He Once Saved U.S. Airmen, Now They Bomb His Nation

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363-04828

Title

He Once Saved U.S. Airmen, Now They Bomb His Nation

Description

Article published in the New York Herald Tribune about the life of Há»“ ChÃ Minh, the leader of North Vietnam, page unknown

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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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- Page 1
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He Once Saved U.S. Airmen
Now They Bomb His Nation
By Beverly Deepe
A Special Correspondent
SAIGON.
Twenty years ago this
month, as the war against
Japan was in its final phase,
an efficient but straggly band
of guerrillas wandered through
the forests of Indochina,
searching for downed Ameri-
can fliers.
"We walked 30 miles a day,
up and down hills. That was
a long way," recalls a Saigon
business man who was one of
the guerrillas.
"When we picked up the
pilots, they weren't used to
walking, and they wanted to
ride our pack horses. The
horses slowed us down-and
we had to keep moving fast.
"I remember we picked up
one American flier with a brain
wound. We took him all the
way into China..
Chi Minh, which means "The
Most Enlightened One."
His father was a Chinese-
educated scholar whose ances-
tors had been mandarins serv-
ing the imperial administra-
tive system. Mr. Ho's father,
perhaps because he opposed
the French colonial rulers, re-
fused to become a mandarin.
A virtually penniless teacher,
he traveled south to Saigon,
leaving his children behind.
When Ho Chi Minh was a
teenager, he went to Saigon
to see his father, who report-
edly told him he
was old
enough to take care of him-
self. Like his father, Ho Chi
Minh became a drifter. Never-
theless, the Communists still
call Saigon "The City of Ho
Chi Minh."
"When we were walking
through the jungles, we'd ask
Ho Chi Minh about his fam-
ily," the Saigon business man
said. "But he never talked
The leader of the guerrilla about them. He talked only
about the country."
band was Ho Chi Minh, now
President of Communist North
Viet Nam. Today, American
fliers, are bombing his coun-
try.
This is one of the many
ironies of politics witnessed
by Mr. Ho in more than 45
years as a Communist. Other
ironies:
He was first a member
of the Communist party in
France-but 30 years later he
led the resistance war against
the French in Viet Nam.
As a recruit of the So-
viet Communist party he
helped train Chinese troops
for Generalissimo Chiang Kai-
shek, then favored by the Rus-
sians over the Chinese Com-
munists. Now Mr. Ho's re-
gime is a bitter foe of Gen.
Chiang and leans toward the
Red Chinese ideology rather
than Russia's.
Ho Chi Minh is both man
and myth in Viet Nam. Long
ago fact became mixed with
fiction. But it is certain that
he was a Bolshevik before a
Russian party worker named
Josef Stalin had been heard
of and a card-carrying Com-
munist when Mao Tse-tung
was only a provincial Chinese
resistance leader.
ANCESTORS
Mr. Ho was born about 1890
in Nghe An Province, north of
the 17th Parallel. The provin-
cial capital is Vinh, which
was bombed during the Ton-
kin Gulf crisis in August and
raided frequently in the air
strikes by U. S. planes that
started in February.
His real name probably was
Nguyen Chi Thanh (The Most
Sincere), but no one knows
for certain. He first wrote un-
der the name of Nguyen Ai
Quoc (Nguyen the Patriot)
and later used the alias of Ho
One report is that after Mr.
Ho became President of Viet
Nam in 1945, his sister came
to the Presidential Palace to
see him. He sent her home
after a half-hour of chit-chat.
"Even as President, Ho Chi
Minh was a very simple man,
very kind and gentle," the
business man said. "But his
generals were cruel and ruth-
less."
STOWAWAY
After leaving his father in
Saigon, Ho Chi Minh stowed
away on a ship to France. He
became a scilor and traveled
to England, Europe and
even to Boston, some say. He
later was a kitchen-hand in
famous restaurants in France
and England, specializing in
pastry-making.
In 1919, he attended the
Communist Third Interna-
tional as a delegate of the
French Communist party.
Later he was sent to Moscow
for more training and
other conferences throughout
Europe.
to
In 1925 he was sent as a
member of a Russian delega-
tion (he was given Russian
citizenship and a Russian
name) to Canton, China, to
advise the Whampoo military
academy training troops for
Chiang Kai-shek.
During this period, Chiang
was 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 Communists, in-
cluding Mao Tse-tung, fled to
plan their fight against both
the warlords and Chiang Kai-
shek.
It was during this period
that Mr. Ho witnessed the
Russians assisting the Nation-
alist Chinese rather than the
Communists-which caused
the initial split between the
Russian and Chinese parties.
After the Russian delegation
went back to Moscow, Mr. Ho
disappeared. But he soon
turned up in northeast Thai-
land and Laos, where he es-
tablished a Communist party
apparatus. In the late 1920s
he became chief of the Asian
Bureau for the Moscow party.
His responsibilities extended
from Japan to India, Indo-
nesia to Indochina.
On Jan. 6, 1930, Mr. Ho
founded the IndoChina Com-
munist party; as economic de-
pression and anti-French sen-
timent spread in Viet Nam
Mr. Ho established recruiting
and training centers for his
cadre.
PRESIDENT
During the '30s Mr. Ho vir-
tually faded from the picture,
but the legends about him
spread throughout Viet Nam.
For a time he was in a ritish
jail in Hong Kong; later he
wandered back and forth
across the Vietnamese-Chinese
border.
When the war against Ja-
pan began, he established war
zones for his guerrilla bands.
Americans parachuted sup-
plies in to the guerrillas dur-
ing the final days of the war
in return for anti-Japanese
intelligence information and
the rescue of U. S. fliers.
As World War II ended in
the Pacific, Mr. Ho's Viet
Minh troops seized control
from the Japanese and on
Sept. 2 he was named Presi-
dent, the post he has fought
to retain ever since.
In 1946, the French troops
returned to Viet Nam to re-
claim their colony. The Viet
Minh immediately began the
anti-colonial war, which they
won eight years later.
Now, in North Viet Nam's
war against "American ag-
gressors," Mr. Ho at 75 years.
of age apparently has left
most of the decision-making
to the younger party mili-
tants.
"Ho Chi Minh receives
guests in the old French Gov-
ernor-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 sandals and no socks.
He comes along and lights a
cigar at a cocktail party and
is very gallant, offering choc-
olates to the ladies, making
a few jokes in fluent English
-and then he goes off."
The Saigon businessman
who helped Mr. Ho search for
American pilots 20 years ago.
says
that "Uncle Ho still
commands respect, but in
decision-making he has a tiny
voice that is very far away."

Date

1965, Aug. 8

Subject

Há»“, ChÃ Minh, 1890-1969; Vietnam (Democratic Republic); Biography; Military leadership

Location

Saigon, South Vietnam

Coordinates

10.8231; 106.6311

Container

B4, F6

Format

newspaper clippings

Collection Number

MS 363

Collection Title

Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers

Creator

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

Item