Article about Hồ Chí Minh's life

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363-06160 to 363-06166.pdf
Digital Object Identifier
363-06160 to 363-06166
Title
Article about Hồ Chí Minh's life
Description
Original title: "ho", Keever's title: "He saved U.S. Pilots in Worlds Warr II; Now They Bomb His Country", article about Hồ Chí Minh's life and relations to America over time, for the New York Herald Tribune
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Draft transcripts were automatically generated via Google Document AI and are currently under review. Please report significant errors to Archives & Special Collections at archives@unl.edu.
Transcript
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deepe
ho--1
april 16, 1965
SAIGON-Exactly twenty years a go this month, am efficient,
but straggly band of guerrillas wandered through the forests of
Indo-China searching for downed American pilots.
"We walked fifty kilometers (thirty miles)
the hills" one Sa igom B businessman recalled.
a day, up and down
"That was a long way.
I remember the first day I started walking, I made only twenty
kilometers (12 miles). I thought it was the end of the world.
When we picked up the American pilots, they weren't used to walking
either--and they wanted to ride our pack horses. We used to get
so mad at them, because tye the horses slowed us down--and we had
to keep moving fast.
"I remember we picked up one American flyer funxxitronaimisiimm
with a brain wound. The French had moved out a French Legonaitre
from the hospite 1 bed and gave it to the American flyer, telling the
Jpan Japanese authorities he was French. We took him all the way into
Was
China -but I don't think he much goode after that."
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deepe
ho--2
april 16, 1965
The leader of the guerrilla band was Ho Chi Minh, now the
President of North Viet Nam. Today, twenty years later, Amoricam
flyers are bombing his country.
"I remember sleeping every night on the rice mat on the ground
beside Ho Chi Minh," the businessman continued. "I'll never forget
seeing Ho Chi Minh sleeping one night in the back of a dirty bakery
shop. He stayed there for three weeks--and for three weeks in a nearby
house a Chinese (Nationalist) intelligence agent slept. The Chinese
had been sent to arrest Ho Chi Minh-but he didn't even know Ho Chi Minh
when he saw him. Everyone had heard of Ho Chi Minh as an important
leader but the Chinese expect expected him to travel with a big
entourage and a number of bodyguards--but he never did."
The irony of rescuing American flyers--and twenty years later
to receive airstrikes by them--tas one of the many paradoxes of
politics witnessed by Ho Chim Chi Minh during his three-quarters of a
century of living.
He was first a member of the French Communist Party---but thirty
yea rs later was to lead the resistance war against the French
colonialists in Viet Nam, He
15
1
a recruit of the Moscow Communist Party--
and thirty years later cold-shouldered the Russians.
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deepe
ho-3
april 16, 1965
Representing the Russian Communist Party, he was assigned
as a military instructor and advisor with a Russian delegation to
the Wha mpoo Military Academy near Canton--where he helped traim
Chinese troops for Genera 1 Chiang Kai-shek. During this period,
he was to witness the Russians assisting the Nationalist Chinese-
instead of the Chinese Communists--which dis was the initial
split between the Russiam and Chinese Communist Parties. Later,
while he was at Whampoo, The Chinese Nationalists attempted to
crush the Chinese Communists,, and a young party member named
Ma o Tse-Tung fled the area.
Ho Chi Minh was a Bolshevik before a young Russian official
nomed Joseph Stalin had been heard of: he was a card-carrying member
of the Communist Party when a youthful Chinese named Mao Tse-Tung
was only a provincial resistence leader.
Raam
Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam-including anti-Communist South Vietnam-
is both a man and a myth. Long ago fact has become inter-twinned with
fiction. He was born about 1890; his real name was probably
Nguyen Chi Thari Thanh (The Most Sincere), but no one knows for certain.
He later write under the nameux name of Nguen Nguyen Ai Quoe (Nguyen The
Patriot),
and much later used the alias of Ho Chi Minh-which means the
most enlighted Enlightened One."
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deepe
ho--4
april 16, 1965
Ho Chi Minh was born in Nghe An province, north of the 17th
parallel, of which the provincial capital is Vinh, which was bombed during
the Tonkin Gulf orisis in August and which was raided frequently in
His father was a
the airstrikes by American planes since February.
Chinese-educated scholar, but Ho Chi Minh's ancestors had been
Ho Chi Minh g
mandarins serving the imperial administrative system.
father oither because he failed or was anti-French-refused to become
a mandarin, and as a virtually penniless teacher traveled to Saigon,
leaving behind his children. When Ho Chi Minh was a young teenager, he,
too, traveled to Saigon to see his father who mentxirix reportedly told
him he was old enough to take care of himself. Like his father, Ho Chi
Minh became a drifter but the Communists still call Saigon "the city of
Tăng Chi Linh vừ
92
"When we were walking through the jungles, we'd ask Ho Chi Minh
about his family," the Saigon businessman explained.
"But he never
said anything about them. He talked only about the country-but not
about his family."
According to one report, even when Ho Chi Minh was President im
1945, his sister came to the Presidential Palace to see him--but he
sent her home after only a half-hour chit-chat.
"But Ho Chi Minh would send me scrawled notes asking me to tea,"
recalled the Saigon businessman who had helped search for American pilots.
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doope
ho-5
april 16, 1965
"Even as President, Ho Chi Minh was a very simple man-very kind and
gentdel," the businessman explained. "It was his generals who were
cruel and ruthless."
After leaving his father in Saigon, Ho Chi Minh became a stowaway
anaxheritmiamm on a ship to Frances he later worked as a sailor
traveling toEngland, Europe--and reportedly even to Boston. He
later became a kitchen-hand in famous restaurants in France and England,
where he reportedly specialized in pastry-making. He became an
apprentice photographer and tye type og typographer.
In 1919, he attended the Communist Third Internationale as a
delegate of the French Communist Party-hen Joseph Stalin was still
a minor official and Mao-Tse-Tung was a small-fry provincial leader.
As a repreen representative of the French Communist Party-not a é
a Vietnamese he was sent to Moscow for more training, to attend more
conferences throughout Europe and in 1925 he was sent te-as a member of
a Russian delegation (he was given Russian citizenship and a Russian name)
-to Canton to advise the military at Chinese military academy training
troops for General Chiang Kai-shek. During this period, Chia-ng was i
operating in a brief "honeymoon" alliance with the Chinese Communist Party
in their common fight against the Chinese warlords. But the honeymoon was
shattered in 1927--the Chinese Communists dispersed to fight both the war'
warlords and Chiang Kai-shek.
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deepe
hanol-6
april 16, 1965
As the Russian delegation fled back to Moscow, Ho Chi Minh
dmsegom whereabouts became unknown, but he soon re-appeared
in Northeast Thailand and Laos, where he established Communist
Party apparatus--and the degree of Communist subversion in those
areas has yet to surface to the outside world. In the late 20's,
he zinoznamom boca mee became chief of the
Asien bureau for the Moscow Communist Party-and his responsibilities
extended from Japan to India, Indonesia to Indo-Chine.
On January 6, 1930, Ho Chi Minh founded the Indo o Indo-China
Communist Party; as economic depression and anti-French sentiments
spread in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh established recruiting and training
centers for his cadre. One of the recruits in 1932 was a young
nationalist party member named Truong Chinh-now the leader the most
militant pro-Peking wing of the Communist Party in North Vietnam.
During the thirties-Ho Chi Minh virtually faded from the picture,
but the legends about him spread throughout Vietnam. He was for a
time in ji a British hail in Hong Kong; later he wandered back and forth
a cross the Vietnamese-Chinese border. When the war against Japm
Jpn n Japan began, he established his harinambomen warzones for his
guerrilla bands-American flyers of parachuted in supplies during the
final days of the war im return for anti-Japanese intelligence
information and the resoud of American fliers.
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deepe
hao-
ho-7
As World War II ended in the Pacific, Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh
om September 2
troops seized control from the Japanese and nemod Ho Chi Minh as
President the post he has held and fought to retain over since.
A year later, the French troops returned to Vietnam to re-claim their
colong the Kiela Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh immediately began the
anti-colonial war, which they won eight years later.
Now, in their war against to their so-called "American aggressors",
Ho Chi Minh at 75 years of age apparently has left most of the
decision-making to the younger Party militants, to the Vietnamese
generals who succeeded in defeating the French.
"Ho Chi Minh receives guests in the old French Governor-General's
Palace," one traveler from Hanoi reported.
"But we don't know where
he lives. He still wears his old battered tunic, with an old pair of
en sandals and no sooks. He comes along and lights a cigar at a
cocktail party and is very gallant, offering chocolates to the ladies,
making a few jokes in fluent English--and then he goes off."
But in the words of the Saigon businessman who had searched for
American pilots with Ho Chi Minh twenty years ago,
has
"uncle Ho still
commands respect, but in decision making, he has a tiny voice that is
very far away."
It's rather the end of an ora.
-30-
Date
1965, Apr. 16
Subject
Vietnam War, 1961-1975; Hồ, Chí Minh, 1890-1969; Vietnam (Democratic Republic); Military biography
Location
Saigon, South Vietnam
Coordinates
10.8231; 106.6311
Size
20 x 26 cm
Container
B187, F4
Format
dispatches
Collection Number
MS 363
Collection Title
Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers
Creator
Keever, Beverly Deepe
Collector
Keever, Beverly Deepe
Copyright Information
These images are for educational use only. To inquire about usage or publication, please contact Archives & Special Collections.
Publisher
Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
Language
English