam than Johnson or Smith in the United States. The middle name is no help in distinguishing among brothers and sisters, as parents often give their offspring the same middle names. That was the case in the Ngo family; the six male siblings all had the middle name Dinh, and in the case of the Chuongs's daughters, Madame Nhu and her sister had the same two middle names, Thi and Le. Thi is a common middle name for girls, but in the case of Madame Nhu and her sister, they dropped the Thi in practice and used Le as a prefix to their given names.

The accepted way to refer to a Vietnamese person is by their given name, even in the most official settings—hence, the president of the Republic of South Vietnam was called President Diem and not President Ngo. One notable exception to this rule is Ho Chi Minh. In his case, he has been decreed so esteemed and so well known that his last name is sufficient.

I struggled over what to call various Vietnamese people in this book, but when I made a decision, I tried to be consistent—except in the case of Madame Nhu. In the chapters that depict her early years, I use the name her parents gave her: Tran Le Xuan. While women typically keep their family name after they marry, in the case of both Madame Nhu and her mother, Madame Chuong, I have chosen to
refer to them the way that they are commonly spoken of in the United States, where this book was written and published.

Per the guidelines set out by the
Chicago Manual of Style,
16th ed., I decided to abandon the use of diacritics in spelling Vietnamese names and places but to retain accents for French words. In Vietnamese, diacritics convey the language's seven tones, and words that may look the same on paper without marks may have very different meanings once assigned tones through diacritics. I apologize for any inadvertent offense stemming from my efforts to simplify these spellings for my readers.

Members of Madame Nhu's Family

Tran Van Chuong
: Madame Nhu's father; also the South Vietnamese ambassador to the United States under President Ngo Dinh Diem

Nam Tran Tran Van Chuong
(also Madame Chuong, Tran Thi Nam Tran): Madame Nhu's mother

Tran Thi Le Chi
: Madame Nhu's sister

Tran Thi Le Xuan
: Madame Nhu's childhood name

Tran Van Khiem
: Madame Nhu's brother

Ngo Dinh Kha
: Father of Ngo Dinh Nhu and Ngo Dinh Diem

Ngo Dinh Khoi
: Eldest Ngo brother, killed by the Communists in 1945

Ngo Dinh Thuc
: Nhu's older brother, archbishop of Hue

Ngo Dinh Diem
: Nhu's older brother; president of the Republic of South Vietnam, 1955–1963

Ngo Dinh Nhu
: Madame Nhu's husband and chief political advisor to Diem

Ngo Dinh Can
: controller of Hue and surrounding areas during the presidency of his brother Diem